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Charlie Bit My Finger video to be taken off YouTube after selling for £500k

111 points by miles 5y ago

flowerlad 5y ago
NFTs may be a way for open source developers to make some money off of their work. Linus Torvalds could make a few hundred millions by selling an NFT for Linux, considering a JPG file sold for $69 million [1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/11/arts/design/nft-auction-christies-beeple.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/11/arts/design/nft-auction-c...
- wearywanderer 5y ago
  Sex work is less tarnishing to one's personal reputation than NFT scams. There is more honor in sucking dick for crack rocks.
- recursive 5y ago
  What is an "NFT for linux"? Maybe selling a banana taped to a wall could be a way for people to make money, considering one of those sold for ${OUTRAGE}. Is Linus running out of money or something?
  - flowerlad 5y ago
    > What is an "NFT for linux"? What is an NFT for a JPG file? I don't know, but we know it got sold for $69 million. > Is Linus running out of money or something? I have no idea, but since when does someone have to run out of money in order to want to make more?
    - rakoo 5y ago
      Past performance is no guarantee of future results
  - dr-smooth 5y ago
    what is an "NFT for anything" other than an arbitrary association between a number and some sort of artifact, presumably declared by the creator of said artifact. It's so bizarre to me that people will pay so much for these things.
- coderintherye 5y ago
  The beeple NFT shouldn't be used as a basis for comparison to future expected values given that it was artificially inflated by self-dealing, you can read more here about it: https://amycastor.com/2021/03/14/metakovan-the-mystery-beeple-art-buyer-and-his-nft-defi-scheme/ https://amycastor.com/2021/03/14/metakovan-the-mystery-beepl...
  - miracle2k 5y ago
    Amy is wrong, as she often is. Metakovan gifting the artist some tokens as a thank you is not self-sealing. It's just a guy overpaying for an artwork, and possible having an interest in promoting an artist he already owns work from.
- paxys 5y ago
  Sure, Linus can sell an NFT containing the word "Linux" the same way he can sell a picture of his feet or just about anything else. It is all meaningless since (1) the NFT does not grant any ownership rights or licenses and (2) Linux code is anyways available under GPLv2.
  - flowerlad 5y ago
    > Linux code is anyways available under GPLv2 Yes, it doesn't stop anyone from using Linux. So win-win for all.
    - paxys 5y ago
      Soo..what is this NFT then exactly? Why would someone buy a Linux NFT?
      - duskwuff 5y ago
        Absolutely nothing, I guess. Like most other NFTs, really.
      - flowerlad 5y ago
        Why would someone pay $69 million for a JPG file? Bragging rights. That's it.
intricatedetail 5y ago
Is there any book about this phenomenon, that people spend fortune on memes?
- BitwiseFool 5y ago
  Not that I know of directly, but there is a phenomenon where the ultra-rich "purchase" (but rarely take possession of) items in an exclusive catalog and the item's ownership/heritage is seen as a status symbol. The first thing that comes to mind is the Codex Leicester, which is now owned by Bill Gates and people were expecting him to rename it "Codex Gates" but he didn't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Leicester https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Leicester
- throwaway803453 5y ago
  But then the hustle would stop working. My take on the hustle is you post some garbage art as an NFT and have a rich buddy buy it for $100,000(?). Then your other garbage arts instantaneously become worth thousands because the media will pick up this story in proportion to the price*garbage factor. You then start dumping said garbage, eventually return the initial payment to your rich buddy and split the take. Unfortunately we are likely past peak stupid in the crypto-world but you'll have another chance ~3 years from now since that's the crypto dumb-money time-constant. But if you still think there's time, visit https://mintable.app/ https://mintable.app/ follow the advice above and report back.
lr4444lr 5y ago
It is interesting in this day and age how digital rights can be transferred, but I can't say that this represents some great loss of access to a landmark cinematic achievement for mankind, or anything like that.
- ryankrage77 5y ago
  > digital rights can be transferred An NFT affords no rights at all. It's equivelant to a piece of paper with a URL that points to a site that has a link the video on it. Except the link no longer works, since the video was taken down.
arthurofbabylon 5y ago
Would ads on YouTube be more profitable for a video like this?
dlevine 5y ago
This is potentially the beginning of a very interesting trend, and something I have spent some time thinking about. My sense is that owning an NFT should allow you to control access to that content (even if your choice is just to make it publicly accessible). NFT doesn't have an ACL layer built in, so this would need to be added (has anyone already done this?) One open question is whether it actually makes sense to have an ACL for an electronic asset, because once someone has access to it, they can easily make a perfect copy of the bits and give it to anyone they want. But I guess you could make the same argument about selling access to digital content that is available on a torrent somewhere.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- matkoniecz 5y ago
  > owning an NFT should allow you to control access to that content are you aware that anyone may sell NFT for anything? I could produce and sell NFT pointing to say Walmart website. Or HN. Or Wikipedia.
  - dlevine 5y ago
    Yes, and I believe that's one of the reasons why there is so much hate for NFTs on this thread. People are selling tokens for huge amounts of money that confer no rights other than being able to say that you own the NFT. Obviously you would need to actually own the asset to be able to hand over access control as part of the NFT sale. NFTs potentially have real use cases, but the technology and infrastructure isn't mature enough to support those use cases.
    - duskwuff 5y ago
      Right. The question that people keep coming back to is what ownership rights are actually conveyed with an NFT. The most common answer I'm seeing is "none", which makes it feel dishonest to equate the sale of the NFT as a sale of the thing it (supposedly) represents.
recursive 5y ago
I mean, it's definitely still there. Several times. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=charlie+bit+my+finger https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=charlie+bit+my+...
librish 5y ago
I don't have any problems with people buying or selling art for large sums of money, nor do I have a problem with people classifying art as pretty much whatever they want. The only thing I mind are the people pretending a real problem has been solved with NFTs. In any current (or conceived as far as I know) implementation of NFTs you have to trust so many people, technologies, and companies that the blockchain being technically "trustless" is not solving a real problem at all. Overall I don't understand the point of a blockchain if you have to interact with anything off-chain at all. If I have to trust an oracle or similar why even bother with a blockchain in the first place?
- ddalex 5y ago
  > If I have to trust an oracle or similar why even bother with a blockchain in the first place? Well how else do you generate hype with an aura of breaking edge tech to impress the clueless and give credibility to your scam?
  - rajin444 5y ago
    I imagine a lot of artists have benefited from this over the centuries.
    - ddalex 5y ago
      Very, very interesting point. Art has a couple of sticky points that allows it to be used as storage of value: * It is impossible to copy and produce second original * It is recognizable by trained and common people alike, it is useful a symbol of status * New art inherits some of artist's prestige; say a newly discovered Picasso painting will be recognized as valuable just because it's a Picasso * It is very difficult to produce enmasse - a computer-generated drawing in the style of Picasso will not be valued as an original Picasso * Wealthy people agree it's a storage of value - when somebody needs liquidity they can be assured that somebody will buy their unique piece. Do NFTs touch all of these points? 1, yes. 2. they're trying to build the fame of NFTs now. 3. they're trying to build it now, very unlikely it will succeed. 4. Are some NFTs esthetically pleasing ? I would guess this is why it's needed to be tied to an artwork. 5. Unlikely.
Tabular-Iceberg 5y ago
What would happen if I put up a NFT for sale of something I had no part in making?
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  This is already happening[1] to smaller creators, and people still buy them because NFTs don't offer any guarantees of authenticity beyond what you'd see on eBay. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/20/22334527/nft-scams-artists-opensea-rarible-marble-cards-fraud-art https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/20/22334527/nft-scams-artist...
- nerfhammer 5y ago
  there's nothing stopping you from doing that
- recursive 5y ago
  Someone might buy it but probably not.
- vaer-k 5y ago
  What would happen if you sold to someone the deed to a house you do not own?
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    This is not the equivalent situation. It's more like I decide to sell an NFT to your comment.
    - vaer-k 5y ago
      It totally disagree. I think it is quite equivalent. The difference is that we don't have a centralized authority to recognize valid NFTs, as we do for deeds. But if we did have a central authority, like perhaps the artist responsible for the work protected by the NFT, and if the artist made it clear and public that only the NFTs she recognizes could be considered valid proof of ownership of her works, then indeed an NFT would function like a deed.
jrochkind1 5y ago
When someone bought this NFT (or in general), did someone sign a contract with you saying they transferred ownership in the intellectual property the NFT "represented"? (Ie, was at the other end of the URL, I guess?) Cause the NFT itself means nothing to courts or laws, does it? If someone owns the copyright in that video, they can send YouTube takedown notices. But what, if anything, makes NFT proof of ownership of copyright? How do you even know the person that sold it to you had the copyright to transfer, and did they transfer it? One of the things that seems irraitional about this NFT market.
- phreeza 5y ago
  I don't think it means nothing to a court,even if it isn't a formal contract. Verbal agreements also carry some weight in court in most jurisdictions, they just aren't as bulletproof. I would guess an nft is somewhere on that level?
- banana_giraffe 5y ago
  > Cause the NFT itself means nothing to courts or laws, does it? We won't know till it's tried in court, but given that handshake agreements can carry weight in court if they can be proven, I'd suspect an NFT could be binding.
  - jrochkind1 5y ago
    Is there a handshake agreement that copyright was transferred? Do the NFT auction sites say anything about this? What if the seller says "Oh, you thought I was selling you the copyright in the thing the NFT represents? I don't know how you got that idea, I never said that! I just sold you the NFT, that's it." Do people buying NFT's actually get some kind of agreement that the seller owned the copyright in the thing represneted and sold it with the NFT purchase? Real questions, I don't use these things!
  - oneeyedpigeon 5y ago
    Aren't the people who are selling NFTs attaching terms and conditions to the effect of "this doesn't give you actual ownership"? In fact, the article states: > its owner does not actually buy the copyright itself
ALittleLight 5y ago
I would describe myself, usually, as not a jealous man. I don't recollect the last time I've felt jealousy. But, something about NFTs provokes anger within me. Maybe that anger is jealously. It feels like NFTs are a mockery of the "market" for lack of a better word. When I think of what I would need to sell (items or time doing labor) to get these amounts and how incredibly useless NFTs actually are... It's frustrating. I don't feel this way about inherited wealth, or people who got money through the lottery, or for being famous reality show people, but something about NFTs really rubs me the wrong way.
- bloak 5y ago
  I remember some of the people who worked hard designing the hardware and software that went into feature phones being outraged, perhaps in a similar way, by the stupid amounts of money people were spending on ringtones at that time (about 20 years ago).
  - iamben 5y ago
    And yet now I don't know anyone with a 'novelty' ringtone. Even though it's ludicrously simple to choose a song or whatever else - literally everyone I know, or strangers whose phone rings - it's a vibrate or a ring.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  Technology like NFTs being promoted in the way that they have been impacts the rest of the market. Not only do they manipulate relative values of legitimate applications of technology, they make people distrust the entire tech sector once the hype cycle dies down. Look at blockchain today versus 4-5 years ago. There might actually be some legitimate uses for the technology, but that market has been soiled by the scammers and their ICOs. At least that's where my frustration comes from.
- beforeolives 5y ago
  Right - seeing so much money thrown around with so little backing/reason/substance doesn't really motivate you to go back to your life and put in a full workweek in exchange for whatever your salary is.
yalogin 5y ago
What is preventing people from uploading the video back to YouTube? after all there are tons of shows already on there that are owned by media companies. I am sure this Charlie video has a lot of copies floating around.
- EEor 5y ago
  There's nothing preventing it. It wouldn't be the original however, and in this scenario that's all that matters.
  - johnnyanmac 5y ago
    I'm not going to pretend I have an intimate knowledge of how NFT's work (I need to basically re-research the idea everytime it comes up), but I never understood the financial incentive to buy one, especially for these very old viral videos. I doubt any amount of merch made would make back hundreds of thousands, and I imagine most/all of the B2B potential is gone since these kinds of videos have long since left their 15 minutes of fame. And As seen here, even the "rich trolling" potential is practically impossible to enforce since we run into the idea of "piracy" (in the loosest form of quotes you can imagine). A problem even billion dollar media empires can't fully enforce. Is there something here I'm missing? ---- on a side note: while memes like nyan cat make sense, I find it very ethically dubious to "own" what's essentially a personal memory of a real family. But I guess if it's the family themselves that sold it, the consentual factors are already in place.
  - monkeynotes 5y ago
    How do we define "original" when talking about digital works? As soon as you upload it you are making a copy. Then that copy gets bounced around and duplicated across edge servers all over the world. You'd have to own the SD card to own the 'original'. But who really cares? I don't understand NFTs, I just don't understand the value.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
jordanpg 5y ago
This tells me more about the psychology of rich people than anything else. How pathetically desperate for validation you must be to pay this much for a unique thing, and to deprive others of access to it.
hoppyhoppy2 5y ago
My main basic questions remain after reading about these NFT sales. Why can't someone just buy all rights to this video the same way a company can buy the rights to a film? What does the blockchain do that a couple lawyers and some paperwork couldn't? Why a blockchain-based digital "certificate" instead of just a certificate? Does my birth certificate or marriage certificate or college diploma need an upgrade to an NFT, too?
- delecti 5y ago
  An NFT is essentially a trading card for the thing that it's attached to. Just like you don't "own" Babe Ruth in any meaningful sense by owning a Babe Ruth trading card, you don't "own" the artwork associated with an NFT by owning the NFT itself. The exception is if there's some arrangement external to the NFT that links ownership of the NFT to ownership of the thing.
  - hoppyhoppy2 5y ago
    Could I sell an NFT for my birth certificate to raise some cash, while my original birth certificate remains at the state's Vital Records Department under ownership of the state? If so, what exactly would the buyer be buying? Just a virtual trading card and a promise that I won't sell my "birth-certificate NFT" trading card to anyone else?
    - delecti 5y ago
      > Could I sell an NFT for my birth certificate to raise some cash, while my original birth certificate remains at the state's Vital Records Department under ownership of the state? Yes, and it's basically equivalent to writing the words "My Birth Certificate" on a piece of paper and selling that piece of paper. It holds no weight whatsoever. > If so, what exactly would the buyer be buying? Nothing. > Just a promise that I won't sell my "birth-certificate NFT" to anyone else? Not even that, unless you also did that. You can make multiple NFTs from the same thing. Just like nothing would prevent you from writing "My Birth Certificate" on a second piece of paper and selling that too, unless there was some external agreement that you wouldn't.
deleted 5y ago
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hackinthebochs 5y ago
The only explanation for NFTs that made sense to me is that people with an interest in the network (e.g. early investors) are bidding up some choice NFTs to make news and drive interest in their network. There is no actual market for NFTs at these prices, but that doesn't stop groups with deep pockets from pretending like there is by purchasing well known memes for eye popping amounts. If internet "celebrities" are able to cash in on this nonsense, I see no harm in it. It's sort of like living off of VC subsidized products.
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  Could be money laundering related too. Buy NFTs for small sums with clean crypto, sell it to your dirty wallet for inflated sums. In order for something like that to work there needs to be plausible deniability so they also buy NFTs with clean wallets which would explain the volume. Plus the legitimate crypto speculators see these crazy numbers and jump aboard too.
  - VRay 5y ago
    I think most of these NFT contracts will give 5% of every resale back to the original creator of the contract, too. Pretty ludicrous IMO
- basch 5y ago
  The real market would be owning early works by an unknown, who later becomes known. That will evolve into the patron system again, where the owner of early works becomes a hype machine to drum up their artists clout, and then offloads their early work.
- hilbertseries 5y ago
  The beeple NFT that sold for 60m, was obviously an attempt to make NFTs look valuable.
- rtkwe 5y ago
  The introduction of NFTs certainly spiked the price of ETH for a while but it seems the shine has worn off and the dump is in full force.
leephillips 5y ago
This is the Casablanca of YT, because, just as HB never says, “Play it again, Sam”, the kid here never says, “Charlie bit my finger.”
- smnrchrds 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beam_me_up,_Scotty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beam_me_up,_Scotty
  - jobigoud 5y ago
    Or "Luke, I Am Your Father”.
StavrosK 5y ago
I should sell an NFT of the f7u12 subreddit, since apparently this is what's in these days.
whack 5y ago
> Sunday's spending spree means the mysterious anonymous bidder will become the owner of the Charlie Bit My Finger clip. > its owner does not actually buy the copyright itself - meaning the artwork the NFT represents can still be shown wherever the original artist or creator chooses. Genuinely curious. What does it mean to own a widely shared digital content, if you don't have the copyright to it? What's stopping the copyright-owner from continuing to license the copyright to others, or even enforcing their copyright against you in future? From a legal perspective, how would the NFT owner even enforce their ownership against anyone else?
- floren 5y ago
  > What does it mean to own a widely shared digital content, if you don't have the copyright to it? Nothing. > What's stopping the copyright-owner from continuing to license the copyright to others, or even enforcing their copyright against you in future? Nothing. > From a legal perspective, how would the NFT owner even enforce their ownership against anyone else? They can't.
  - Opt_Out_Fed_IRS 5y ago
    But the important thing is that clueless buyers didn't put together the above reasoning Or think somehow blockchain and AI can be used the amazing technoutopian future™ to combat piracy (including piracy of the image or video of the NFT they bought it)
- ping_pong 5y ago
  > What does it mean to own a widely shared digital content, if you don't have the copyright to it? Therein lies the question. It's basically selling a digital derivative of something that gives you no rights besides owning that derivative itself. Is there anything saying that the copyright owner can't sell another NFT to a competing NFT blockchain? What if people start using different NFTs for the same digital good?
  - bellyfullofbac 5y ago
    It sounds like the emperor's clothes, he's wearing the most exquisite garment as long as everyone agrees he is...
ping_pong 5y ago
I've never seen this video before, and I've been on the Internet since the mid-90s. It doesn't make sense to take down the video though, because it's the views that make it more valuable.
- lostgame 5y ago
  >> I've never seen this video before, and I've been on the Internet since the mid-90s. I dunno, so have I; and just - it was big, but there were so many of these kinda nonsense YouTube videos at the time this was trending it was kind of hard to catch them all.
- Theodores 5y ago
  Me too. Yet now I am supposed to know. It is the same with the collage by Beeple. Never. Heard. Of. Him. I suspect there is more to come, art that you have never heard of by an artist you are supposed to have heard of, now with NFT shiny and journalists that think they know the story. This would not happen if linear broadcasters from yesteryear and their dead tree brethren didn't suck up the press releases to give them the oxygen of publicity.
deleted 5y ago
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beforeolives 5y ago
I seriously doubt that the high-end NFT economy is sustainable in the long term. The people who are buying these are just burning money.
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  I'm curious what will happen when an NFT for the same piece of art gets sold on multiple blockchains. Now you can "own" a "Charlie Bit My Finger" NFT on Ethereum and someone else owns it on the FooBar blockchain. Which one is "authentic"? Blockchain doesn't help you here - you're going to have to go to court to prove you own the "authentic" one or sue the artist for selling 2 copies instead of one.
  - miracle2k 5y ago
    The artist can mint two copies on the same blockchain, no problem. It's a digital print.
    - anonyxyz 5y ago
      This would tarnish their reputation
  - underwater 5y ago
    How is that different from reality? You might buy a piece of artwork from famous artist X, but society and the market decide that art by Y is also valuable. You might buy a painting because we all agree that paintings are valuable. But what's to stop framed original poetry, or sculptures, or photographs, becoming more valued and supplanting paintings as the preferred form of desirable art.
- acuozzo 5y ago
  > The people who are buying these are just burning^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hlaundering money. FTFY
whalesalad 5y ago
I don't get it. I just don't understand. One, why did anyone want to buy this meaningless video? Two, why did it need to be done via NFT, and finally why for such a large sum of money? Is this a form of money laundering? I am so confused, no part of this makes any sense to me at all.
- hnnnnnnng 5y ago
  Imagine you got into Bitcoin in 2010 and bought a few hundred dollars worth. Now that is worth more money than you could even dream about. The real question is why not buy an nft for the lulz?
  - dkasper 5y ago
    I don't think that's what's happening here for the most part. Many NFTs are not even purchased with crypto, they're bought with credit cards or bank transfers on sites like NiftyGateway.
- joshfraser 5y ago
  Humans have always enjoyed collecting things, whether it's homes, or cars, or luxury handbags. We like to share the things we own with our friends. We often like to show off and flex and share the things we're proud to own. But what happens when you're better friends with someone on the other side of the world that you've never met than you own neighbor next door? That desire to own and collect things is still there, but now it just happens in a digital world. As our lives increasingly move online, it makes sense that the things we own and collect should be digital as well. The desire to be the single owner of the Charlie Bit Me video that has been enjoyed by hundreds of millions of people around the world, is the same desire that causes people to collect fine art or invest in digital cryptocurrencies.
smnrchrds 5y ago
Are there laws to prevent owners of culturally significant artworks, e.g. van Gogh and da Vinci paitnings, from being destroyed, and from being shipped to countries that do not have regulations against them being destroyed? It seems the free market is moving in the direction of valuing destruction of art more than the art itself. In the absence of regulations, it would be a matter of time until some investor buys up a bunch of masterpieces, turn them into NFTs, destroys them, and ends up doubling their money in the process.
- GuB-42 5y ago
  You can't turn a real Van Gogh into a NFT. If anything the actual painting is the real life NFT to the image that is public domain on the internet. By destroying an original you own you are just burning money. And by doing that, you will also piss off pretty much everyone on the planet, and no one will want that (digital) NFT. In fact, I wouldn't want to take that shameful NFT even if you paid me for it.
  - smnrchrds 5y ago
    I would rather not leave it to chance. If there aren't regulations yet, they should pass some ASAP. It didn't matter how many millions of people cared about Cecil the lion; it still took just one rich asshole for him to lose his life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Cecil_the_lion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Cecil_the_lion
    - miracle2k 5y ago
      Someone burned a Banksy print and converted it into an NFT. It's certainly possible. In the US, there are moral rights of an artist that would probably make the destruction of work illegal, but that might only apply to living artists.
    - Bronze_Colossus 5y ago
      I feel what your talking about is a non issue. Now, I think NFT is all a scam but I do believe that people think they can make money out of it. NFTs are for digital artworks, it is an artificial way to create scarcity. A physical painting is already scarce. Burning an actual Van Gogh would be like burning down a house and saying it's okay because the deeds to the house are fine.
thinkingemote 5y ago
Is NFT an eternal copyright now? An NFT is basically a deed of ownership, like buying up property. Such products will never see the public domain, as they are owned forever. I wonder if the major publishing companies are eyeing these up
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  But they're not the copyright: > An NFT is a bit like a collectible certificate of authenticity, but its owner does not actually buy the copyright itself - meaning the artwork the NFT represents can still be shown wherever the original artist or creator chooses. What you "own" when you buy an NFT is bragging rights about owning the NFT. Edit: It's like if you bought the gold masters for Abbey Road. You don't own the copyrights, just a one-of-a-kind representation of that album that you can tell your golf buddies about.
  - itisit 5y ago
    And you also own the right to sell the NFT to the next fool.
- kbelder 5y ago
  An NFT has nothing to do with ownership of the property. But... if the property is ALSO sold along with the NFT, it will lose copyright protection at life + 70 years just like any other created art. The NFT will then refer to a public domain object, but it gives no power over it. As the laws currently stand, at least. I wonder if the NFT token itself loses copyright and becomes public domain at some point?
tppiotrowski 5y ago
I think the purpose of NFTs doesn’t make sense today but maybe the future of the internet are browser implementations by Google and Apple that check ownership of assets embedded in HTML and fail to display them until you pay a royalty fee? I guess Firefox and Chromium wouldn’t need to go along unless someone lobbied Congress to change the laws. I don’t know how similar this would be to DRM, which seems to have failed to stop piracy.
legitster 5y ago
So, most NFTs are on the Ethereum network, correct? What's stopping people from just... making a new crypto NFT network? What if Doge NFTs take off - could everything be sold a second time?
- pionar 5y ago
  Unless there's some other legal agreement, there's nothing stopping you from selling an NFT on the same network multiple times.
- andrewnicolalde 5y ago
  Nothing, yes.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  Everything can already be sold a second time. It is just “print #2” in a run.
- mattdesl 5y ago
  There are already many NFT marketplaces across a range of blockchains. Depending on who you ask, it may be considered poor form to mint the same token on multiple chains. It would be like a print artist selling multiple editions of what they claim to be a limited 1/1 print run (nothing is stopping print artists from doing this now besides integrity & social contracts - it could devalue their work).
  - oneeyedpigeon 5y ago
    > It would be like a print artist selling multiple editions of what they claim to be a limited 1/1 print run That sounds like it would be illegal.
    - mattdesl 5y ago
      Nope... not illegal, just a faux pas.
- deleted 5y ago
a0-prw 5y ago
I mistakenly, in a drunken moment, clicked on some bbc clickbait. Charlie and his brother were still amusing Everything else was bullshit.
raspyberr 5y ago
I wonder if NFTs are a societal reaction to the increasing lack of ownership of digital products. Surely people must understand that they're aren't the sole owners of whatever the NFT points to though?. It's just not possible with digital objects.
grouphugs 5y ago
this isn't news, this is just worthless spam
ajarmst 5y ago
More evidence that, no matter what horror finally consumes us, we will thoroughly deserve it.
gregsadetsky 5y ago
The "post Internet" artist Brad Troemel has insightful takes on the art world, and posts them to his Patreon and Instagram accounts. He recently released a 42 minute "NFT report": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXBxVFsHBJQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXBxVFsHBJQ It touches upon "what is an NFT", but also the reasons why artists are interested in them, and where the (crypto) money is coming from. His take (I don't mean to TLDW, the video is really worth watching) is that NFTs are loved by people from the crypto world because it "finally" gives a clear utility to crypto/the blockchain (aside from speculation/trading/gambling), and it's simultaneously beneficial to artists who can bypass the traditional art market with all of its gatekeepers and be on the receiving end of huge sums spent by crypto whales (who can't "do" much with their crypto savings anyway) Worth the watch!
artifact_44 5y ago
Enjoying all the confused dog faces in here, trying to understand this. Its just capitalism, and capitalism is arbitrary and cruel. When it's you making the money, it starts to make sense pretty quickly. When it's not you making the money, it feels like egregious sin. Its. Just. Capitalism.
stevenalowe 5y ago
i think it's worth it to get it off the internet!
intellix 5y ago
My favorite music artist Infected Mushroom just released an EP called Shroomeez with 4 songs. They also released all songs as NFT collectibles ($333 each and sold 15 x 4). Then the album had one secret unreleased track called Babka that sold for about $10,000. Everyone is really mad about it that they'll never get to hear the song

111 points by miles 5y ago

NFTs may be a way for open source developers to make some money off of their work. Linus Torvalds could make a few hundred millions by selling an NFT for Linux, considering a JPG file sold for $69 million [1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/11/arts/design/nft-auction-christies-beeple.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/11/arts/design/nft-auction-c...

wearywanderer 5y ago
Sex work is less tarnishing to one's personal reputation than NFT scams. There is more honor in sucking dick for crack rocks.
recursive 5y ago
What is an "NFT for linux"? Maybe selling a banana taped to a wall could be a way for people to make money, considering one of those sold for ${OUTRAGE}. Is Linus running out of money or something?
- flowerlad 5y ago
  > What is an "NFT for linux"? What is an NFT for a JPG file? I don't know, but we know it got sold for $69 million. > Is Linus running out of money or something? I have no idea, but since when does someone have to run out of money in order to want to make more?
  - rakoo 5y ago
    Past performance is no guarantee of future results
- dr-smooth 5y ago
  what is an "NFT for anything" other than an arbitrary association between a number and some sort of artifact, presumably declared by the creator of said artifact. It's so bizarre to me that people will pay so much for these things.
coderintherye 5y ago
The beeple NFT shouldn't be used as a basis for comparison to future expected values given that it was artificially inflated by self-dealing, you can read more here about it: https://amycastor.com/2021/03/14/metakovan-the-mystery-beeple-art-buyer-and-his-nft-defi-scheme/ https://amycastor.com/2021/03/14/metakovan-the-mystery-beepl...
- miracle2k 5y ago
  Amy is wrong, as she often is. Metakovan gifting the artist some tokens as a thank you is not self-sealing. It's just a guy overpaying for an artwork, and possible having an interest in promoting an artist he already owns work from.
paxys 5y ago
Sure, Linus can sell an NFT containing the word "Linux" the same way he can sell a picture of his feet or just about anything else. It is all meaningless since (1) the NFT does not grant any ownership rights or licenses and (2) Linux code is anyways available under GPLv2.
- flowerlad 5y ago
  > Linux code is anyways available under GPLv2 Yes, it doesn't stop anyone from using Linux. So win-win for all.
  - paxys 5y ago
    Soo..what is this NFT then exactly? Why would someone buy a Linux NFT?
    - duskwuff 5y ago
      Absolutely nothing, I guess. Like most other NFTs, really.
    - flowerlad 5y ago
      Why would someone pay $69 million for a JPG file? Bragging rights. That's it.

intricatedetail 5y ago

Is there any book about this phenomenon, that people spend fortune on memes?

BitwiseFool 5y ago
Not that I know of directly, but there is a phenomenon where the ultra-rich "purchase" (but rarely take possession of) items in an exclusive catalog and the item's ownership/heritage is seen as a status symbol. The first thing that comes to mind is the Codex Leicester, which is now owned by Bill Gates and people were expecting him to rename it "Codex Gates" but he didn't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Leicester https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Leicester
throwaway803453 5y ago
But then the hustle would stop working. My take on the hustle is you post some garbage art as an NFT and have a rich buddy buy it for $100,000(?). Then your other garbage arts instantaneously become worth thousands because the media will pick up this story in proportion to the price*garbage factor. You then start dumping said garbage, eventually return the initial payment to your rich buddy and split the take. Unfortunately we are likely past peak stupid in the crypto-world but you'll have another chance ~3 years from now since that's the crypto dumb-money time-constant. But if you still think there's time, visit https://mintable.app/ https://mintable.app/ follow the advice above and report back.

lr4444lr 5y ago

It is interesting in this day and age how digital rights can be transferred, but I can't say that this represents some great loss of access to a landmark cinematic achievement for mankind, or anything like that.

ryankrage77 5y ago
> digital rights can be transferred An NFT affords no rights at all. It's equivelant to a piece of paper with a URL that points to a site that has a link the video on it. Except the link no longer works, since the video was taken down.

arthurofbabylon 5y ago

Would ads on YouTube be more profitable for a video like this?

dlevine 5y ago

This is potentially the beginning of a very interesting trend, and something I have spent some time thinking about. My sense is that owning an NFT should allow you to control access to that content (even if your choice is just to make it publicly accessible). NFT doesn't have an ACL layer built in, so this would need to be added (has anyone already done this?) One open question is whether it actually makes sense to have an ACL for an electronic asset, because once someone has access to it, they can easily make a perfect copy of the bits and give it to anyone they want. But I guess you could make the same argument about selling access to digital content that is available on a torrent somewhere.

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matkoniecz 5y ago
> owning an NFT should allow you to control access to that content are you aware that anyone may sell NFT for anything? I could produce and sell NFT pointing to say Walmart website. Or HN. Or Wikipedia.
- dlevine 5y ago
  Yes, and I believe that's one of the reasons why there is so much hate for NFTs on this thread. People are selling tokens for huge amounts of money that confer no rights other than being able to say that you own the NFT. Obviously you would need to actually own the asset to be able to hand over access control as part of the NFT sale. NFTs potentially have real use cases, but the technology and infrastructure isn't mature enough to support those use cases.
  - duskwuff 5y ago
    Right. The question that people keep coming back to is what ownership rights are actually conveyed with an NFT. The most common answer I'm seeing is "none", which makes it feel dishonest to equate the sale of the NFT as a sale of the thing it (supposedly) represents.

recursive 5y ago

I mean, it's definitely still there. Several times. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=charlie+bit+my+finger https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=charlie+bit+my+...

librish 5y ago

I don't have any problems with people buying or selling art for large sums of money, nor do I have a problem with people classifying art as pretty much whatever they want. The only thing I mind are the people pretending a real problem has been solved with NFTs. In any current (or conceived as far as I know) implementation of NFTs you have to trust so many people, technologies, and companies that the blockchain being technically "trustless" is not solving a real problem at all. Overall I don't understand the point of a blockchain if you have to interact with anything off-chain at all. If I have to trust an oracle or similar why even bother with a blockchain in the first place?

ddalex 5y ago
> If I have to trust an oracle or similar why even bother with a blockchain in the first place? Well how else do you generate hype with an aura of breaking edge tech to impress the clueless and give credibility to your scam?
- rajin444 5y ago
  I imagine a lot of artists have benefited from this over the centuries.
  - ddalex 5y ago
    Very, very interesting point. Art has a couple of sticky points that allows it to be used as storage of value: * It is impossible to copy and produce second original * It is recognizable by trained and common people alike, it is useful a symbol of status * New art inherits some of artist's prestige; say a newly discovered Picasso painting will be recognized as valuable just because it's a Picasso * It is very difficult to produce enmasse - a computer-generated drawing in the style of Picasso will not be valued as an original Picasso * Wealthy people agree it's a storage of value - when somebody needs liquidity they can be assured that somebody will buy their unique piece. Do NFTs touch all of these points? 1, yes. 2. they're trying to build the fame of NFTs now. 3. they're trying to build it now, very unlikely it will succeed. 4. Are some NFTs esthetically pleasing ? I would guess this is why it's needed to be tied to an artwork. 5. Unlikely.

Tabular-Iceberg 5y ago

What would happen if I put up a NFT for sale of something I had no part in making?

AlexandrB 5y ago
This is already happening[1] to smaller creators, and people still buy them because NFTs don't offer any guarantees of authenticity beyond what you'd see on eBay. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/20/22334527/nft-scams-artists-opensea-rarible-marble-cards-fraud-art https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/20/22334527/nft-scams-artist...
nerfhammer 5y ago
there's nothing stopping you from doing that
recursive 5y ago
Someone might buy it but probably not.
vaer-k 5y ago
What would happen if you sold to someone the deed to a house you do not own?
- endisneigh 5y ago
  This is not the equivalent situation. It's more like I decide to sell an NFT to your comment.
  - vaer-k 5y ago
    It totally disagree. I think it is quite equivalent. The difference is that we don't have a centralized authority to recognize valid NFTs, as we do for deeds. But if we did have a central authority, like perhaps the artist responsible for the work protected by the NFT, and if the artist made it clear and public that only the NFTs she recognizes could be considered valid proof of ownership of her works, then indeed an NFT would function like a deed.

jrochkind1 5y ago

When someone bought this NFT (or in general), did someone sign a contract with you saying they transferred ownership in the intellectual property the NFT "represented"? (Ie, was at the other end of the URL, I guess?) Cause the NFT itself means nothing to courts or laws, does it? If someone owns the copyright in that video, they can send YouTube takedown notices. But what, if anything, makes NFT proof of ownership of copyright? How do you even know the person that sold it to you had the copyright to transfer, and did they transfer it? One of the things that seems irraitional about this NFT market.

phreeza 5y ago
I don't think it means nothing to a court,even if it isn't a formal contract. Verbal agreements also carry some weight in court in most jurisdictions, they just aren't as bulletproof. I would guess an nft is somewhere on that level?
banana_giraffe 5y ago
> Cause the NFT itself means nothing to courts or laws, does it? We won't know till it's tried in court, but given that handshake agreements can carry weight in court if they can be proven, I'd suspect an NFT could be binding.
- jrochkind1 5y ago
  Is there a handshake agreement that copyright was transferred? Do the NFT auction sites say anything about this? What if the seller says "Oh, you thought I was selling you the copyright in the thing the NFT represents? I don't know how you got that idea, I never said that! I just sold you the NFT, that's it." Do people buying NFT's actually get some kind of agreement that the seller owned the copyright in the thing represneted and sold it with the NFT purchase? Real questions, I don't use these things!
- oneeyedpigeon 5y ago
  Aren't the people who are selling NFTs attaching terms and conditions to the effect of "this doesn't give you actual ownership"? In fact, the article states: > its owner does not actually buy the copyright itself

ALittleLight 5y ago

I would describe myself, usually, as not a jealous man. I don't recollect the last time I've felt jealousy. But, something about NFTs provokes anger within me. Maybe that anger is jealously. It feels like NFTs are a mockery of the "market" for lack of a better word. When I think of what I would need to sell (items or time doing labor) to get these amounts and how incredibly useless NFTs actually are... It's frustrating. I don't feel this way about inherited wealth, or people who got money through the lottery, or for being famous reality show people, but something about NFTs really rubs me the wrong way.

bloak 5y ago
I remember some of the people who worked hard designing the hardware and software that went into feature phones being outraged, perhaps in a similar way, by the stupid amounts of money people were spending on ringtones at that time (about 20 years ago).
- iamben 5y ago
  And yet now I don't know anyone with a 'novelty' ringtone. Even though it's ludicrously simple to choose a song or whatever else - literally everyone I know, or strangers whose phone rings - it's a vibrate or a ring.
heavyset_go 5y ago
Technology like NFTs being promoted in the way that they have been impacts the rest of the market. Not only do they manipulate relative values of legitimate applications of technology, they make people distrust the entire tech sector once the hype cycle dies down. Look at blockchain today versus 4-5 years ago. There might actually be some legitimate uses for the technology, but that market has been soiled by the scammers and their ICOs. At least that's where my frustration comes from.
beforeolives 5y ago
Right - seeing so much money thrown around with so little backing/reason/substance doesn't really motivate you to go back to your life and put in a full workweek in exchange for whatever your salary is.

yalogin 5y ago

What is preventing people from uploading the video back to YouTube? after all there are tons of shows already on there that are owned by media companies. I am sure this Charlie video has a lot of copies floating around.

EEor 5y ago
There's nothing preventing it. It wouldn't be the original however, and in this scenario that's all that matters.
- johnnyanmac 5y ago
  I'm not going to pretend I have an intimate knowledge of how NFT's work (I need to basically re-research the idea everytime it comes up), but I never understood the financial incentive to buy one, especially for these very old viral videos. I doubt any amount of merch made would make back hundreds of thousands, and I imagine most/all of the B2B potential is gone since these kinds of videos have long since left their 15 minutes of fame. And As seen here, even the "rich trolling" potential is practically impossible to enforce since we run into the idea of "piracy" (in the loosest form of quotes you can imagine). A problem even billion dollar media empires can't fully enforce. Is there something here I'm missing? ---- on a side note: while memes like nyan cat make sense, I find it very ethically dubious to "own" what's essentially a personal memory of a real family. But I guess if it's the family themselves that sold it, the consentual factors are already in place.
- monkeynotes 5y ago
  How do we define "original" when talking about digital works? As soon as you upload it you are making a copy. Then that copy gets bounced around and duplicated across edge servers all over the world. You'd have to own the SD card to own the 'original'. But who really cares? I don't understand NFTs, I just don't understand the value.
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jordanpg 5y ago

This tells me more about the psychology of rich people than anything else. How pathetically desperate for validation you must be to pay this much for a unique thing, and to deprive others of access to it.

hoppyhoppy2 5y ago

My main basic questions remain after reading about these NFT sales. Why can't someone just buy all rights to this video the same way a company can buy the rights to a film? What does the blockchain do that a couple lawyers and some paperwork couldn't? Why a blockchain-based digital "certificate" instead of just a certificate? Does my birth certificate or marriage certificate or college diploma need an upgrade to an NFT, too?

delecti 5y ago
An NFT is essentially a trading card for the thing that it's attached to. Just like you don't "own" Babe Ruth in any meaningful sense by owning a Babe Ruth trading card, you don't "own" the artwork associated with an NFT by owning the NFT itself. The exception is if there's some arrangement external to the NFT that links ownership of the NFT to ownership of the thing.
- hoppyhoppy2 5y ago
  Could I sell an NFT for my birth certificate to raise some cash, while my original birth certificate remains at the state's Vital Records Department under ownership of the state? If so, what exactly would the buyer be buying? Just a virtual trading card and a promise that I won't sell my "birth-certificate NFT" trading card to anyone else?
  - delecti 5y ago
    > Could I sell an NFT for my birth certificate to raise some cash, while my original birth certificate remains at the state's Vital Records Department under ownership of the state? Yes, and it's basically equivalent to writing the words "My Birth Certificate" on a piece of paper and selling that piece of paper. It holds no weight whatsoever. > If so, what exactly would the buyer be buying? Nothing. > Just a promise that I won't sell my "birth-certificate NFT" to anyone else? Not even that, unless you also did that. You can make multiple NFTs from the same thing. Just like nothing would prevent you from writing "My Birth Certificate" on a second piece of paper and selling that too, unless there was some external agreement that you wouldn't.

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hackinthebochs 5y ago

The only explanation for NFTs that made sense to me is that people with an interest in the network (e.g. early investors) are bidding up some choice NFTs to make news and drive interest in their network. There is no actual market for NFTs at these prices, but that doesn't stop groups with deep pockets from pretending like there is by purchasing well known memes for eye popping amounts. If internet "celebrities" are able to cash in on this nonsense, I see no harm in it. It's sort of like living off of VC subsidized products.

colinmhayes 5y ago
Could be money laundering related too. Buy NFTs for small sums with clean crypto, sell it to your dirty wallet for inflated sums. In order for something like that to work there needs to be plausible deniability so they also buy NFTs with clean wallets which would explain the volume. Plus the legitimate crypto speculators see these crazy numbers and jump aboard too.
- VRay 5y ago
  I think most of these NFT contracts will give 5% of every resale back to the original creator of the contract, too. Pretty ludicrous IMO
basch 5y ago
The real market would be owning early works by an unknown, who later becomes known. That will evolve into the patron system again, where the owner of early works becomes a hype machine to drum up their artists clout, and then offloads their early work.
hilbertseries 5y ago
The beeple NFT that sold for 60m, was obviously an attempt to make NFTs look valuable.
rtkwe 5y ago
The introduction of NFTs certainly spiked the price of ETH for a while but it seems the shine has worn off and the dump is in full force.

leephillips 5y ago

This is the Casablanca of YT, because, just as HB never says, “Play it again, Sam”, the kid here never says, “Charlie bit my finger.”

smnrchrds 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beam_me_up,_Scotty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beam_me_up,_Scotty
- jobigoud 5y ago
  Or "Luke, I Am Your Father”.

StavrosK 5y ago

I should sell an NFT of the f7u12 subreddit, since apparently this is what's in these days.

whack 5y ago

> Sunday's spending spree means the mysterious anonymous bidder will become the owner of the Charlie Bit My Finger clip. > its owner does not actually buy the copyright itself - meaning the artwork the NFT represents can still be shown wherever the original artist or creator chooses. Genuinely curious. What does it mean to own a widely shared digital content, if you don't have the copyright to it? What's stopping the copyright-owner from continuing to license the copyright to others, or even enforcing their copyright against you in future? From a legal perspective, how would the NFT owner even enforce their ownership against anyone else?

floren 5y ago
> What does it mean to own a widely shared digital content, if you don't have the copyright to it? Nothing. > What's stopping the copyright-owner from continuing to license the copyright to others, or even enforcing their copyright against you in future? Nothing. > From a legal perspective, how would the NFT owner even enforce their ownership against anyone else? They can't.
- Opt_Out_Fed_IRS 5y ago
  But the important thing is that clueless buyers didn't put together the above reasoning Or think somehow blockchain and AI can be used the amazing technoutopian future™ to combat piracy (including piracy of the image or video of the NFT they bought it)
ping_pong 5y ago
> What does it mean to own a widely shared digital content, if you don't have the copyright to it? Therein lies the question. It's basically selling a digital derivative of something that gives you no rights besides owning that derivative itself. Is there anything saying that the copyright owner can't sell another NFT to a competing NFT blockchain? What if people start using different NFTs for the same digital good?
- bellyfullofbac 5y ago
  It sounds like the emperor's clothes, he's wearing the most exquisite garment as long as everyone agrees he is...

ping_pong 5y ago

I've never seen this video before, and I've been on the Internet since the mid-90s. It doesn't make sense to take down the video though, because it's the views that make it more valuable.

lostgame 5y ago
>> I've never seen this video before, and I've been on the Internet since the mid-90s. I dunno, so have I; and just - it was big, but there were so many of these kinda nonsense YouTube videos at the time this was trending it was kind of hard to catch them all.
Theodores 5y ago
Me too. Yet now I am supposed to know. It is the same with the collage by Beeple. Never. Heard. Of. Him. I suspect there is more to come, art that you have never heard of by an artist you are supposed to have heard of, now with NFT shiny and journalists that think they know the story. This would not happen if linear broadcasters from yesteryear and their dead tree brethren didn't suck up the press releases to give them the oxygen of publicity.

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beforeolives 5y ago

I seriously doubt that the high-end NFT economy is sustainable in the long term. The people who are buying these are just burning money.

AlexandrB 5y ago
I'm curious what will happen when an NFT for the same piece of art gets sold on multiple blockchains. Now you can "own" a "Charlie Bit My Finger" NFT on Ethereum and someone else owns it on the FooBar blockchain. Which one is "authentic"? Blockchain doesn't help you here - you're going to have to go to court to prove you own the "authentic" one or sue the artist for selling 2 copies instead of one.
- miracle2k 5y ago
  The artist can mint two copies on the same blockchain, no problem. It's a digital print.
  - anonyxyz 5y ago
    This would tarnish their reputation
- underwater 5y ago
  How is that different from reality? You might buy a piece of artwork from famous artist X, but society and the market decide that art by Y is also valuable. You might buy a painting because we all agree that paintings are valuable. But what's to stop framed original poetry, or sculptures, or photographs, becoming more valued and supplanting paintings as the preferred form of desirable art.
acuozzo 5y ago
> The people who are buying these are just burning^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hlaundering money. FTFY

whalesalad 5y ago

I don't get it. I just don't understand. One, why did anyone want to buy this meaningless video? Two, why did it need to be done via NFT, and finally why for such a large sum of money? Is this a form of money laundering? I am so confused, no part of this makes any sense to me at all.

hnnnnnnng 5y ago
Imagine you got into Bitcoin in 2010 and bought a few hundred dollars worth. Now that is worth more money than you could even dream about. The real question is why not buy an nft for the lulz?
- dkasper 5y ago
  I don't think that's what's happening here for the most part. Many NFTs are not even purchased with crypto, they're bought with credit cards or bank transfers on sites like NiftyGateway.
joshfraser 5y ago
Humans have always enjoyed collecting things, whether it's homes, or cars, or luxury handbags. We like to share the things we own with our friends. We often like to show off and flex and share the things we're proud to own. But what happens when you're better friends with someone on the other side of the world that you've never met than you own neighbor next door? That desire to own and collect things is still there, but now it just happens in a digital world. As our lives increasingly move online, it makes sense that the things we own and collect should be digital as well. The desire to be the single owner of the Charlie Bit Me video that has been enjoyed by hundreds of millions of people around the world, is the same desire that causes people to collect fine art or invest in digital cryptocurrencies.

smnrchrds 5y ago

Are there laws to prevent owners of culturally significant artworks, e.g. van Gogh and da Vinci paitnings, from being destroyed, and from being shipped to countries that do not have regulations against them being destroyed? It seems the free market is moving in the direction of valuing destruction of art more than the art itself. In the absence of regulations, it would be a matter of time until some investor buys up a bunch of masterpieces, turn them into NFTs, destroys them, and ends up doubling their money in the process.

GuB-42 5y ago
You can't turn a real Van Gogh into a NFT. If anything the actual painting is the real life NFT to the image that is public domain on the internet. By destroying an original you own you are just burning money. And by doing that, you will also piss off pretty much everyone on the planet, and no one will want that (digital) NFT. In fact, I wouldn't want to take that shameful NFT even if you paid me for it.
- smnrchrds 5y ago
  I would rather not leave it to chance. If there aren't regulations yet, they should pass some ASAP. It didn't matter how many millions of people cared about Cecil the lion; it still took just one rich asshole for him to lose his life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Cecil_the_lion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Cecil_the_lion
  - miracle2k 5y ago
    Someone burned a Banksy print and converted it into an NFT. It's certainly possible. In the US, there are moral rights of an artist that would probably make the destruction of work illegal, but that might only apply to living artists.
  - Bronze_Colossus 5y ago
    I feel what your talking about is a non issue. Now, I think NFT is all a scam but I do believe that people think they can make money out of it. NFTs are for digital artworks, it is an artificial way to create scarcity. A physical painting is already scarce. Burning an actual Van Gogh would be like burning down a house and saying it's okay because the deeds to the house are fine.

thinkingemote 5y ago

Is NFT an eternal copyright now? An NFT is basically a deed of ownership, like buying up property. Such products will never see the public domain, as they are owned forever. I wonder if the major publishing companies are eyeing these up

AlexandrB 5y ago
But they're not the copyright: > An NFT is a bit like a collectible certificate of authenticity, but its owner does not actually buy the copyright itself - meaning the artwork the NFT represents can still be shown wherever the original artist or creator chooses. What you "own" when you buy an NFT is bragging rights about owning the NFT. Edit: It's like if you bought the gold masters for Abbey Road. You don't own the copyrights, just a one-of-a-kind representation of that album that you can tell your golf buddies about.
- itisit 5y ago
  And you also own the right to sell the NFT to the next fool.
kbelder 5y ago
An NFT has nothing to do with ownership of the property. But... if the property is ALSO sold along with the NFT, it will lose copyright protection at life + 70 years just like any other created art. The NFT will then refer to a public domain object, but it gives no power over it. As the laws currently stand, at least. I wonder if the NFT token itself loses copyright and becomes public domain at some point?

tppiotrowski 5y ago

I think the purpose of NFTs doesn’t make sense today but maybe the future of the internet are browser implementations by Google and Apple that check ownership of assets embedded in HTML and fail to display them until you pay a royalty fee? I guess Firefox and Chromium wouldn’t need to go along unless someone lobbied Congress to change the laws. I don’t know how similar this would be to DRM, which seems to have failed to stop piracy.

legitster 5y ago

So, most NFTs are on the Ethereum network, correct? What's stopping people from just... making a new crypto NFT network? What if Doge NFTs take off - could everything be sold a second time?

pionar 5y ago
Unless there's some other legal agreement, there's nothing stopping you from selling an NFT on the same network multiple times.
andrewnicolalde 5y ago
Nothing, yes.
UncleMeat 5y ago
Everything can already be sold a second time. It is just “print #2” in a run.
mattdesl 5y ago
There are already many NFT marketplaces across a range of blockchains. Depending on who you ask, it may be considered poor form to mint the same token on multiple chains. It would be like a print artist selling multiple editions of what they claim to be a limited 1/1 print run (nothing is stopping print artists from doing this now besides integrity & social contracts - it could devalue their work).
- oneeyedpigeon 5y ago
  > It would be like a print artist selling multiple editions of what they claim to be a limited 1/1 print run That sounds like it would be illegal.
  - mattdesl 5y ago
    Nope... not illegal, just a faux pas.
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a0-prw 5y ago

I mistakenly, in a drunken moment, clicked on some bbc clickbait. Charlie and his brother were still amusing Everything else was bullshit.

raspyberr 5y ago

I wonder if NFTs are a societal reaction to the increasing lack of ownership of digital products. Surely people must understand that they're aren't the sole owners of whatever the NFT points to though?. It's just not possible with digital objects.

grouphugs 5y ago

this isn't news, this is just worthless spam

ajarmst 5y ago

More evidence that, no matter what horror finally consumes us, we will thoroughly deserve it.

gregsadetsky 5y ago

The "post Internet" artist Brad Troemel has insightful takes on the art world, and posts them to his Patreon and Instagram accounts. He recently released a 42 minute "NFT report": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXBxVFsHBJQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXBxVFsHBJQ It touches upon "what is an NFT", but also the reasons why artists are interested in them, and where the (crypto) money is coming from. His take (I don't mean to TLDW, the video is really worth watching) is that NFTs are loved by people from the crypto world because it "finally" gives a clear utility to crypto/the blockchain (aside from speculation/trading/gambling), and it's simultaneously beneficial to artists who can bypass the traditional art market with all of its gatekeepers and be on the receiving end of huge sums spent by crypto whales (who can't "do" much with their crypto savings anyway) Worth the watch!

artifact_44 5y ago

Enjoying all the confused dog faces in here, trying to understand this. Its just capitalism, and capitalism is arbitrary and cruel. When it's you making the money, it starts to make sense pretty quickly. When it's not you making the money, it feels like egregious sin. Its. Just. Capitalism.

stevenalowe 5y ago

i think it's worth it to get it off the internet!

intellix 5y ago

My favorite music artist Infected Mushroom just released an EP called Shroomeez with 4 songs. They also released all songs as NFT collectibles ($333 each and sold 15 x 4). Then the album had one secret unreleased track called Babka that sold for about $10,000. Everyone is really mad about it that they'll never get to hear the song