3 ms·

One thing I don't understand is that, afaik, and NFT and the record of transactions have no legal weight or enforceability like the assignment of copyright.

judge2020 5y ago
Sure it does, the NFT sales are like a bill of sale - both parties have to agree on a price before the money & item change hands. But the legal side doesn't really matter for what you'd traditionally want it for, as this public ledger literally cannot be changed by force nor the focus of an entire government attempting to do so (well, they could jail miners and people not using their fork with the forged transaction, but still).
- criddell 5y ago
  Is an NFT different from other blockchain transactions? If I steal your wallet, am I also stealing your NFTs? If an NFT is designed to send some percentage of a sale to the person who minted it, is there a way to prevent me from selling you my wallet without going back to the blockchain?
  - judge2020 5y ago
    > is there a way to prevent me from selling you my wallet without going back to the blockchain? Besides hardware wallets, most people wouldn't take the risk of buying a wallet since the seller could then send the NFTs to a different address they control, thus leaving you with a worthless wallet you paid above market price for. > If I steal your wallet, am I also stealing your NFTs? (once again, besides hardware wallets) stealing a wallet itself is only possible if the owner doesn't have the private key / secret words jotted down somewhere. A much more likely and common attack after finding a private key is to immediately transfer all NFTs to another address for cheap.
    - criddell 5y ago
      So it would put you back into the realm of traditional transactions? That doesn't seem like a huge problem. If I sell you my car, there's no way of you knowing if I gave you all the copies of my keys. I could steal the car anytime in the future.
- dodobirdlord 5y ago
  That's the core issue though with ownership of NFTs. If a court says one thing, and the immutable ledger says something else, it's the immutable ledger that's wrong.
  - mwattsun 5y ago
    Which confirms my suspicions that NFTs are not enforceable because they have no laws governing them, except by everyone agreeing to the rules of the game. What I don't know, but what I suspect, is that no one is getting arrested for not following the agreed upon rules.
    - dodobirdlord 5y ago
      We can look to cryptocurrencies for precedent in how NFT ownership disputes will go. Courts have had no issue looking past meaningless technicalities about “immutable ledgers” and “key-based ownership” to adjudicate disputes about who actually owns cryptocurrencies, and have had no issue with reaching decisions that, for example, cryptocurrencies were stolen because they were transferred to a new address without the permission of the current owner.
  - judge2020 5y ago
    Then perhaps it's a ledger of possession instead - a court can't alter reality and say "plaintiff is now in possession of item", however they can order the a defendant to give back stolen property.
    - dodobirdlord 5y ago
      A ledger of possession is certainly a much better model than a ledger of ownership, but it still falls a bit short because frequently when dealing with more abstract kinds of property than a literal physical object, like intangible property (intellectual property, mineral rights), immovable property (land, water sources), or property in the actual possession of a custodial third party (money in a bank account, a company in the care of the board of directors), a court order can change possession, since there's less distinction between possession and ownership of these less concrete forms of property. So it's fair to say that a blockchain can serve as a ledger of possession of those things that are themselves on the blockchain, but not of any thing that is external to the blockchain.

judge2020 5y ago

Sure it does, the NFT sales are like a bill of sale - both parties have to agree on a price before the money & item change hands. But the legal side doesn't really matter for what you'd traditionally want it for, as this public ledger literally cannot be changed by force nor the focus of an entire government attempting to do so (well, they could jail miners and people not using their fork with the forged transaction, but still).

criddell 5y ago
Is an NFT different from other blockchain transactions? If I steal your wallet, am I also stealing your NFTs? If an NFT is designed to send some percentage of a sale to the person who minted it, is there a way to prevent me from selling you my wallet without going back to the blockchain?
- judge2020 5y ago
  > is there a way to prevent me from selling you my wallet without going back to the blockchain? Besides hardware wallets, most people wouldn't take the risk of buying a wallet since the seller could then send the NFTs to a different address they control, thus leaving you with a worthless wallet you paid above market price for. > If I steal your wallet, am I also stealing your NFTs? (once again, besides hardware wallets) stealing a wallet itself is only possible if the owner doesn't have the private key / secret words jotted down somewhere. A much more likely and common attack after finding a private key is to immediately transfer all NFTs to another address for cheap.
  - criddell 5y ago
    So it would put you back into the realm of traditional transactions? That doesn't seem like a huge problem. If I sell you my car, there's no way of you knowing if I gave you all the copies of my keys. I could steal the car anytime in the future.
dodobirdlord 5y ago
That's the core issue though with ownership of NFTs. If a court says one thing, and the immutable ledger says something else, it's the immutable ledger that's wrong.
- mwattsun 5y ago
  Which confirms my suspicions that NFTs are not enforceable because they have no laws governing them, except by everyone agreeing to the rules of the game. What I don't know, but what I suspect, is that no one is getting arrested for not following the agreed upon rules.
  - dodobirdlord 5y ago
    We can look to cryptocurrencies for precedent in how NFT ownership disputes will go. Courts have had no issue looking past meaningless technicalities about “immutable ledgers” and “key-based ownership” to adjudicate disputes about who actually owns cryptocurrencies, and have had no issue with reaching decisions that, for example, cryptocurrencies were stolen because they were transferred to a new address without the permission of the current owner.
- judge2020 5y ago
  Then perhaps it's a ledger of possession instead - a court can't alter reality and say "plaintiff is now in possession of item", however they can order the a defendant to give back stolen property.
  - dodobirdlord 5y ago
    A ledger of possession is certainly a much better model than a ledger of ownership, but it still falls a bit short because frequently when dealing with more abstract kinds of property than a literal physical object, like intangible property (intellectual property, mineral rights), immovable property (land, water sources), or property in the actual possession of a custodial third party (money in a bank account, a company in the care of the board of directors), a court order can change possession, since there's less distinction between possession and ownership of these less concrete forms of property. So it's fair to say that a blockchain can serve as a ledger of possession of those things that are themselves on the blockchain, but not of any thing that is external to the blockchain.