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NFTs fascinate me as a technical/political concept, in terms of creating new digital certificates of ownership (I don't think it's that new, as CryptoKitties an
by jimkleiber 6y ago
NFTs fascinate me as a technical/political concept, in terms of creating new digital certificates of ownership (I don't think it's that new, as CryptoKitties and offshoots have been around for a while).
What confuses me is how this ownership will be enforced, as it seems like one of the main purposes of governments is to enforce property rights. I think it's simpler to enforce these ownership rights with bitcoin because 1) the token has to be on the bitcoin blockchain and 2) each bitcoin is equal to the others.
Questions I have:
1) If one person registers a thing (can be digital but also analog, as I see the NFT as just the certificate of ownership), what stops that person from registering it on another blockchain? Is there only one blockchain for these proofs of ownership?
2) Assuming there is more than one blockchain and they exist independently, what stops another person from registering that same thing on another blockchain?
3) What stops a person from registering a very slight deviation of a thing (e.g., in the link, tweaking the green color in eyes of the smiley face)?
4) What stops someone from registering something that others have created but haven't yet registered, i.e., me scouring the internet to find un-registered art?
5) What rights do the people who own these NFTs have over the item they own? E.g., some people talked on CH about how if one buys an NFT of a digital art piece, some NFTs will say the person cannot print that art piece on t-shirts and sell them.
6) Most importantly, who will resolve the myriad of disputes that will result from the above?
As I ask these questions, I realize that maybe many of these issues get reduced/eliminated by having verified identities of the person registering the thing. I'm not sure, I'm open to hearing answers that help reduce my skepticism :-)