3 ms·

Isn't one other difference the fact that when you own a physical art piece, you have the option of hanging the original on your wall and claiming the exclusive

Isn't one other difference the fact that when you own a physical art piece, you have the option of hanging the original on your wall and claiming the exclusive right to see or move it whenever and however you want? Especially if you explicitly don't want other people to see it, for whatever reason, and if you particularly appreciate being able to stand an inch away from it without a security guard yelling at you. With most NFT implementations, everything you're getting is 100% public and can be bit-for-bit seen, downloaded, and redistributed by anyone. (There's always the possibility of off-chain solutions that grant access to exclusive content only if you prove you own the token, and they're built into some platforms. But these seem to mostly be novelties at this point, and with current solutions there's always the risk of the provider getting hacked and all the exclusive content leaking, etc.) This is why it's hard to equate piracy with theft and NFT ownership with physical painting ownership, I think. You can probably equate the speculative parts of art collection to it, where the collector (or "investor") may never actually care about the work intrinsically and may never be closer than 1000 miles away from it because they view it solely as a financial asset. No idea what % of the current physical art collection market is like that, though.

stinkytaco 6y ago
> You can probably equate the speculative parts of art collection to it, where the collector (or "investor") may never actually care about the work intrinsically and may never be closer than 1000 miles away from it because they view it solely as a financial asset. Even this, I assume, is based on the assumption that someone, someday will want to do what you describe (hang it on a wall and have exclusive access) and pay you for the privilege to do so. Right now, that isn't really possible with an NFT.
- meowface 6y ago
  Maybe. Or maybe there are enough pure speculators where some art really does just get passed around for a century to different investors despite remaining in some storage facility the whole time? Don't know anything about art collection, so I have no clue.
rjknight 6y ago
> Isn't one other difference the fact that when you own a physical art piece, you have the option of hanging the original on your wall and claiming the exclusive right to see or move it whenever and however you want? You definitely have control over the physical object. You don't, however, have control over whether or not the artist can sell prints. The artist retains the copyright and will be able to sell prints, including signed or limited edition prints, without your permission. This might not apply if you commissioned the work (e.g. it's a portrait of yourself or your family), but then the same principle would apply to a purely digital artwork. In general, thinking about NFTs in terms of ownership of the original work, or of the copyright, is a mistake, and one that the article also makes. For some reason people seem to expect that buying an NFT ought to confer ownership of the copyright, or that it's somehow remarkable that it does not (the OP says "Sundaresan doesn’t own the copyright to Everydays. All he bought was a non-fungible token (NFT)"). But physical art doesn't work that way, and I'm not sure why we would assume any differently for digital art. NFTs are best understood as providing a mechanism for creating the equivalent of autographed prints, which is valuable for digital artists because nobody wants to buy their original AfterEffects or Processing or Blender files.

stinkytaco 6y ago

> You can probably equate the speculative parts of art collection to it, where the collector (or "investor") may never actually care about the work intrinsically and may never be closer than 1000 miles away from it because they view it solely as a financial asset. Even this, I assume, is based on the assumption that someone, someday will want to do what you describe (hang it on a wall and have exclusive access) and pay you for the privilege to do so. Right now, that isn't really possible with an NFT.

meowface 6y ago
Maybe. Or maybe there are enough pure speculators where some art really does just get passed around for a century to different investors despite remaining in some storage facility the whole time? Don't know anything about art collection, so I have no clue.

rjknight 6y ago

> Isn't one other difference the fact that when you own a physical art piece, you have the option of hanging the original on your wall and claiming the exclusive right to see or move it whenever and however you want? You definitely have control over the physical object. You don't, however, have control over whether or not the artist can sell prints. The artist retains the copyright and will be able to sell prints, including signed or limited edition prints, without your permission. This might not apply if you commissioned the work (e.g. it's a portrait of yourself or your family), but then the same principle would apply to a purely digital artwork. In general, thinking about NFTs in terms of ownership of the original work, or of the copyright, is a mistake, and one that the article also makes. For some reason people seem to expect that buying an NFT ought to confer ownership of the copyright, or that it's somehow remarkable that it does not (the OP says "Sundaresan doesn’t own the copyright to Everydays. All he bought was a non-fungible token (NFT)"). But physical art doesn't work that way, and I'm not sure why we would assume any differently for digital art. NFTs are best understood as providing a mechanism for creating the equivalent of autographed prints, which is valuable for digital artists because nobody wants to buy their original AfterEffects or Processing or Blender files.