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The pleasure of ownership of what? Nothing. You just have a row in a distributed ledger indicating that the token currently belongs to your private key. It doe

The pleasure of ownership of what? Nothing. You just have a row in a distributed ledger indicating that the token currently belongs to your private key. It does not conver any legal ownership over the image. It does not confer copyright. Anybody else could come allow and create a new series of NFTs that include a token pointing to the same art, and sell it too. NFTs are basically equivalent to those pieces of paper that claim ownership over a plot on the moon that get sold. Anybody can make them and sell them, and they have zero legal ramification. The only thing that makes a particular NTF that points at a work of art special is if it is endorsed by somebody. This can have meaning though. While anybody can make baseball cards for any player for any year, only those made (endorsed) by certain companies have any value in the collector's market (and only certain players and certain years). But even then at least you really do legally own a physical piece of paperboard. NFTs are more akin to owning a unique item in a video game, except at least with those you can usually use the item.

jacobsimon 6y ago
Just dropping by to say I actually did develop a NFT version of the Moon (back in 2017!). It was obviously somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but still very much alive and real: https://lunartoken.co https://lunartoken.co I think your critique of NFTs is mostly valid. Until there is some legal validity to them recognized by governments, they are basically just, well, tokens of ownership. The same could be said about most property or IP at some point in time :)
- platz 6y ago
  > tokens of ownership They are not even "tokens of ownership"; they're just tokens that one owns, nothing more, but the semantic distinction here is significant, because a token cannot own anything outside of itself.
  - jacobsimon 6y ago
    I meant token in the literal dictionary sense, as in a symbolic voucher
jaywalk 6y ago
You own the thing. Even though it's not physical, it's exactly like owning a baseball card or a work of art. On their own, those things have no intrinsic value. Just like an NFT, they have value because the creator endorsed them, and other people put value in that endorsement. And just like an NFT again, you do not have the right to reproduce a baseball card or work of art just because you purchased it.
- platz 6y ago
  > Even though it's not physical, it's exactly like owning a baseball card or a work of art. you're confused. You don't own anything with an NFT other than a pointer. so it's not like owning a work of art at all. NFT's do not give you ownership over a work of art.
  - nebulous1 6y ago
    I think he may be accidentally correct about the baseball card though, with the baseball player being the asset the NFT is pointing to and the card being the NFT. As such, the NFT is a collectible, nothing more. If it turns out that people want to trade these collectibles then ... that's fine!
  - superbaconman 6y ago
    NFTs are NOT just urls. You can store all sorts of data within the token. Like maybe a license which grants commercial distribution rights.
    - platz 6y ago
      please show me all the tokens on openseas that are licenses that grant commercial distribution rights.
      - superbaconman 6y ago
        I haven't really spent much time looking. Honestly until message signing becomes a feature of every major wallet, then I'm not to interested. If you can't sign a message with your wallet you can't prove you own the wallet. If you can't prove ownership of a wallet, you can't prove ownership of NFTs associated with the wallet.
legutierr 6y ago
> It does not confer copyright. Why don't they? If NFTs tokenized ownership of the copyright of the referenced media (maybe through some kind of transferable copyright assignment contract linked to the given token), then maybe they wouldn't be total bullshit. Meaning that, if they did confer copyright, maybe they actually would be useful and a good idea.
- jsmith45 6y ago
  Sure, fully agree that if they really did represent some form of meaningful ownership, like the copyright to the work, then yeah, they would not be total bullshit.
- meheleventyone 6y ago
  > Why don't they? Because you can sell people a token for $$$ (at least theoretically) without even giving up real ownership of the IP. If you're ever actually licensing IP the rights holder is going to grant as little freedom as possible for the most money possible. No freedom for lots of money is the ideal from that POV.

jacobsimon 6y ago

Just dropping by to say I actually did develop a NFT version of the Moon (back in 2017!). It was obviously somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but still very much alive and real: https://lunartoken.co https://lunartoken.co I think your critique of NFTs is mostly valid. Until there is some legal validity to them recognized by governments, they are basically just, well, tokens of ownership. The same could be said about most property or IP at some point in time :)

platz 6y ago
> tokens of ownership They are not even "tokens of ownership"; they're just tokens that one owns, nothing more, but the semantic distinction here is significant, because a token cannot own anything outside of itself.
- jacobsimon 6y ago
  I meant token in the literal dictionary sense, as in a symbolic voucher

jaywalk 6y ago

You own the thing. Even though it's not physical, it's exactly like owning a baseball card or a work of art. On their own, those things have no intrinsic value. Just like an NFT, they have value because the creator endorsed them, and other people put value in that endorsement. And just like an NFT again, you do not have the right to reproduce a baseball card or work of art just because you purchased it.

platz 6y ago
> Even though it's not physical, it's exactly like owning a baseball card or a work of art. you're confused. You don't own anything with an NFT other than a pointer. so it's not like owning a work of art at all. NFT's do not give you ownership over a work of art.
- nebulous1 6y ago
  I think he may be accidentally correct about the baseball card though, with the baseball player being the asset the NFT is pointing to and the card being the NFT. As such, the NFT is a collectible, nothing more. If it turns out that people want to trade these collectibles then ... that's fine!
- superbaconman 6y ago
  NFTs are NOT just urls. You can store all sorts of data within the token. Like maybe a license which grants commercial distribution rights.
  - platz 6y ago
    please show me all the tokens on openseas that are licenses that grant commercial distribution rights.
    - superbaconman 6y ago
      I haven't really spent much time looking. Honestly until message signing becomes a feature of every major wallet, then I'm not to interested. If you can't sign a message with your wallet you can't prove you own the wallet. If you can't prove ownership of a wallet, you can't prove ownership of NFTs associated with the wallet.

legutierr 6y ago

> It does not confer copyright. Why don't they? If NFTs tokenized ownership of the copyright of the referenced media (maybe through some kind of transferable copyright assignment contract linked to the given token), then maybe they wouldn't be total bullshit. Meaning that, if they did confer copyright, maybe they actually would be useful and a good idea.

jsmith45 6y ago
Sure, fully agree that if they really did represent some form of meaningful ownership, like the copyright to the work, then yeah, they would not be total bullshit.
meheleventyone 6y ago
> Why don't they? Because you can sell people a token for $$$ (at least theoretically) without even giving up real ownership of the IP. If you're ever actually licensing IP the rights holder is going to grant as little freedom as possible for the most money possible. No freedom for lots of money is the ideal from that POV.