5 ms·
Isn't the NFT selling the premise that the owner of the NFT owns the art being pointed to? Maybe it isn't theft but it does seem to be fraud? Or if the argume
by noodle 5y ago
Isn't the NFT selling the premise that the owner of the NFT owns the art being pointed to? Maybe it isn't theft but it does seem to be fraud? Or if the argument is that NFTs don't convey some sort of ownership over the thing it points to, what's even the point of NFTs?
- politician 5y agoNo, what's being sold is ownership of a unique set of metadata stored in a blockchain. There's nothing connecting a NFT to an underlying asset. It's like if I gave you the opportunity to buy the words "The Empire State Building" written on a napkin with a promise to never write those words on any other napkin. You might buy that if, say, I was famous. That's an NFT. You're not the new owner of the Empire State building.
- edmundsauto 5y agoI admit I don't understand NFTs much, but would a reasonable analogy be a photograph? I could take a picture of the Empire State Building, sell you the rights to the picture? Except, with an NFT, it's a blockchain identified bit of numbers rather than a picture?
- politician 5y agoYes, that's a reasonable analogy. Now extend it with some crypto-magic that makes duplicating that picture impossible, that's an NFT.
- noodle 5y agoBut the complaint is that people are selling the rights to pictures via NFTs that they don't have the rights to sell in the first place, isn't it? So the analogy would be that some third party took a copy of your photograph of the building and sold the rights to it despite them not having the ability to do so?
- politician 5y agoNo, the complaint is that OpenSea is distributing images that were uploaded by users that lack licenses to do so and that OpenSea does not have a compliant DMCA process. Therefore it is being asserted that OpenSea cannot claim a 512(c) exemption from liability. [1] https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11478 https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11478 In other words, the complaint is that when you curl e.g. https://images.opensea.com/some-pixel-artwork https://images.opensea.com/some-pixel-artwork it returns a PNG of the pixel art without adequate license metadata, and there's no one to talk to that will fix the issue.
- basch 5y agoDont confuse selling a picture for selling the rights to a picture. An NFT could include the rights to the actual art itself, but most likely youre buying a sole reproduction. Similar to how going and buying a copy of a photograph at the store doesnt necessarily give you the explicit right to reproduce it for profit. Copyright is different from possession. NFTs are possession, unless they spell out that the purchase also transfers the copyright.
- edmundsauto 5y agoWhat if, instead of copyrighted works, we put people as an NFT? IE, OpenSea could sell an NFT of Donald Trump, as represented by bits on the blockchain.
- _puk 5y agoThis reminds me of the old eBay scam where the listing would be worded in such a way as not to actually say that you got more than the picture of whatever was listed, but people bought it as their expectation was inherently different and they assumed the sale to be for the actual product.
- fragmede 5y agoAh yes, the xbox-box sale. You purchased the cardboard box the xbox came in, not the video game console.
- chizhik-pyzhik 5y ago> Isn't the NFT selling the premise that the owner of the NFT owns the art being pointed to? Correct. The victims here are both the buyer (who bought thinking they purchased from the creator) and the creator (who would have earned that revenue if they created the NFT). The solution is really just better moderation and UX- OpenSea needs to make it easy to determine whether the creator is actually the creator, or just someone who re-uploaded the content.