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As someone who doesn't collect anything, NFT for collectibles doesn't interest me personally. But I still think NFTs have a future as digitally signed proof of

by chime 5y ago

As someone who doesn't collect anything, NFT for collectibles doesn't interest me personally. But I still think NFTs have a future as digitally signed proof of ownership of media assets. Long ago, back in my web designer days, I bought a CD from CompUSA full of clip arts and stock photos and used them on my clients' websites. I moved on to web development and out of nowhere 5 years later I got a panicked call from an old client who said Getty is threatening to sue them for using copyrighted images on the website I made for them. Try as I might, I could not convince either my ex-client or Getty reps that I legally (and most likely naively) bought a stock photo CD but did not have that in my possession any longer. Cost me a month's rent out of pocket to get the matter resolved as I did not have the resources to fight either of them. I can imagine a (non-physical-media) future where all commercial stock media is signed upon download, with the NFT signature embedded in the file itself like EXIF data. Editors can be made to respect the source file NFTs and include them in the exported files. YouTube could easily identify the NFT for the audio track you used in your video and if you had licensed it legally, it would not even run the fingerprint algo on it. Now it doesn't matter if the original seller or vendor goes out of business. The history is in the blockchain forever (or as long as the license permits). I'm not saying I support going all NFT for ownership/copyright. I'm saying I can imagine it happening as a valid use-case for NFT/blockchain.

sleepybrett 5y ago
Let me show you my fine collection of prime numbers!
danudey 5y ago
For what it's worth, there's no way you can force every image manipulation tool and library to respect the NFTs, and the NFT can't necessarily point to a specific item itself (since the location it points to could move), so there's no permanent effective way to actually make those two connect. As far as I can tell, the only thing that NFTs might be useful for is uniquely identifiable assets whose unique identification can be embedded in the NFT itself; for example, a car's VIN number or a property's address or lot number. Unfortunately, we already have much more effective and well-regulated systems to handle both of those situations, and I'm at a loss for any circumstance in which an NFT would be better and also guaranteed effective.
- sebmellen 5y ago
  The NFT could always be self-referential and point to the hash of the image itself which would be accessible on IPFS or another content-addressed network.
  - cwmma 5y ago
    not if you cropped it in the webside and (like in this case) don't have the original files.
  - tkinom 5y ago
    Just for thought exercise: If github wants to add NFT to support its users to monetize the users generated contents, how would github do that? Or how might a special NFT/PDF reader sw enables the PDF creators to monetized their creations?
- TJSomething 5y ago
  You could use a perceptual hash, which would work as long as you had the entire image in any format.
  - DonHopkins 5y ago
    >"I legally (and most likely naively) bought a stock photo CD but did not have that in my possession any longer" Explain exactly how pissing away all that electricity by burning all that coal and generating all that carcinogenic pollution and greenhouse gas would have caused him to not lose the entire original image just like he lost the original stock photo CD?
- chime 5y ago
  > For what it's worth, there's no way you can force every image manipulation tool and library to respect the NFTs, Correct. But the license owner can require the license buyer to use editors that preserve NFTs or be subject to automated DMCA notices. Once Adobe and Apple start respecting the NFT-copyright-format in their tools, other commercial vendors will be forced by the market to support it too. Again, I'm not in favor of any of this. Just admitting that I am pessimistic enough to see where all of this could end up eventually.
heterodoxxed 5y ago
| NFTs have a future as digitally signed proof of ownership Why do you think handwritten signatures have gotten us so far? Because the literal act of signing something is the lease important part of contracts and trust relationships.
- chime 5y ago
  Automated signatures work decently when the process is smooth. XCode integrates with your Apple ID to sign apps. Letsencrypt works for signing TLS certificates. HDCP works silently even for typical users. I don't support HDCP or DVD-region-lock but they worked for the copyright owners without inconveniencing the users enough to affect the bottom-line. It's the technical users and hackers among us who have a problem with these. I'm not looking forward to NFT everywhere for creatives, I'm saying I can see it happen. I don't want to sign every JPEG I edit but if the tools preserve the source signatures, it wouldn't really affect me. Photoshop has had counterfeit detection system for over a decade. I'm sure Adobe would love to offer Getty + CS Cloud NFT-copyright integration if they can make it work. I'm sure they can come up with a catchy marketing name for it and build an ecosystem to license, edit, and distribute media with detailed tracking of every asset.
  - heterodoxxed 5y ago
    But those are for automated systems, more akin to a keycard than a contract for ownership.
lottin 5y ago
> But I still think NFTs have a future as digitally signed proof of ownership of media assets. NFTs are not proof of ownership, because anyone can create an NFT of anything. I can create an NFT of my neighbour's car.
- jrh206 5y ago
  They are proof of ownership if you trust the originator of the NFT, in this case it would be someone like the photographer or Getty.
  - lottin 5y ago
    But if you have to trust the originator it's not a "proof" is it? A proof is something that can be demonstrated to be true.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  I think it's pretty clear from the proposal that the only relevant NFT for some piece of digital media would be the NFT created by the original copyright holder of that piece of digital media. For example, Getty could issue NFTs for a particular stock photograph. Obviously any random person could create an NFT and claim that it represents ownership of a particular stock photograph, but that's not really relevant or problematic. You could also create a traditional paper certificate of title for your neighbor's car too, but obviously no one would respect it (unless they were tricked, but that's against the law and the legal system would tend to respect that genuine certificate of title).
  - boublepop 5y ago
    Brilliant! So what you are saying is that NFT’s are a good documentation of ownership… if we assume some other system takes care of documenting that the NFT was in fact created by the owner. So you know if we have some other system to track ownership.
    - Raidion 5y ago
est31 5y ago
Seconded. I see no point in "buying" media from stores where my account can be terminated immediately. If I bought an NFT token that encodes the right to use some copyrighted work, this issue doesn't exist. Imagine a future where you can engage in completely legal torrenting of copyrighted works, where all sides have NFT proofs of ownership. Owning an NFT would mean you own the notarized right to download a copy as well as to seed it to other torrenters who can cryptographically prove they own the same NFT.
- chime 5y ago
  > Imagine a future where you can engage in completely legal torrenting of copyrighted works, where all sides have NFT proofs of ownership. Owning an NFT would mean you own the notarized right to download a copy as well as to seed it to other torrenters who can cryptographically prove they own the same NFT. Thank you! You get what I'm talking about. Many folks here are replying to me as if I'm saying NFTs can prevent copyright infringements. That's not possible and not the goal. The goal would be to track ownership and handle violations more reliably than mass DMCA-notices that plague YouTube.
- acdha 5y ago
  > Seconded. I see no point in "buying" media from stores where my account can be terminated immediately. If I bought an NFT token that encodes the right to use some copyrighted work, this issue doesn't exist. As usual, you don't need a blockchain to do either of the two things you're talking about. For the copyright case, what matters is that you have a legal authorization which will be recognized by a court. An NFT can do that but so can an email or anything else — and the problem you're trying to avoid is a concern either way because the same people who require terms of use for their content aren't going to reverse course due to magical thinking advised by blockchain salespeople. The secondary problem of unreliable cloud storage is similarly very expensively not solved by an NFT. Due to the inherent inefficiency of blockchains almost all NFTs point to a URL for the actual payload. If that hosting provider shuts down or restricts access, you have the same problem as you do now. Now, some people will say that IPFS solves this but if you've thought about the problem at all that is only a solution for content which is very popular and released under an open license: someone has to pay for the storage, even the few people willing to provide storage unpaid aren't going to do so for encrypted content which they can't access, and nobody who cares about access restriction is going to put it in a public blockchain anyway since they'd be one key leak away from the content being available without payment.
paxys 5y ago
NFTs explicitly do NOT grant ownership to the underlying asset though. You are purchasing the NFT itself, and nothing else.
- legutierr 5y ago
  They could, though. The original owner could assign ownership to whoever the bearer of the NFT happens to be.
boublepop 5y ago
> But I still think NFTs have a future as digitally signed proof of ownership of media assets. The NFT is only a proof of ownership of the NFT. You don’t own the artwork. If you want to buy the artwork you need an old fashioned signed contract documenting transfer of ownership.
themagician 5y ago
They only function as proof of ownership if there is no dispute. Basically, it just confirms provenance. If an NFT is stolen, or a more original author/owner emerges, that will take precedence over the NFT in question at which point it will have to be reissued. The immutable nature of NFTs and crypto in general doesn’t really work well in the real world where we rely on the ability to change things.
CJefferson 5y ago
The problem with the whole Blockchain business is what happens when a court declares something with violates the chain? You need to start keeping a user maintained list of patches, at which point why bother with a Blockchain instead of just having a trusted website?
nostromo 5y ago
Except there's no reason for that to be distributed and thus no reason for it to be an NFT. You could accomplish the same thing just using signed files, or a hash in the exif.
dcolkitt 5y ago
I'm a big proponent of blockchain. But technically blockchain is overkill for this application. At least for non-exclusive perpetual licenses, like the stock photo example. Blockchain gives you three things. 1) Censorship resistance (no one can "lose" or forget about the license). 2) Protections against mis-spend (no one without the private keys can grant the license). And 3) Protection against double-spend (in the case of two grants, we have a universally agreed upon history of which came first). A non-exclusive license only requires the first two. You can satisfy the problem with digital signatures and a censorship-resistant P2P file share like IPFS. Comparatively putting data on the blockchain is fairly expensive. Even with sharding O(log(n)) nodes have to store the data, whereas with IPFS only O(1) do. On Ethereum, every kB of storage costs around $5. If you don't need canonical sequencing of history, then blockchain is probably overkill.
- dbmikus 5y ago
  Transferring ownership of an NFT would not work just with digital signatures and IPFS, though. I could sign a transaction saying "I transfer this NFT to you", but unless you trust me or some authority, you have no guarantee than I don't just resign it and transfer to someone else as well.
TomSwirly 5y ago
> But I still think NFTs have a future as digitally signed proof of ownership of media assets. Except NFTs don't "prove" anything. The only form of proof of ownership of media assets is legal. If I have a legal document proving that I own media asset X and you have an NFT, you will be in the cold.

by chime 5y ago

sleepybrett 5y ago

Let me show you my fine collection of prime numbers!

danudey 5y ago

For what it's worth, there's no way you can force every image manipulation tool and library to respect the NFTs, and the NFT can't necessarily point to a specific item itself (since the location it points to could move), so there's no permanent effective way to actually make those two connect. As far as I can tell, the only thing that NFTs might be useful for is uniquely identifiable assets whose unique identification can be embedded in the NFT itself; for example, a car's VIN number or a property's address or lot number. Unfortunately, we already have much more effective and well-regulated systems to handle both of those situations, and I'm at a loss for any circumstance in which an NFT would be better and also guaranteed effective.

sebmellen 5y ago
The NFT could always be self-referential and point to the hash of the image itself which would be accessible on IPFS or another content-addressed network.
- cwmma 5y ago
  not if you cropped it in the webside and (like in this case) don't have the original files.
- tkinom 5y ago
  Just for thought exercise: If github wants to add NFT to support its users to monetize the users generated contents, how would github do that? Or how might a special NFT/PDF reader sw enables the PDF creators to monetized their creations?
TJSomething 5y ago
You could use a perceptual hash, which would work as long as you had the entire image in any format.
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  >"I legally (and most likely naively) bought a stock photo CD but did not have that in my possession any longer" Explain exactly how pissing away all that electricity by burning all that coal and generating all that carcinogenic pollution and greenhouse gas would have caused him to not lose the entire original image just like he lost the original stock photo CD?
chime 5y ago
> For what it's worth, there's no way you can force every image manipulation tool and library to respect the NFTs, Correct. But the license owner can require the license buyer to use editors that preserve NFTs or be subject to automated DMCA notices. Once Adobe and Apple start respecting the NFT-copyright-format in their tools, other commercial vendors will be forced by the market to support it too. Again, I'm not in favor of any of this. Just admitting that I am pessimistic enough to see where all of this could end up eventually.

heterodoxxed 5y ago

| NFTs have a future as digitally signed proof of ownership Why do you think handwritten signatures have gotten us so far? Because the literal act of signing something is the lease important part of contracts and trust relationships.

chime 5y ago
Automated signatures work decently when the process is smooth. XCode integrates with your Apple ID to sign apps. Letsencrypt works for signing TLS certificates. HDCP works silently even for typical users. I don't support HDCP or DVD-region-lock but they worked for the copyright owners without inconveniencing the users enough to affect the bottom-line. It's the technical users and hackers among us who have a problem with these. I'm not looking forward to NFT everywhere for creatives, I'm saying I can see it happen. I don't want to sign every JPEG I edit but if the tools preserve the source signatures, it wouldn't really affect me. Photoshop has had counterfeit detection system for over a decade. I'm sure Adobe would love to offer Getty + CS Cloud NFT-copyright integration if they can make it work. I'm sure they can come up with a catchy marketing name for it and build an ecosystem to license, edit, and distribute media with detailed tracking of every asset.
- heterodoxxed 5y ago
  But those are for automated systems, more akin to a keycard than a contract for ownership.

lottin 5y ago

> But I still think NFTs have a future as digitally signed proof of ownership of media assets. NFTs are not proof of ownership, because anyone can create an NFT of anything. I can create an NFT of my neighbour's car.

jrh206 5y ago
They are proof of ownership if you trust the originator of the NFT, in this case it would be someone like the photographer or Getty.
- lottin 5y ago
  But if you have to trust the originator it's not a "proof" is it? A proof is something that can be demonstrated to be true.
tshaddox 5y ago
I think it's pretty clear from the proposal that the only relevant NFT for some piece of digital media would be the NFT created by the original copyright holder of that piece of digital media. For example, Getty could issue NFTs for a particular stock photograph. Obviously any random person could create an NFT and claim that it represents ownership of a particular stock photograph, but that's not really relevant or problematic. You could also create a traditional paper certificate of title for your neighbor's car too, but obviously no one would respect it (unless they were tricked, but that's against the law and the legal system would tend to respect that genuine certificate of title).
- boublepop 5y ago
  Brilliant! So what you are saying is that NFT’s are a good documentation of ownership… if we assume some other system takes care of documenting that the NFT was in fact created by the owner. So you know if we have some other system to track ownership.
  - Raidion 5y ago

est31 5y ago

Seconded. I see no point in "buying" media from stores where my account can be terminated immediately. If I bought an NFT token that encodes the right to use some copyrighted work, this issue doesn't exist. Imagine a future where you can engage in completely legal torrenting of copyrighted works, where all sides have NFT proofs of ownership. Owning an NFT would mean you own the notarized right to download a copy as well as to seed it to other torrenters who can cryptographically prove they own the same NFT.

chime 5y ago
> Imagine a future where you can engage in completely legal torrenting of copyrighted works, where all sides have NFT proofs of ownership. Owning an NFT would mean you own the notarized right to download a copy as well as to seed it to other torrenters who can cryptographically prove they own the same NFT. Thank you! You get what I'm talking about. Many folks here are replying to me as if I'm saying NFTs can prevent copyright infringements. That's not possible and not the goal. The goal would be to track ownership and handle violations more reliably than mass DMCA-notices that plague YouTube.
acdha 5y ago
> Seconded. I see no point in "buying" media from stores where my account can be terminated immediately. If I bought an NFT token that encodes the right to use some copyrighted work, this issue doesn't exist. As usual, you don't need a blockchain to do either of the two things you're talking about. For the copyright case, what matters is that you have a legal authorization which will be recognized by a court. An NFT can do that but so can an email or anything else — and the problem you're trying to avoid is a concern either way because the same people who require terms of use for their content aren't going to reverse course due to magical thinking advised by blockchain salespeople. The secondary problem of unreliable cloud storage is similarly very expensively not solved by an NFT. Due to the inherent inefficiency of blockchains almost all NFTs point to a URL for the actual payload. If that hosting provider shuts down or restricts access, you have the same problem as you do now. Now, some people will say that IPFS solves this but if you've thought about the problem at all that is only a solution for content which is very popular and released under an open license: someone has to pay for the storage, even the few people willing to provide storage unpaid aren't going to do so for encrypted content which they can't access, and nobody who cares about access restriction is going to put it in a public blockchain anyway since they'd be one key leak away from the content being available without payment.

paxys 5y ago

NFTs explicitly do NOT grant ownership to the underlying asset though. You are purchasing the NFT itself, and nothing else.

legutierr 5y ago
They could, though. The original owner could assign ownership to whoever the bearer of the NFT happens to be.

boublepop 5y ago

> But I still think NFTs have a future as digitally signed proof of ownership of media assets. The NFT is only a proof of ownership of the NFT. You don’t own the artwork. If you want to buy the artwork you need an old fashioned signed contract documenting transfer of ownership.

themagician 5y ago

They only function as proof of ownership if there is no dispute. Basically, it just confirms provenance. If an NFT is stolen, or a more original author/owner emerges, that will take precedence over the NFT in question at which point it will have to be reissued. The immutable nature of NFTs and crypto in general doesn’t really work well in the real world where we rely on the ability to change things.

CJefferson 5y ago

The problem with the whole Blockchain business is what happens when a court declares something with violates the chain? You need to start keeping a user maintained list of patches, at which point why bother with a Blockchain instead of just having a trusted website?

nostromo 5y ago

Except there's no reason for that to be distributed and thus no reason for it to be an NFT. You could accomplish the same thing just using signed files, or a hash in the exif.

dcolkitt 5y ago

I'm a big proponent of blockchain. But technically blockchain is overkill for this application. At least for non-exclusive perpetual licenses, like the stock photo example. Blockchain gives you three things. 1) Censorship resistance (no one can "lose" or forget about the license). 2) Protections against mis-spend (no one without the private keys can grant the license). And 3) Protection against double-spend (in the case of two grants, we have a universally agreed upon history of which came first). A non-exclusive license only requires the first two. You can satisfy the problem with digital signatures and a censorship-resistant P2P file share like IPFS. Comparatively putting data on the blockchain is fairly expensive. Even with sharding O(log(n)) nodes have to store the data, whereas with IPFS only O(1) do. On Ethereum, every kB of storage costs around $5. If you don't need canonical sequencing of history, then blockchain is probably overkill.

dbmikus 5y ago
Transferring ownership of an NFT would not work just with digital signatures and IPFS, though. I could sign a transaction saying "I transfer this NFT to you", but unless you trust me or some authority, you have no guarantee than I don't just resign it and transfer to someone else as well.

TomSwirly 5y ago

> But I still think NFTs have a future as digitally signed proof of ownership of media assets. Except NFTs don't "prove" anything. The only form of proof of ownership of media assets is legal. If I have a legal document proving that I own media asset X and you have an NFT, you will be in the cold.