4 ms·

> There’s a lot of confusion here about why NFTs are valuable if the buyer doesn’t get to own the image copyright. Mostly because of two persistent lies around

> There’s a lot of confusion here about why NFTs are valuable if the buyer doesn’t get to own the image copyright. Mostly because of two persistent lies around NFTs: 1) That you buy a piece of artwork. 2) Blockchain makes it automatically watertight. All you get is transfer rights of a single number via a blockchain, optionally (usually) with a URI pointing to some media. Now, why is owning blockchain transfer rights to that number valuable? Because an artist was involved in creating it, and they stated somewhere that the number refers to a specific artwork. Outside the blockchain, more things have to be trusted for this to hold up: - The artist in question must be the seller. Sure, you bought it from "banksy44" on nftgox.com, but is that the artist? There are soft ways to verify it, and you can get all sorts of receipts, promises, or statements from semi-official authorities. - Whatever links the number or the URI to the artwork must remain up. If it's on a regular URL, the host owner gets to decide when to delete it, or when to replace it an ad for their gambling site. If a IPFS resource goes dead, it's gone. If the number referring to the artwork is stored on a 3rd party ledger you rely on them being honest, online, and correct. AND NOW you have two weaker links in your trust chain, on the level of "humans trusting humans", rendering the blockchain basically useless. The premise is a lie, intentional or not.

miracle2k 5y ago
I will not disagree that there is confusion and bad arguments on both sides of the debate, which is why you are essentially arguing within the wrong framing. At the same time, people buying NFTs are generally quite a bit less confused about what you consider "lies" than you seem to think. Importantly, the blockchain is not useless because they have to exist within the universe's rules of impermanence. You may want to ponder the differences and shared properties between something like seditionart.com, MASS MoCA's ownership of Sol Le Witt wall paintings, and an NFT on a blockchain. Finally, let me point out that the URI issue is very much a misunderstanding that is widespread within the NFT community as well. It helps to think of the URI as a convenience feature rather than someone implying anything about the value of the token. There are fascinating experiments with tokens that have no url, tokens that have no visual representation, tokens with changing urls, or arbitrary urls; tokens that point to the same url. There are of course tokens that use data uris, and have the image-representation on-chain, or generate it dynamically; or they do so but not in URL form. There are technical implementations where the database of urls is separate from the ledger of tokens; there are early experiments by artists with blockchains (many years before anyone cared about NFTs) where there is no ability to store a URL in the first place. Cryptopunks, a really early project, simply stored a hash to a file containing the assembled images, and that is all that is needed.

miracle2k 5y ago

I will not disagree that there is confusion and bad arguments on both sides of the debate, which is why you are essentially arguing within the wrong framing. At the same time, people buying NFTs are generally quite a bit less confused about what you consider "lies" than you seem to think. Importantly, the blockchain is not useless because they have to exist within the universe's rules of impermanence. You may want to ponder the differences and shared properties between something like seditionart.com, MASS MoCA's ownership of Sol Le Witt wall paintings, and an NFT on a blockchain. Finally, let me point out that the URI issue is very much a misunderstanding that is widespread within the NFT community as well. It helps to think of the URI as a convenience feature rather than someone implying anything about the value of the token. There are fascinating experiments with tokens that have no url, tokens that have no visual representation, tokens with changing urls, or arbitrary urls; tokens that point to the same url. There are of course tokens that use data uris, and have the image-representation on-chain, or generate it dynamically; or they do so but not in URL form. There are technical implementations where the database of urls is separate from the ledger of tokens; there are early experiments by artists with blockchains (many years before anyone cared about NFTs) where there is no ability to store a URL in the first place. Cryptopunks, a really early project, simply stored a hash to a file containing the assembled images, and that is all that is needed.