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YouTube already cannot delete the video. As mentioned in the article, Bin Laden had a copy of it on his hdd. How many other drives have a copy? Unlike the Mona

by dkarp 5y ago

YouTube already cannot delete the video. As mentioned in the article, Bin Laden had a copy of it on his hdd. How many other drives have a copy? Unlike the Mona Lisa postcards, these copies are just as good as the origin and I disagree that the YouTube URL is somehow important to the video's preservation. Admittedly, the copyright situation is a bit less clear though. Presumably the video will become public domain at some point, at which time the Internet Archive can offer it as they already do for other out of copyright video.

CaptArmchair 5y ago
> Admittedly, the copyright situation is a bit less clear though. Well, according to Wikipedia, an NFT is a piece of data which acts as a proof of ownership, (essentially like a deed from a notary public) "that is separate from copyright". As for copyright, that's clearly about exclusive rights of authorization (per the Berne convention) which are protected on the part of the original creator. In this case, the original creator was the Davies-Carr family who first made the home video and uploaded it to YT. https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-57227290 https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-57227290 The difference between analog art and digital art is "uniqueness". That is, there's one physical original copy of the Mona lisa handcrafted by Leonardo Da Vinci, and it hangs in the Louvre. Sure, there are millions of printed copies of the image on the canvas, but the true value of that particular copy is that it's the first rendition of the image of the Mona Lisa in the physical world. The closest you can get to that in the digital world would be the storage medium that contains the original file as it was first created (I suppose that would be the home recorder of the Davies-Carr family). So, NFT, in this regard, is about establishing "ownership" of the original copy. Pretty much like an art collector wants to actually own the original first rendition, as made by the artist. What wasn't sold here is the copyright. It's the ownership of the particular copy which was uploaded on YouTube. Barring extending any license of intellectual property to the buyer, the exclusive rights that authorize who gets to make a copy, and publish that copy online,... are still firmly in the hands of the Davies-Carr family. This is an important distinction since it might bite art collectors: buying a work doesn't automatically imply you also own the copyright to that work. On the contrary. > Presumably the video will become public domain at some point Under UK law, that would mean: 70 years after the death of the original creator. Depending on the age of the Davies-Carr family members (and wishing them a long and healthy life), "Charlie bit my finger" won't enter the public domain before 2100. Copyright in the digital era is massively problematic as most content copied and shared online is almost invariably violating someone's copyright. Sharing a copy of "Charlie bit my finger" via a torrent isn't violating the rights of the person who ends up being mentioned as "owner" in the NFT. It's essentially violating the rights of the original author which are, presumably, still the Davies-Carr family. Put more succinctly, the Davies-Carr family could be entirely cool with someone asking them "Hey, I have a copy of your video, okay if I upload it back to YouTube?" and the NFT owner can't do a single thing about it. So, by now it should be clear what the actual problem with NFT's is. What you hope to buy is the experience of owning an original piece. In the analog world, this carries quite a lot of different layers of meaning: this pertains to the idea of having the actual canvas, rope, paint,... hanging off your wall; but also the story tied to the particular physical object: it's tribulations as it survived history, the fact that it has an established provenance and you, as owner of the object, becoming an inextricable part of the object's history. You'd buy art not just for the sake of owning, but also because you tie yourself to it's history, and it becomes a vessel that helps you transcend your own mortality (famous art collectors become part of the historic narrative). As far as NFT's go, that's totally not the case. The buyer of "charlie bit my finger" bought a copy which merely resided on the hard drives of YouTube. Even that copy is arguably original as "Charlie bit my finger" has been with YouTube for years, and probably was copied / transferred many times over between Google's data centers. In the digital world, it's simply impossible to attain the same kind of "value" you'd get from buying an object in the physical, analog world. ... the only reason why someone was willing enough to pay $760k for this NFT is because they genuinely believe it's equivalent in value compared to buying on the analogue art market.
- maest 5y ago
  A few questions: 1. What does "ownership" mean in this case? It seems that the NFT holder has basically no rights when it comes to the work. (since, as you point out, ownership of the NFT is different from owning e.g. the copyright on the work) 2. If the rights of the NFT holder are violated (whatever those might be), who would enforce them?
  - D13Fd 5y ago
    1. You own the NFT, not the work. You can't copy, display, or otherwise control the work unless the author also gave you those rights. 2. I'm not sure how the rights of an NFT holder could be violated, as they only own the NFT--the cell in a shared ledger--not the work.
    - CaptArmchair 5y ago
      Re: 2 NFT is blockchain technology. And so, there's wallets as well, which are just private keys to which a unique token on the blockchain is assigned. Pretty much like "having a bitcoin in your wallet". The difference with cryptocurrency is that the tokens are provably unique, and therefor non-fungible (tokens aren't interchangeable unlike gold, oil or money.) An NFT represents a digital asset (regardless of where the asset is stored), and so if you have an NFT in your wallet, you can prove, by extension, that you own that digital asset. An NFT is basically a certificate of ownership. In law, the equivalent would be a "deed" or "title deed" (common law) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_(property) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_(property) The rights of an NFT holder could be violated if someone were to break/hack their wallet and transfer the token to another wallet. Resolving this is hard since you proving the intent behind transaction isn't part of NFT technology. That's where you end up in the classic legal system for arbitrage. Doubts about the regularity of the chain of property, as recorded in the blockchain within crypto, are called "cloud on title" in U.S. property law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_on_title https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_on_title Now, imagine the difficulties of contesting ownership acquired across international borders in different jurisdictions. NFT's do not solve that problem. All they do is prove authenticity and record provenance.

by dkarp 5y ago

CaptArmchair 5y ago

> Admittedly, the copyright situation is a bit less clear though. Well, according to Wikipedia, an NFT is a piece of data which acts as a proof of ownership, (essentially like a deed from a notary public) "that is separate from copyright". As for copyright, that's clearly about exclusive rights of authorization (per the Berne convention) which are protected on the part of the original creator. In this case, the original creator was the Davies-Carr family who first made the home video and uploaded it to YT. https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-57227290 https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-57227290 The difference between analog art and digital art is "uniqueness". That is, there's one physical original copy of the Mona lisa handcrafted by Leonardo Da Vinci, and it hangs in the Louvre. Sure, there are millions of printed copies of the image on the canvas, but the true value of that particular copy is that it's the first rendition of the image of the Mona Lisa in the physical world. The closest you can get to that in the digital world would be the storage medium that contains the original file as it was first created (I suppose that would be the home recorder of the Davies-Carr family). So, NFT, in this regard, is about establishing "ownership" of the original copy. Pretty much like an art collector wants to actually own the original first rendition, as made by the artist. What wasn't sold here is the copyright. It's the ownership of the particular copy which was uploaded on YouTube. Barring extending any license of intellectual property to the buyer, the exclusive rights that authorize who gets to make a copy, and publish that copy online,... are still firmly in the hands of the Davies-Carr family. This is an important distinction since it might bite art collectors: buying a work doesn't automatically imply you also own the copyright to that work. On the contrary. > Presumably the video will become public domain at some point Under UK law, that would mean: 70 years after the death of the original creator. Depending on the age of the Davies-Carr family members (and wishing them a long and healthy life), "Charlie bit my finger" won't enter the public domain before 2100. Copyright in the digital era is massively problematic as most content copied and shared online is almost invariably violating someone's copyright. Sharing a copy of "Charlie bit my finger" via a torrent isn't violating the rights of the person who ends up being mentioned as "owner" in the NFT. It's essentially violating the rights of the original author which are, presumably, still the Davies-Carr family. Put more succinctly, the Davies-Carr family could be entirely cool with someone asking them "Hey, I have a copy of your video, okay if I upload it back to YouTube?" and the NFT owner can't do a single thing about it. So, by now it should be clear what the actual problem with NFT's is. What you hope to buy is the experience of owning an original piece. In the analog world, this carries quite a lot of different layers of meaning: this pertains to the idea of having the actual canvas, rope, paint,... hanging off your wall; but also the story tied to the particular physical object: it's tribulations as it survived history, the fact that it has an established provenance and you, as owner of the object, becoming an inextricable part of the object's history. You'd buy art not just for the sake of owning, but also because you tie yourself to it's history, and it becomes a vessel that helps you transcend your own mortality (famous art collectors become part of the historic narrative). As far as NFT's go, that's totally not the case. The buyer of "charlie bit my finger" bought a copy which merely resided on the hard drives of YouTube. Even that copy is arguably original as "Charlie bit my finger" has been with YouTube for years, and probably was copied / transferred many times over between Google's data centers. In the digital world, it's simply impossible to attain the same kind of "value" you'd get from buying an object in the physical, analog world. ... the only reason why someone was willing enough to pay $760k for this NFT is because they genuinely believe it's equivalent in value compared to buying on the analogue art market.

maest 5y ago
A few questions: 1. What does "ownership" mean in this case? It seems that the NFT holder has basically no rights when it comes to the work. (since, as you point out, ownership of the NFT is different from owning e.g. the copyright on the work) 2. If the rights of the NFT holder are violated (whatever those might be), who would enforce them?
- D13Fd 5y ago
  1. You own the NFT, not the work. You can't copy, display, or otherwise control the work unless the author also gave you those rights. 2. I'm not sure how the rights of an NFT holder could be violated, as they only own the NFT--the cell in a shared ledger--not the work.
  - CaptArmchair 5y ago
    Re: 2 NFT is blockchain technology. And so, there's wallets as well, which are just private keys to which a unique token on the blockchain is assigned. Pretty much like "having a bitcoin in your wallet". The difference with cryptocurrency is that the tokens are provably unique, and therefor non-fungible (tokens aren't interchangeable unlike gold, oil or money.) An NFT represents a digital asset (regardless of where the asset is stored), and so if you have an NFT in your wallet, you can prove, by extension, that you own that digital asset. An NFT is basically a certificate of ownership. In law, the equivalent would be a "deed" or "title deed" (common law) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_(property) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_(property) The rights of an NFT holder could be violated if someone were to break/hack their wallet and transfer the token to another wallet. Resolving this is hard since you proving the intent behind transaction isn't part of NFT technology. That's where you end up in the classic legal system for arbitrage. Doubts about the regularity of the chain of property, as recorded in the blockchain within crypto, are called "cloud on title" in U.S. property law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_on_title https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_on_title Now, imagine the difficulties of contesting ownership acquired across international borders in different jurisdictions. NFT's do not solve that problem. All they do is prove authenticity and record provenance.