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If you have a digital work of art, an NFT can help you with two things: forms a binding between the rights-holder and the work of art. The NFT can also encode

If you have a digital work of art, an NFT can help you with two things: forms a binding between the rights-holder and the work of art. The NFT can also encode various information and other licensing decisions made by the rights holder for example: - what is the name of the license covering the work of art - who is the original author - what date was the work created - what if anything was it derived from - are private or public performances allowed - is copying allowed - does the license allow for sublicenses or transfers And, as we get into the money question: - what is the cost to play, display, or perform this work - who should be paid I could imagine, say, iTunes being able to play NFT protected works, and being able to collect a fee from the user to be able to play it. In theory this would go directly to the rights holder, which would perhaps be the original author rather than a music publisher. Another example I saw was that artists could create limited editions, say of 1000 of a digital image. If I wanted to display these on my TV, I would have to have own the NFT. The NFT addresses the problem of how Samsung figures out how to pay the rights holder. Usually after a work of art is sold, the original author is out of the picture. But, they could encode an NFT so that whenever the ownership is transferred, the original creator gets a slice. So, the original creator would continue to benefit from works which appreciate in value.

obstacle1 5y ago
Re: your last example. Where is the incentive for a company to actually bother reaching into the ledger to determine who holds royalty rights? The underlying media pointed to by the NFT is not restricted, it's infinitely reproducible and thus valueless. Why not just right-click save-as and display the media, bypassing the metadata encoded in the NFT? It seems like there'd have to be some person or collection of persons who are responsible for enforcing that the company treat the terms of the NFT as a binding agreement. Using force, if necessary, either legal or physical. Something almost like... a legal system associated with a state. Which would be centralized. Which would beg the question, what's the value of the decentralized ledger in that case?
- stevep98 5y ago
  > The underlying media pointed to by the NFT is not restricted, it's infinitely reproducible and thus valueless It is protected by copyright or other IP law, and not valueless. I would say that the incentive is that they can access a market of digital products without fear of being sued by the rights-owner. The value of the NFT approach is that it can all be codified and automated so that a) as a creator I can get paid for my content without having to negotiate contracts with every distribution channel b) distribution channels get access to every piece of content. Not saying that NFT's will work in the end, but that's my understanding of it. In simple terms, though, it's just codifying the license terms, so that at least has some value as digital media grows and content creation becomes decentralized.

obstacle1 5y ago

Re: your last example. Where is the incentive for a company to actually bother reaching into the ledger to determine who holds royalty rights? The underlying media pointed to by the NFT is not restricted, it's infinitely reproducible and thus valueless. Why not just right-click save-as and display the media, bypassing the metadata encoded in the NFT? It seems like there'd have to be some person or collection of persons who are responsible for enforcing that the company treat the terms of the NFT as a binding agreement. Using force, if necessary, either legal or physical. Something almost like... a legal system associated with a state. Which would be centralized. Which would beg the question, what's the value of the decentralized ledger in that case?

stevep98 5y ago
> The underlying media pointed to by the NFT is not restricted, it's infinitely reproducible and thus valueless It is protected by copyright or other IP law, and not valueless. I would say that the incentive is that they can access a market of digital products without fear of being sued by the rights-owner. The value of the NFT approach is that it can all be codified and automated so that a) as a creator I can get paid for my content without having to negotiate contracts with every distribution channel b) distribution channels get access to every piece of content. Not saying that NFT's will work in the end, but that's my understanding of it. In simple terms, though, it's just codifying the license terms, so that at least has some value as digital media grows and content creation becomes decentralized.