4 ms·

From a recent conversation with a (soon to be) lawyer [as I understand it] software typically uses what's called a "shrink wrap contract" [1] wherein the _usage

From a recent conversation with a (soon to be) lawyer [as I understand it] software typically uses what's called a "shrink wrap contract" [1] wherein the _usage_ of the product implicitly accepts a license. As far as I can tell, nothing in the ERC721 standard (for example) has any provision for such a legal instrument to be included. As such, I don't see how NFT "ownership" can (currently) be construed to possess any legal rights whatsoever unless agreed upon externally to the NFT in which case... what value is the NFT adding? Would love to get a proper legal teardown of this space. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrink_wrap_contract https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrink_wrap_contract [2] All this said, I could see a world where an NFT smart contract requires a cryptographically signed _legal_ contract to be hashed into the transfer as a form of legal consent. But for some reason this isn't yet reality.

mattdesl 5y ago
Similar to buying a signed print from an artist—no contract involved, no legal transfer of copyright or intellectual property, no claim to anything except ownership of the artist-signed artefact. In the case of NFT it is mostly equivalent: claim of ownership over the artist-signed artefact (the token).
- zepto 5y ago
  Exactly this. Which is fine. What isn’t fine is when people pretend that the ownership is over the media itself.
  - mattdesl 5y ago
    Most collectors aren't claiming to own the media (because anybody can right-click save it, and because it is usually hosted on IPFS, the very purpose of which is to allow the media to be copied & distributed across many nodes). But they may claim to own "the artwork," referring to the artist-signed artefact. Much like how a museum may choose to acquire & build provenance around a signed photographic print, despite the availability of unsigned prints that depict the same exact media (see Ansel Adams signed vs unsigned prints, for example).
    - nickitolas 5y ago
      imo anyone claiming to "own the artwork" when talking about widely available digital media is talking about copyright, and if they're talking about something else, they're high
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

mattdesl 5y ago

Similar to buying a signed print from an artist—no contract involved, no legal transfer of copyright or intellectual property, no claim to anything except ownership of the artist-signed artefact. In the case of NFT it is mostly equivalent: claim of ownership over the artist-signed artefact (the token).

zepto 5y ago
Exactly this. Which is fine. What isn’t fine is when people pretend that the ownership is over the media itself.
- mattdesl 5y ago
  Most collectors aren't claiming to own the media (because anybody can right-click save it, and because it is usually hosted on IPFS, the very purpose of which is to allow the media to be copied & distributed across many nodes). But they may claim to own "the artwork," referring to the artist-signed artefact. Much like how a museum may choose to acquire & build provenance around a signed photographic print, despite the availability of unsigned prints that depict the same exact media (see Ansel Adams signed vs unsigned prints, for example).
  - nickitolas 5y ago
    imo anyone claiming to "own the artwork" when talking about widely available digital media is talking about copyright, and if they're talking about something else, they're high
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]