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Do I understand this correctly? Without NFTs, I would sign a contract with the artist (or current owner) of a digital artwork that transfers the ownership and

Do I understand this correctly? Without NFTs, I would sign a contract with the artist (or current owner) of a digital artwork that transfers the ownership and all rights to the work to me. Since it's a digital artwork, the contract would include a secure hash fingerprint of the artwork to ensure we know what artwork we're talking about. Now, somebody somewhere could fraudulently claim to own the artwork and try to sell it, but the prospective buyer could check with the original author and track down the current owner (through the contracts trace) to ensure they're dealing with the legitimate owner. NFTs make this easier by putting all that stuff on the blockchain. Did I get it correctly?

iamben 6y ago
I asked this in another NFT post the other day. As far as I could understand unless specified it still doesn't include the rights to the image (like you can't reproduce it on t-shirts), it's just you own a (for want of a better phrase) 'digital original'.
- fl0wenol 6y ago
  This alone makes me really uncomfortable because then what the hell are you paying for? On the one hand it's a way to give an artist more money directly, sure, and tie it to the specific work. But you could just do that publicly or anonymously anyway. On the other hand it seems entirely performative, in that it only servers to signal to wealthy peers (in this case, crypto bros) that you are an "art patron" without the messiness that comes with a real work on canvas that can get damaged by sun, fire, moisture... where's all the risk? The value is all declarative and speculative. As others have offered, this is like land on the moon. I could sort of see the logic if this was tied to a massively popular online game where it enforced your ability to have the one custom skin and no one else can use it, with the cooperation of the game itself. But in general this is not what's happening. It seems primarily driven by speculation and probably a criminal element... crypto bros wanting in on the money laundering and tax evasion possibilities of art collecting without all the business of actually you know, having it.
jobigoud 6y ago
You don't get any rights. And as you mention you still need to consult and trust a central authority, here the artist, to know who is the real owner. There are interesting use cases for NFT but for art it doesn't really solve anything new.

iamben 6y ago

I asked this in another NFT post the other day. As far as I could understand unless specified it still doesn't include the rights to the image (like you can't reproduce it on t-shirts), it's just you own a (for want of a better phrase) 'digital original'.

fl0wenol 6y ago
This alone makes me really uncomfortable because then what the hell are you paying for? On the one hand it's a way to give an artist more money directly, sure, and tie it to the specific work. But you could just do that publicly or anonymously anyway. On the other hand it seems entirely performative, in that it only servers to signal to wealthy peers (in this case, crypto bros) that you are an "art patron" without the messiness that comes with a real work on canvas that can get damaged by sun, fire, moisture... where's all the risk? The value is all declarative and speculative. As others have offered, this is like land on the moon. I could sort of see the logic if this was tied to a massively popular online game where it enforced your ability to have the one custom skin and no one else can use it, with the cooperation of the game itself. But in general this is not what's happening. It seems primarily driven by speculation and probably a criminal element... crypto bros wanting in on the money laundering and tax evasion possibilities of art collecting without all the business of actually you know, having it.

jobigoud 6y ago

You don't get any rights. And as you mention you still need to consult and trust a central authority, here the artist, to know who is the real owner. There are interesting use cases for NFT but for art it doesn't really solve anything new.