49 ms·

€2.6M spent for a book at auction, believed they would own the IP

• YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
  The non-challan we will make an original series out of it and sell it to a streaming service must be the funniest thing I've read in a long time. cryptobros really are funny if you are not getting scamed by them.
  • ngc248 5y ago
    sorry I hate to be that guy but its not non-challan, its nonchalant. I was confused for a minute their by what non-challan meant ... i was thinking tthat maybe it is related to https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/challan https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/challan
    • Freak_NL 5y ago
      I got stuck on that sentence too. I think it is the lack of quotes around the “we will make an original series out of it and sell it to a streaming service”-bit following it that stopped me from seeing 'non-challan' as a mistyped 'nonchalant'.
      • fmajid 5y ago
        Non-challan: vegans who refuse to eat challah bread because it's got egg in it?
• BoardsOfCanada 5y ago
  Well, not the worst book to spend that much money on. If anyone hasn't seen the documentary Jodorowsky's Dune I highly recommend it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfJi2sfduqk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfJi2sfduqk
  • oflannabhra 5y ago
    This YouTube video is blocked for me in the US, but for anyone else curious about the book and it’s history: It not a copy of Dune, but a copy of a book created to show the vision of one of the first (failed) movie adaptations. French director Jodorowsky had an official adaptation of Dune (and had collaborated with Herbert) [0]. The adaptation failed after running out of money. Notable is the scope of the adaptation: 14 hours and millions poured into pre-production. Subsequently, a documentary [1] was made about this failed adaptation. I think the parent link is to this documentary. [0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(novel)#Early_stalled_attempts https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(novel)#Early_stalled_a... [1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jodorowsky's_Dune https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jodorowsky's_Dune
  • 015a 5y ago
    Its truly one of the wildest stories very few people know about. He (very seriously) planned for it to star: Mick Jagger, Salvador Dali, Orson Welles, and... Jodorowsky's 12 year old son playing Paul. With music by Pink Floyd (post-Dark Side). This was not pie-in-the-sky dreaming; he met with all of these people, and they all agreed. Planning for a 14 hour movie, they ultimately gave up due to the budget being "short by $5M" (adjusted for inflation: ~$15M). Though by the end of the documentary, you'll definitely arrive at the conclusion that it wouldn't just be another $5M, and the project had so many problems beyond money; it is interesting to think about how Dune (2021)'s budget came in at ~$165M. We missed out on something truly unique for sure; probably an acid-fueled fever dream, but I totally understand why some people have an obsession with the work Jodorowsky put into the adaptation, and would pay to own a piece of that history.
• jaclaz 5y ago
  Since it is an auction, besides the winning bidder, there was at least another bidder, which makes two of them and is even more perplexing. It is not really the "Dune" book, but rather its storyboard, more details and a few photos here: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20211122-doomed-dune-storyboards-sell-for-2-7mn-euros https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20211122-doomed-dune-s...
  • o_m 5y ago
    Sounds like a great way to launder money
    • carl_dr 5y ago
      Spending €2.6M on something worth €26,000? Sounds like a crappy return to me.
      • kstrauser 5y ago
        Not if it’s a pump and dump. The DAO collected a couple million dollars of other people’s money and used it to win an expensive auction, thus “proving” that the idea is worth lots of money. Now their second DAO can collect even more because it’s been legitimized.
      • ed_elliott_asc 5y ago
        Unless you already owned it and are now selling it via auction.
      • fmajid 5y ago
        If the person who owned the book is the same as the bidder, or in cahoots, they can buy cryptocurrency with dirty money, buy the book at an inflated price, get ostensibly legitimate money back but have to pay the auction house a commission for the privilege. Since most of the crypto world does not do AML-KYC, it is a very attractive for money laundering, and I would say this is by design.
      • londons_explore 5y ago
• WA 5y ago
  I guess, if you think in NFTs all day and truly believe that your JSON receipt is worth anything and gives you legal ownership, stuff like this happens to you in the real world, too.
  • Hokusai 5y ago
    But that is what the industry is selling (even that it's obviously not legally true). "NFT stands for non-fungible token, which basically means that it’s a one-of-a-kind digital asset that belongs to you and you only." https://fortune.com/2021/12/18/nft-making-selling/ https://fortune.com/2021/12/18/nft-making-selling/ Fortune, e.g., misinterpretes it in that same way. Anyone can make copies of an NFT backed asset unless you use other legal or technical methods to limit copies.
    • nybble41 5y ago
      That definition isn't wrong. However, the "one-of-a-kind digital asset" is the NFT itself—basically a digital autograph—not a copy of the image (or book) the NFT describes, or even a license to such a copy, and certainly not the copyright, unless the copyright holder explicitly agreed to that when minting the NFT. (And you would need some out-of-band proof that the NFT was truly minted by the copyright holder.)
• jacquesm 5y ago
  Who was the seller? Where did the 2.6 million come from? How many other bidders were there? What was the auction model used? How are they going to recover the investment now? And if they won't how will they deal with the write-off? So many questions...
  • xcambar 5y ago
    Yes, we need answers to these ! I'll add one: why does the thread mention "cryptobros" about buyers when the auction was nothing related to crypto in any way? Is it just becoming a generic insult to dumb people or am I missing something?
    • popilewiz 5y ago
    • stnikolauswagne 5y ago
      > why does the thread mention "cryptobros" about buyers when the auction was nothing related to crypto in any way? Because the group who won it crowdfunded the money via cryptocurrency, wants to turn the book into NFTs and is organized in a DAO, if I looked into this a bit more I am sure I would find something about web3 and metaverse and whatever else fits in the bullshit bingo of current discourse around the whole crypto scene. If this does not count as „cryptobros“ then I imagine nothing does.
      • xcambar 5y ago
        Thanks for the info I missed (and/or was too lazy to search). Yep, cryptobros it is.
  • Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    > Where did the 2.6 million come from? Crypto gains (scammy or otherwise), NFT sales, etc. The phrase 'cryptobros' is used to refer to people who got rich off of crypto shenanigans.
• saulrh 5y ago
  > 1. Make the book public (to the > extent permitted by law) Extra dumb: A big chunk of it is already online. https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipNGBuasYa_WETf7sF6Q9W3SN-X7oiB3jrh5QDMMNQPQl9xgS3cua--BhRr-BImP1w?pli=1&key=QmE1WTR0Z0FtZVFIalpsYVZ3LXFXMS1DUmNiUnR3 https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipNGBuasYa_WETf7sF6Q9W3S... Seems like NFT logic in reverse, lol
  • whywhywhywhy 5y ago
    > Extra dumb: A big chunk of it is already online Let's not pretend some low quality jpegs in a Google Photos album is an acceptable archive for this work.
    • falcolas 5y ago
      Eh, that's the DAO's plan too. Just substitute the blockchain for Google Photos. They're even sticking with JPEGs as well.
    • rchaud 5y ago
      Better we pretend that this fly-by-night operation is going to put care and consideration into their archival efforts?
    • TremendousJudge 5y ago
      Yeah the fact that a copy of this book isn't publicly available in a museum is a tragedy
• rhn_mk1 5y ago
  I think I'm beginning to understand the prices of art NFTs: the majory of people simply don't understand that NFTs aren't representing much anything of value. It's even harder to believe that the box is empty when its price was so high.
  • libertine 5y ago
    I came here to comment something in the likes of this, just to add it helps to understand not only the price of art NFTs but the dynamics of it. These "investments" are all backed up by some fantasy that works in their "realm" - like buying an avatar that will be used in "the metaverse", being the metaverse a collective fantasy and illusion. Just like these fellows are so emotionally invested in this fantasy that they were already selling the rights of a TV Show to a streaming service... and I bet that if you go to them now they have the narrative that this will be sold to some yet to exist streaming service of the metaverse based on NFTs.
    • fmajid 5y ago
      To be fair, much of the art market is also smoke and mirrors. Witness Piero Manzoni's work: https://www.chron.com/life/article/Barry-Tate-s-taste-in-art-is-in-the-toilet-2113765.php https://www.chron.com/life/article/Barry-Tate-s-taste-in-art...
      • j4yav 5y ago
        Anti-art is actually a thing and kind of interesting, if also arguably also kind of dumb and pointless: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-art https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-art. It's sort of the equivalent of trolling in the art world, and is usually a meta-commentary on what it means for something to be art. I wouldn't really say that it makes up much of the art market, though they always get a lot of news attention when they appear.
• ivanhoe 5y ago
  It's actually 2.66M + 5.5% VAT = 2.8M euros ($3.2M USD), as stated on the bottom of the auction page: "VAT at the rate of 5.5% will be due on the total of the hammer price and fees charged to the buyer." https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6345488 https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6345488
  • cmdkeen 5y ago
    It's probably even more than that with the "Buyer's Premium" tacked on - the Christie's cost calculator linked reckons that would be another EUR540,000 on top...
    • TigeriusKirk 5y ago
      The "price realized" includes the buyer's premium. It's a bit of sleight of hand auction houses do in reporting results.
      • cmdkeen 5y ago
        I stand corrected - that's useful to know as I only recently discovered buyer's premium when thinking about dipping my toe into the auction waters
• xmprt 5y ago
  2 things confuse me about this. 1. This was a normal auction and not an NFT one. How is a DAO enforced in this case? What happens if the nominated bidder decides to go rogue and bid more or less than the decided cap? What happens if the price of Ethereum drops to the point that the DAO is no longer able to find the 2.6M they need? 2. If this is an auction then there has to be another bidder (I doubt even the people in this DAO are dumb enough to make their initial bid 2.6M). Who was bidding 2.5M against them?
  • knorker 5y ago
    According to the buzzfeed article it was bought by one guy, and then the DAO community appears to reimburse him. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/amansethi/spicedao-dunedao-soby https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/amansethi/spicedao-dune...
    • captn3m0 5y ago
      And he is also using the DAO to fund his 800k capital gains taxes.
    • Nextgrid 5y ago
      As expected, the problem of interacting with the real world comes up again. It doesn't matter how decentralized your blockchain or "DAO" is, ultimately all interactions outside the blockchain will rely on one or more trusted parties that can go rogue or be coerced... at which point you may as well not have a blockchain and just trust these people directly.
      • cinntaile 5y ago
        Sending some ethereum to a central address sure is easier though, especially when you're collaborating across borders.
        • ramchip 5y ago
          I think the equivalent would be Kickstarter, Gofundme, etc. rather than directly sending someone money.
• knbknb 5y ago
  They bought a rare Dune storybook, created by an all-star team of artists (Jodorowsky, Moebius, HR Giger, ...). I think that storybook was used to pitch the concept art to Movie Producers and Studios. To make this easier to understand, substitute "Dune book" with "Gutenberg Bible" or, even better, "historic, ultrarare, pre-medieval parchment of a Bible translation". The new owners of that Bible probably do not think (and do not intend to promote the idea) that they now own the property rights for "the" Bible, or for all Bibles, or for any Bible - except for that particular instance of the Bible. Rather they now own that parchment, with all its decorated pages, handwriting, scripts, gemstones, peculiar translations, and compilation of Gospels and Letters. These content, drawings and illustrations inside that Bible are really unique, unless the monks decided to draw everything ( or even more often.) This content could indeed be monetized, or shared with the world, for the greater good.
  • piva00 5y ago
    There are other copies of the same artbook...
  • Cederfjard 5y ago
    If so, why would they think they now have the right to make an animated series based on the IP (which their tweet explicitly states)? You’re being way too charitable. And as the sibling comment said, this is not the only copy (but seeing elsewhere in the thread that they’ve talked about burning it, perhaps they thought so, too. That’s honestly not an impressive amount of due diligence in that case, to put it mildly).
  • ricardobeat 5y ago
    > This content could indeed be monetized, or shared with the world, I suggest you read the rest of the discussion. No, it can't be shared, and it can't be monetized. You said it yourself - they do not own the intellectual property rights. They own a printed version of that content that does not include any rights for digital reproduction, derivative work or anything of the sort. Like any other book (!).
  • pjc50 5y ago
    The difference between this and the Gutenberg bible is that Gutenberg isn't going to DMCA you.
• knorker 5y ago
  > “We can’t just scan it and put it on the internet,” Fang said. But by raising the money as a DAO, Fang said they hoped to show the various estates and stakeholders that there is a massive online interest in making the bible more accessible to the public. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/amansethi/spicedao-dunedao-soby https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/amansethi/spicedao-dune... I don't know what they're doing, but it seems that they are at least a bit aware that they don't own the rights. Who exactly are they trying to convince, and about what? I mean they don't just need the rights to the art in the book itself, but they also need to get the movie/TV rights for Dune itself. Is this really spending €2.6M just to get a foot in the door, to be able to spend, what, another $200M for the actual rights? But even then, why do they think this DAO is the best way to execute this vision? They could just go "oh, people are interested in Dune? Ok, let's make a movie, but without involving these DAO people". Oh wait, there already is a Dune series of movies currently being made/in theaters. But also: The contents have been on the internet for years, apparently: https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipNGBuasYa_WETf7sF6Q9W3SN-X7oiB3jrh5QDMMNQPQl9xgS3cua--BhRr-BImP1w?pli=1&key=QmE1WTR0Z0FtZVFIalpsYVZ3LXFXMS1DUmNiUnR3 https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipNGBuasYa_WETf7sF6Q9W3S... (from the twitter thread)
  • libertine 5y ago
    >I don't know what they're doing Now it will be hosted on some other server as well (THE REAL DECENTRALIZED SERVER) but wrapped into some NFT, where they will sell each page - or even better - each square of the storyboard, coated into some fucked up story like: "You can own a piece of a future TV Show based on this story board!" And they will probably come out profiting because people will buy this illusion. Edit: From a quick Google search there's around 3000 drawings, so 3000 NFTs at some absurd price that people will want for a piece of the pipe dream. They didn't even had to pay an artist or create a story this time around... Beeple sold 5000 renders for 69 million.
    • knorker 5y ago
      Ah, that's interesting. They can't, of course, sell the images themselves; they don't hold the copyright. But they can sell URLs referring to the content. That's pretty clever. I mean it's super dumb, but it's clever. By that I mean that an NFT whose content is an URL to an image you don't own, is dumb. But it's clever to "mint" these, and you'll find more fools to buy the NFTs if you give the appearance of legitimacy. In other words: They have no more rights to sell NFTs for the contents than I do, but they'll be more successful at implying to buyers that they do. The most interesting thing about NFTs (and most blockchain tech) is the question "is this actually fraud, or is it merely stupid?". It's philosophy about the meaning of "fraud".
• stnikolauswagne 5y ago
  I made the mistake of diving a bit deeper into the group who bought it and found a proposal where they are talking about literally burning the book they just bought after digitizing it for … reasons I guess [0] At this point I just hope its some sort of practical joke or whatever because this just seems a bit much. [0] https://forum.spicedao.xyz/t/nft-of-the-book-w-proof-of-jpeg-proof-of-burn/48 https://forum.spicedao.xyz/t/nft-of-the-book-w-proof-of-jpeg...
  • mxxx 5y ago
    Fuck me, they’re talking about using JPEG as an archival format before destroying the original. What is going on here.
    • cdirkx 5y ago
      > Because the book remains on-chain, the book does not die, but crosses the boundary of physical to digital. It reminds me of the video game SOMA, where people upload a brain-scan of themselves to live on after some catastrophe, essentially making a digital copy of their consciousness. But because they are also still physically alive, they see the digital version of themselves as a clone, someone else. To "complete the transition", they decide they must end their lives at the exact moment the scan is complete.
      • ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
        The NFT craze reminds me of Nasrudin's "Smoke Seller."[0] [0] https://u.cs.biu.ac.il/~schiff/Net/t26.jpg https://u.cs.biu.ac.il/~schiff/Net/t26.jpg
      • ehnto 5y ago
        SOMA was brilliant. That moment in particular I think was really thrilling, it made me consider some pretty fundamental questions about consciousness in a totally absurd setting. The setting I think helped isolate the core questions really well I felt. Trying not to spoil it by discussing it, if anyone hasn't yet you really should try it, it's a really unique experience in gaming and that's hard to come by these days.
• __alexs 5y ago
  The founders of this DAO are paying themselves >$30,000/month [0] out of the pool to look after an old book and to commission an animated TV series [0] from a company that does music videos and commercials [1]. [0] https://snapshot.org/#/dunedao.eth/proposal/0x2038fc240d0e85c496cc692d0001fb159d6f613b546392aa96e49a3b752ced0d https://snapshot.org/#/dunedao.eth/proposal/0x2038fc240d0e85... [1] https://robleridgeproductions.com/about/ https://robleridgeproductions.com/about/
  • giarc 5y ago
    Someone else here pointed out that it's likely the total budget for the 4 person core team is $30k, not $30k each.
    • ryan_lane 5y ago
      That's still an absurd amount of money, since everything they're proposing to do, they can't legally do. They don't have any actual work to do, and are being paid $90k a year each to do nothing.
• camjw 5y ago
  My favorite part of this story is that they DAO has actually raised ~$8m, spent $3m on the book (10x the expected auction price), then the "core team" has started paying themselves ~$30k a month[0]. Also, how is this "decentralised" when one person owns over 50% of the voting token? [0] https://snapshot.org/#/dunedao.eth/proposal/0x2038fc240d0e85c496cc692d0001fb159d6f613b546392aa96e49a3b752ced0d https://snapshot.org/#/dunedao.eth/proposal/0x2038fc240d0e85...
  • hwers 5y ago
    (not 10x, it’s 100x)
  • digitaltrees 5y ago
    For the sake of accuracy, it appears to me that it is $30k per month total for the core team not each. There is a total maximum operating budget of $50k per month including a maximum of $30k for the core team. When the core team has 4. That is about $8k per month each.
    • black_puppydog 5y ago
      8K seems plenty when you can do your "work" from anywhere in the world (and probably have a good reason to not be too easy to find by your scam victims)
      • jaclaz 5y ago
        ... and possibly if the "work" is not like 40-50 hours/week, but more like a couple hours per month ...
        • pessimizer 5y ago
          Sounds like a board seat.
      • norswap 5y ago
        All the GAFAM engineers sweating heavily right now.
• zeotroph 5y ago
  There was a movie made about that story book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jodorowsky%27s_Dune https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jodorowsky%27s_Dune With it there are 4 Dune "movies" out: the 1984 Lynch version, the 2000 Sci-Fi Channel one (a 3 part mini series, nearly a movie), the aforementioned 2013 one, and of course the 2021 Villeneuve one.
• schleck8 5y ago
  Insane... I first thought this was some elitist meme, but their following is taking it seriously. https://nitter.net/TheSpiceDAO/status/1482404318347153413 https://nitter.net/TheSpiceDAO/status/1482404318347153413
• globular-toast 5y ago
  It feels a bit weird to me to heavily mock and ridicule someone who thought they were doing something for public good.
  • folli 5y ago
    didn't they initially intend to burn the book to make their NFT (or whatever kind of token) more valuable? If that's true, then they deserve to be ridiculed and more.
    • globular-toast 5y ago
      I have no idea. I'm only going by the information in this post.
  • j4yav 5y ago
    How is buying a book, converting it into NFTs and then burning it a public good?
    • globular-toast 5y ago
      Where does it say anything about burning books? I'm referring to the bit about making it public and supporting derivative works.
      • j4yav 5y ago
        In the fourth or fifth reply in the Twitter thread this post links to, it links to the DAO forum where they describe their plans to convert the book to JPEG NFTs and then burn the original.
      • ComradePhil 5y ago
        Here's their plan: https://forum.spicedao.xyz/t/nft-of-the-book-w-proof-of-jpeg-proof-of-burn/48 https://forum.spicedao.xyz/t/nft-of-the-book-w-proof-of-jpeg...
  • gspr 5y ago
• thegregjones 5y ago
  Everyone's favourite Gary Brannon appearing on HN is a pleasant surprise :-) if you're not already familiar with "Citation Needed" or "Two of these people are lying" take a look at their YouTube series
  • notRobot 5y ago
    Submitter here. I'm a huge techdiff fan, which is why I follow Gary on Twitter, which is why I saw this story in the first place :)
• netcan 5y ago
  This is, obviously, silly. There are a lot of silly cryptostuff. Silliness aside though, this highlights a point to me. Methods of organising are (1) very important (2) relatively undiverse (3) hard to create out of whole cloth. The creation/ascendance of "modern" joint stock companies circa 1600 was (arguably) responsible for some serious revolution. The 90s produced some very interesting examples: GNU, Linux, Wikipedia, WWW... These are "organisations" organised in unconventional ways and they produced results that a conventional non profit, commercial or government organisation could not have produced. New ways of organising are potentially very powerful. CryptoBro naivety isn't necessarily terrible for this end. It'll produce a lot of stupid moves, but stupidity and creativity are often neighbors. CryptoBros' typically mercenary and/or ideological tendencies might be more of a hurdle. Besides laws, norms & regulatory structure, what's the difference between a DAU and a joint stock company?
  • Hokusai 5y ago
    > stupidity and creativity are often neighbors That seems to be true in movies, but in the real world new advancements are created by experts that know the basics. Serendipity is part of that, but you need to have the basic knowledge. I will concede, thou, that ideas to be rich can come from anywhere as the only metric is to convince investors, to produce something useful is not required.
    • netcan 5y ago
      I'll not argue that "who" matters. The sense in which stupidity and creativity are neighbors is the difference between expertise and qualifications. I didn't mean that stupid people are more creative. Where unqualified and uncredentialed people can play, you'll find a bunch of clueless morons but also uncredentialed geniuses. Where only the credentialed and qualified can play, say traditional finance, you'll find mostly regular bankers and financiers. I certainly wouldn't have elected to create the current blaze of cryptmadness, but the fact that most of what it produces is scams and bullshit doesn't mean nothing else can come out of it.
  • astoor 5y ago
    The fact that cryptocurrency schemes like DAOs allow people to raise vast sums of money in very short spaces of time with no evidence of anyone involved having the ability, skills or even intention of delivering anything, seems to be fundamentally flawed to me. It seems that you are only going to attract dreamers who want to be able to get rich really quickly without having to do anything much, and I wouldn't have thought those would include the sorts of people who would be most likely to put in the time and effort and attention to detail and hard work required to build things that are truly worthwhile and which will stand the test of time.
• rasz 5y ago
• plutonorm 5y ago
  This must be some kind of commentary on the uselessness of NFTs, surely. They can't really be that stupid?
  • meepmorp 5y ago
    Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from performance art.
    • plutonorm 5y ago
      Fantastic turn of phrase. Hanlon's Razor + Clarke's Third Law
• cstross 5y ago
  Good grief, they are SO going to get sued if they try to do any of their proposed uses! (They no more own the rights to "Dune" than you would if you bought a DVD in a second hand shop and decided to start selling copies of it.) It'd have been a lot cheaper to ignore the NFT nonsense entirely, engage a motion picture rights agency, and pitch direct to Jodorowski and the Herbert estate for permission to use the IP.
  • mnd999 5y ago
    Code is law right? And the code (that they wrote) says it’s okay so it’s okay. Cryptobro logic.
• dvh 5y ago
  Could be worse. They could have bought nft of a book.
  • Nextgrid 5y ago
    That's step 2 of the plan. They will now burn the book and turn it to an NFT to resell to an even bigger idiot.
• iamacyborg 5y ago
  This surprises me even less than the $660 Centipede Press edition of Dune immediately reselling for >$3,000.
• rezonant 5y ago
  And this is why I can't take "web3" seriously.
• _zooted 5y ago
  Doesn't this mean there is a $3m scammer out there somewhere that probably should get caught?
  • maxwell86 5y ago
    Where is the scam? Someone actioned a book, and some genious paid 3 million+ dollars for it. 3, 2, 1, sold.
• remorses 5y ago
  To be honest this looks like a very smart marketing strategy to me, making something so dumb that everyone starts talking about it. This strategy is also used a lot in Tik Tok videos for example: you write the caption with some obvious errors like "your" instead of "you are" and people starts correcting you in the replies making the tik tok algo rank your video higher
• DemocracyFTW 5y ago
  Also worth to understand and remember, from the linked thread: "digitisation does not = preservation. All they’ve done is replace a long term, resource-light asset with a short term and resource-heavy one that doesn’t work in the way the creator intended."
  • whywhywhywhy 5y ago
    Can someone explain what he meant by that please.
    • ramchip 5y ago
      Digitisation preserves the contents of the book, but not the book itself.
      • falcolas 5y ago
        Specifically, the destructive digitization method they've chosen. You can digitize & keep the book. <s> But then that'd devalue the NFTs, so F that. </s>
• scotty79 5y ago
  Is that modern equivalent of having a bridge to sell?
  • nikanj 5y ago
    It’s more akin to buying a postcard of the Brooklyn bridge and thinking you can now put up toll booths
• chimen 5y ago
  I had commented before the other week so I'm gonna quote myself from now whenever I see NFT: > I see a whole new wave of fouls about to lose their money to ponzi schemes and over-hyped "investments", much like it happened with the bitcoin/crypto train.
  • sdoering 5y ago
    Sorry to be that guy, but I got stumped by 'fouls'. You probably meant to write 'fools'.
    • tjpnz 5y ago
      A fowl is a hunting bird.
• ParadisoShlee 5y ago
  All I really want to know if they had to bet against another bunch of other crypto people to get the 3 million price... or if the 3 million was their first and only offer on a $60k book??
  • topranks 5y ago
    Based on how I understand the ContitutionDAO went down the problem is it’s clear to others what funds these things have available going into an auction (as it’s organised publicly). In ConstitutionDAO’s case it means they were narrowly outbid. In this case the suggestion is it makes it safe for any second buyer to make high bids, knowing the DAO will counter up to a certain amount.
• VoodooJuJu 5y ago
  I want to believe that this is just some kind of marketing stunt. I don't want to believe that people can simultaneously be this wealthy and this stupid.
• Waterluvian 5y ago
  So many conversations here and on Twitter focus on laughing at these people. But I think the most likely explanation is that they’re not this stupid. That it’s some form of fraud.
  • f6v 5y ago
    I’ve been reading some crypto- and NFT focused Telegram channels. There’re many people who’d willingly “invest” into something like this.
  • cfj 5y ago
    Are you familiar with Hanlon's razor?
    • Waterluvian 5y ago
      Sure. And Occam's razor. These are nice one-liners but not rules to base perspectives on. What I'm focusing on is how everyone loves to feel smart, and most do that by making others feel dumb. And when you are anti-something (yes, I am anti NFT), you have further motivation to just chalk it up to, "haha look at these bozos." The more useful, and in my opinion, more likely hypothesis to spend all our oxygen on is, "what kind of fraud might be going on here?" For example, did someone just make a ton of money by convincing a bunch of chumps to fund this?
  • bidder33 5y ago
    Or maybe it is simply a group of people who love jodos vision for dune. the idea of a film as a guiding prophet, visions of a flowing creative universe. and we want to play with that. so we raised a bunch of funds and bought a cool book. now we are making an animation. we've been discussing ideas like sending funds to the makers of Jodorowskys Dune documentary which didnt even break even, as a way of thanking them too. y'know, playing in the way we were taught, as hackers, as kids who grew up on the internet. To go out and do things, make things. hang out with our friends. but hn would rather take a few snippets, call us all scammers and frauds, and hate on us. but whatever.. we're gonna keep having fun ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• InsomniacL 5y ago
  How did it sell for 10x of the expected auction price? I understand that they thought they were buying the IP, but who was bidding against them? I guess I'm asking if the seller or another party could see their publicly available bidding strategy and pushed the price up knowing their limits?
  • boopboopbadoop 5y ago
    *100x. One of the other threads mentioned that they had to post their maximum bid publicly in a blockchain somewhere as part of the “dao” before the auction, so someone could easily have seen what they were willing to bid, and just bid them up to it.
    • giarc 5y ago
      I don't think that's true. From Buzzfeed article, it looks like a 25 year old crypto millionaire bid on this, and the SpiceDAO raised $12 million after the fact and are going to reimburse him (and use the rest of the funds for this derivative work)
      • boopboopbadoop 5y ago
        The OP’s question was about how the bid got so high, i.e. it would take two people to get the bid that high.
        • giarc 5y ago
          I wasn't clear, but the winning bidder wasn't the DAO, so it's not like the Constitution DAO where they said "We raised 35 million to bid". The winning bidder used his own eth to win the auction and is only now going to be reimbursed by the DAO (who raised $12 million). So my point was that the winner bidder didn't disclose their max bid like the commentor said.
• leodriesch 5y ago
  Im just wondering how they’ve spent MILLIONS of dollars on this auction and nobody ever told them this wasn’t gonna work. How is this even possible? Didn’t they tell anyone about their plan before executing it?
  • chillfox 5y ago
    I am sure they told a bunch of other cryptobros about it and they were all like yeah big brain idea.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• aasasd 5y ago
  I'm now afraid that Jodorowsky might die from laughter when he hears about this.
• Bayart 5y ago
  It's the first time something on HN gives me second-hand embarrassment.
• jl6 5y ago
  For most of human history, people have lived in small, local information bubbles which were hard to penetrate with facts from the outside world. We see this manifest as the pre-industrial global patchwork of weird and wonderful religious/spiritual/cultural variety. Then somehow the world started to join up and information began to seep into local cultures and sweep away a lot of these pre-rational beliefs. And for a while, it seemed like the direction of travel was towards a global system of thought based on a widely distributed factual, rational approach. But in the last ten years, something seems to have arrested this direction of travel and reinstated local bubbles of thought, insulated from outside challenge. Cryptoscams are the perfect (but not only) example of a self-sustaining shared consensual delusion. They don’t talk to the outside world. So much so that something like this happens. They are living inside a pre-rational info-bubble which has budded off from reality and floated away on its own wind. We are not just dealing with scams and fools here. There is an intense current of reality-defiance and cult behaviour. Some people get sucked into the crypto-attractor, but other hallucinations are available.
  • kybernetikos 5y ago
    I think it's access to broadcast media. When access to broadcast media was heavily gatekept, the official reality bubbles were few and strengthened everywhere. Now everyone has it, there can be far more bubbles. I also hope that we're in a transitional time as people get used to the new technology. I'm sure that it took people a while to understand how much they should believe newspapers or not when they first came along. And it's laughable to people now that War of The Worlds caused such a sensation when aired on the radio, or the BBC spaghetti harvest april fools was believed by so many.
    • donkeyd 5y ago
      > Now everyone has it, there can be far more bubbles. Yeah, I feel like this is the issue. I've heard the theory that in the past, every village had a village idiot. The internet has enabled all these village idiots to find each other and to broadcast their idiocies. They feel strengthened in finding like-minded people and feel vindicated in their beliefs. Due to the size of the group and how vocal they are, they're now also pulling in people who might have previously ignored the village idiot because everyone else did.
• mattkevan 5y ago
  Reading the comments here I initially misread ‘cryptobros’ as ‘cryptouroboros’. It’s actually a pretty good description for a bunch of guys passing the same tokens around for ever increasing amounts, thinking they’re getting richer.
• TomGullen 5y ago
  Who was the other bidder(s) I wonder that allowed them to buy it so high
  • ComradePhil 5y ago
    This guy apparently: https://twitter.com/productnerd/status/1462889815872004101 https://twitter.com/productnerd/status/1462889815872004101
    • simonebrunozzi 5y ago
      > https://twitter.com/productnerd/status/1462889815872004101 https://twitter.com/productnerd/status/1462889815872004101 No. He underestimated the final price by 2M, which means he offered ~660k. I watched the auction, there was one person from Colorado (possibly the DAO creator), and another person from Europe.
      • ComradePhil 5y ago
        Thanks! I completely misunderstood his tweet. I somehow thought he bid 2 million.
• master_crab 5y ago
  I barely read the tweets (I refuse to give more than 5 min of time to crypto news) so shame on me in advance if this has been covered: Are we sure this isn’t just another elaborate scheme to launder money?
• Seattle3503 5y ago
  Buying a book at 10x the price kinda sounds like money laundering.
• boole1854 5y ago
  This story is misinformation. It is a shame that so many are upvoting and spilling vitriol without properly vetting the information. In fact, the winners of the book auction do understand that they do not own the intellectual property. They have a goal of using their remaining funds to acquire the intellectual property. See https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/amansethi/spicedao-dunedao-soby https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/amansethi/spicedao-dune...: > As things stand, Saqib still owns Jodorowsky’s bible but is in the process of transferring ownership to the DAO. Meanwhile, the copyrights for the bible’s contents are held by multiple artists and their estates. [...] > “We can’t just scan it and put it on the internet,” Fang said. But by raising the money as a DAO, Fang said they hoped to show the various estates and stakeholders that there is a massive online interest in making the bible more accessible to the public.
  • Hokusai 5y ago
    If that is the case it shows how much investment money is running wild around. They spend 2.6 million in something that is not so important. It could also be a publicity stunt, but they look quite bad right now.
    • boole1854 5y ago
      My understanding is that purchasing the book is, among other things, supposed to be a publicity stunt that enables them to spur further interest in their project including convincing current IP holders that they are serious about producing new Dune-related content. https://medium.com/@spicedao/roadmap-timeline-ae319c92505d https://medium.com/@spicedao/roadmap-timeline-ae319c92505d
  • kgwgk 5y ago
    > the winners of the book auction do understand that they do not own the intellectual property Then maybe when they wrote We won the auction for €2.66M. Now our mission is to: 1. Make the book public (to the extent permitted by law) 2. Produce an original animated limited series inspired by the book and sell it to a streaming service they could have been more explicit about how #2 is as unlikely as it was before they won the auction.
• ben_w 5y ago
  Huh, second time today that this specific Garry Brannan has entered my… feeds? I guess I can call Hacker News a feed. And I thought the work video from 5 months ago was surprising coincidence, given I otherwise only know him from The Technical Difficulties: https://youtu.be/3rEEnjA1_eA https://youtu.be/3rEEnjA1_eA
• carapace 5y ago
  One of my goals in life is to produce the anime version of Dune. (I don't care from money or rights, I'd do it underground and release it for free.) The thing is, I want to follow the book as closely as possible. No interpretation or modification, just a visual translation of what Frank Herbert wrote.
• vmception 5y ago
  I think one thing many people are missing is how much of this space is children, by now. While the past decade has been about adults risking their fiat capital, children are forced to only earn crypto onchain, as they cannot get the bank account or money without bothering their parents. It is less wise to bother their parents. People like you and I who will proselytize about crypto or any particular crypto investment, while also having incentive to assume custody over the money and benefit from it instead. Whereas in the crypto space natively they can earn and trade and acquire goods and services. Something harder for adults to even notice is possible since the fiat system serves us well enough, so it is an easier frame of reference to only think about crypto as “earn dollars, buy crypto, have more or less dollars later” compared to “earn crypto, trade crypto to have more crypto”. There is no way to quantify it, but if you lead with this assumption you will find it. I know children that have a few hundred $ in their joint bank account but $100k in crypto onchain and just waiting till they turn 18 so they can cash out without telling their parents. As the things they invest in also grow 100x, this is a formidable force of capital, that would represent a cognitive distortion in the markets. So it is no longer just passionate adults that simply never traded before, its teenagers and possibly even Generation Alpha at this point. A lot of things make a lot more sense with this assumption. Use that information however you please.
  • Mentlo 5y ago
    I just re-read everything about this particular event through this lens and it is absolutely horrifying how much it fits. It reads as if kids are using crypto in a similar way they would if they were to play a game, with the difference being that through this game they can cash out eventually.
    • vmception 5y ago
      Right yes, they can accumulate like a game often times by playing games, but just as easily by moonlighting as a community moderator or launching their own projects. many do like the financials sector and use the defi space. If its any consolation, I don't think this knowledge is known enough yet for unscrupulous marketers to be specifically target children and their money, as opposed to merely selective evolution of which goofy projects attract an audience at all. But yeah this will increasingly be something to watch for and assume, also remember that it will be other children marketing to each other more and more, in comparison to adults taking advantage (which will also happen). Not that there will be any way to tell who is taking advantage of who.
• charles_f 5y ago
  I love how blockchain used to be the self proclaimed symbol of freedom from the Big {*}, and the current popular use is to make it an even shittier DRM mechanism
• tetrisgm 5y ago
  I actually interacted with the person running the DAO. I believe him to be a scam artist. For context: I also set up a group to bid on the book. Our intent was to spend $100,000. He reached out to offer to join forces. I mentioned that the goals of the DAO, the use of proceeds, and the general vision were pretty blurry and might not work. He said he had been in touch with Jodorowsky and Moebius and they're excited to work on an exhibition or such kind of event with him. When I pointed out that Moebius died in 2012, he paused for a few minutes then said oh I meant his estate. I don't believe there's been any proof of such communication or plans with the estate yet.
  • TigeriusKirk 5y ago
    Thanks for posting this. It's nice to have a comment from someone with insight into the situation. Your $100,000 goal wasn't unreasonable based on the estimates. What were your plans for the book if you'd won?
    • tetrisgm 5y ago
      We were planning on talking with the Internet Archive see if they could make a digital copy, and then donate it to a scifi museum. Also throw some Dune theme parties.
• seba_dos1 5y ago
  The level of understanding of copyright that these NFT "enthusiasts" have seems to be similar to their understanding of NFT's utility.
• tablespoon 5y ago
  Apparently this is a copy of the storyboards for a failed Dune movie adaptation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jodorowsky%27s_Dune https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jodorowsky%27s_Dune. Apparently a lot of famous artists were involved. This site has scans/photos of most of the content: https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipNGBuasYa_WETf7sF6Q9W3SN-X7oiB3jrh5QDMMNQPQl9xgS3cua--BhRr-BImP1w?key=QmE1WTR0Z0FtZVFIalpsYVZ3LXFXMS1DUmNiUnR3 https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipNGBuasYa_WETf7sF6Q9W3S... (from https://www.muddycolors.com/2020/03/moebius-dune/ https://www.muddycolors.com/2020/03/moebius-dune/). Apparently it envisioned Gurney Halleck as a dwarf: https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipNGBuasYa_WETf7sF6Q9W3SN-X7oiB3jrh5QDMMNQPQl9xgS3cua--BhRr-BImP1w/photo/AF1QipPcDv60AWHnP8uF1Z-yFIDXoQuf5OxRw1wZEVZ9?key=QmE1WTR0Z0FtZVFIalpsYVZ3LXFXMS1DUmNiUnR3 https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipNGBuasYa_WETf7sF6Q9W3S...