3 ms·

If e-book and amazon video/music licenses were portable, resellable AND platform agnostic (can use my license and exercise it with a different content host to c

by cwkoss 5y ago

If e-book and amazon video/music licenses were portable, resellable AND platform agnostic (can use my license and exercise it with a different content host to certify I am allowed to download that content), I would buy a bunch of them. I currently have no reason to want to own an NFT, and never "buy" content from amazon because it is locked to my account and has no real permanence. This would certainly be a killer app for NFTs, but I doubt Amazon is willing to cede enough control to actually do this.

paxys 5y ago
While that would be amazing to have, the problem isn't lack of technology (or more specifically blockchain technology). Amazon could very easily set up a marketplace to facilitate transfer of ebooks, movies and more to other accounts. They could also issue "tokens" for redemption on other platforms. All this is possible with good old fashioned CRUD.
- cwkoss 5y ago
  Hmm, I would value these more if they weren't managed within an amazon-controlled database, but you're right that they could offer a lot of the value of this with a centralized solution if they wanted to.
acdha 5y ago
Less Amazon than the content owners: NFTs give them no additional revenue, still have the same hosting costs, and dramatically increase the odds of a compromise leaking their material permanently.
- cwkoss 5y ago
  > NFTs give them no additional revenue Portable digital assets could be priced higher and would have more demand. > still have the same hosting costs Do content owners have to pay amazon hosting costs? I thought that was included in their platform fee. > dramatically increase the odds of a compromise leaking their material permanently The odds of leak are 100% already, so this isn't true.
  - acdha 5y ago
    Right now, a company gives their movie to a reseller and gets a fraction of a sale price. The reseller pays for hosting out of their percentage. NFTs don’t help with storage because blockchains are both inefficient and global so you still need to pay someone to host the actual media files and only give them to people with valid keys. Worse from a rights-holder’s perspective, blockchains don’t allow you to remove content. That means that any time something gets compromised, you have valid keys floating around with no way to remove them. It’s true that leaks happen anyway but there are some key differences: these are always the best quality and they look like legitimate usage so it’s harder to block or track the way they go after torrent users. Anything which reduces risk will increase the number of people bootlegging by a hefty margin. You can do things like, say, having the key in the blockchain be what you use to request a temporary key with lots of rate-limiting but if you’re building the infrastructure for a separate login and distribution system anyway, it comes back to the question of what benefit you get from the extra cost and risk of using NFTs rather than just using that system. If the answer isn’t “a lot more money”, nobody is going to jump on a system which is less reliable and harder to use.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
That's amazing. If intellectual property licensing worked like this, it would be a lot more bearable.
- cwkoss 5y ago
  Someone is going to make a hundred billion dollar business doing this. Those first few years kissing the asses of IP conglomerates enough to get them to try it will be horrible, and then when you prove success competition will be fierce as there is no moat: not a business I would want to start. But I'd certainly be a customer.
smt88 5y ago
NFTs as a decentralized DRM scheme would have the same weaknesses as traditional DRM systems. Centralization is also literally the entire point of DRM, so no one has an incentive to try to make it work.

by cwkoss 5y ago

paxys 5y ago

While that would be amazing to have, the problem isn't lack of technology (or more specifically blockchain technology). Amazon could very easily set up a marketplace to facilitate transfer of ebooks, movies and more to other accounts. They could also issue "tokens" for redemption on other platforms. All this is possible with good old fashioned CRUD.

cwkoss 5y ago
Hmm, I would value these more if they weren't managed within an amazon-controlled database, but you're right that they could offer a lot of the value of this with a centralized solution if they wanted to.

acdha 5y ago

Less Amazon than the content owners: NFTs give them no additional revenue, still have the same hosting costs, and dramatically increase the odds of a compromise leaking their material permanently.

cwkoss 5y ago
> NFTs give them no additional revenue Portable digital assets could be priced higher and would have more demand. > still have the same hosting costs Do content owners have to pay amazon hosting costs? I thought that was included in their platform fee. > dramatically increase the odds of a compromise leaking their material permanently The odds of leak are 100% already, so this isn't true.
- acdha 5y ago
  Right now, a company gives their movie to a reseller and gets a fraction of a sale price. The reseller pays for hosting out of their percentage. NFTs don’t help with storage because blockchains are both inefficient and global so you still need to pay someone to host the actual media files and only give them to people with valid keys. Worse from a rights-holder’s perspective, blockchains don’t allow you to remove content. That means that any time something gets compromised, you have valid keys floating around with no way to remove them. It’s true that leaks happen anyway but there are some key differences: these are always the best quality and they look like legitimate usage so it’s harder to block or track the way they go after torrent users. Anything which reduces risk will increase the number of people bootlegging by a hefty margin. You can do things like, say, having the key in the blockchain be what you use to request a temporary key with lots of rate-limiting but if you’re building the infrastructure for a separate login and distribution system anyway, it comes back to the question of what benefit you get from the extra cost and risk of using NFTs rather than just using that system. If the answer isn’t “a lot more money”, nobody is going to jump on a system which is less reliable and harder to use.

matheusmoreira 5y ago

That's amazing. If intellectual property licensing worked like this, it would be a lot more bearable.

cwkoss 5y ago
Someone is going to make a hundred billion dollar business doing this. Those first few years kissing the asses of IP conglomerates enough to get them to try it will be horrible, and then when you prove success competition will be fierce as there is no moat: not a business I would want to start. But I'd certainly be a customer.

smt88 5y ago

NFTs as a decentralized DRM scheme would have the same weaknesses as traditional DRM systems. Centralization is also literally the entire point of DRM, so no one has an incentive to try to make it work.