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I feel like monetizing digital artists is a problem better addressed by subscription services like Patreon. The way I see it, an NFT basically locks a sale to o

I feel like monetizing digital artists is a problem better addressed by subscription services like Patreon. The way I see it, an NFT basically locks a sale to one follower whereas a support/subscription services allows the creator to receive money from multiple followers for the same piece. When the creator perceives 'art-theft' as a problem, they can always resort to using a third party watermarking service. The NFT itself has no such anti-copying measures. Sure, someone "owns" it but there is no practical way to identify who made a copy and distributed it. Just my two cents.

randomhodler84 5y ago
There is no way to know someone didn’t run remove_watermark.py on your jpeg either. At least with an NFT there is a tx graph of cryptographic signatures. Fine Art is about story and provenance. NFTs do provide both.
- criddell 5y ago
  NFTs do neither, at least not for the thing it is associated with. In his article on Web3, Moxie Marlinspike wrote this: > So as an experiment, I made an NFT that changes based on who is looking at it, since the web server that serves the image can choose to serve different images based on the IP or User Agent of the requester. For example, it looked one way on OpenSea, another way on Rarible, but when you buy it and view it from your crypto wallet, it will always display as a large [poop] emoji. What you bid on isn’t what you get. There’s nothing unusual about this NFT, it’s how the NFT specifications are built. Many of the highest priced NFTs could turn into [poop] emoji at any time; I just made it explicit.
  - nybble41 5y ago
    This is why if you're going to spend any notable amount of money on an art NFT you should ensure that it precisely identifies (e.g. by an IPFS content ID) the specific artwork it's related to. An art NFT that just points to some random server which could change its response at any time isn't worth the cost of its bits.
    - criddell 5y ago
      IPFS isn't magic. User david_ar had this great comment about IPFS and permanence: > You shouldn't read "permanent" as "eternal", but as "not temporary" --- in the same sense as "permanent address" or "permanent employment". HTTP is temporary in the sense that you're relying on a single server to actively continue serving a file for it to remain available. IPFS is permanent in the sense that, so long as the file exists somewhere in the network, it will remain available to everyone. > Edit: If you want to ensure your content remains available, you still need to host it somewhere (your own server, convincing/paying someone else to, etc). IPFS isn't so much about storage as it is about distribution. IPFS ensures the file won't change but says nothing about availability.
      - nybble41 5y ago
        I never claimed that IPFS magically ensures permanent storage, but the connection between the IPFS content ID (hash) and the content is permanent: If you have a copy of an image or other data, and an NFT with an IPFS content ID, you can show that your file is the one associated with the NFT. That's true even if the entire IPFS network were to disappear since verifying that a file matches a content ID is something you can do locally without depending on IPFS. As to permanence, IPFS makes it easy to pin any available data on your own node to ensure it stays around. Even if it disappears from the network for a time it can be re-added with the same content ID as long as someone retains a copy. Just make sure you save it somewhere, preferably before spending money on the NFT. If the file completely disappears your NFT won't be worth much.
        randomhodler84 5y ago
        In fact the jpeg doesn’t matter at all, that’s just aesthetic. An IPFS url is a commitment to a file. It’s only the commitment that’s important really.
- boopboopbadoop 5y ago
  > Fine Art is about story and provenance Fine art is about being aesthetically pleasing. A JPG can do this on its own, without an NFT. Maybe you mean the value of art is determined by, among other things, story and provenance? Sure, NFTs provide those two. What they don’t provide, which in my opinion is the most important part, is a unique piece of art. Some think a unique record in a blockchain that points to a non-unique copy of a JPG is equivalent, but it is not.
  - randomhodler84 5y ago
    What is the difference between a painting by Leonardo, and an exact copy by a very skilled forger and Artist? “Nothing”. Except, that we can prove Leonardo painted it as we have the history of ownership. The fact the jpeg isn’t unique isn’t the problem. It’s who minted the NFT. If you know it’s the artist, then only that “copy” is the real one. It’s all bullshit I know but there is an approximation of the above question.
criddell 5y ago
I don't think there's any reason why an artist couldn't create 500 copies of a piece and generate 500 NFTs to be sold or given to supporters. Your last sentence seems to be describing a DRM problem which, AFAIK, is an entirely different class of problem.
- falcolas 5y ago
  An artist can mint an infinite number of NFTs for any single piece of art. They'll all be 100% legitimate. Only one will be the "first", but that's not much of a distinction (or rather, it's the same distinction you get from owning the first of a numbered copy of a print).
  - criddell 5y ago
    Right. I keep forgetting that it's the token that's special, not the item (if any) that exists at the URL it's associated with.
twox2 5y ago
You can think of NFTs as akin to Patreon. The thing is they are way better than Patreon. NFTs pay a perpetual royalty to the artist, and the few intermediaries involved mean much smaller fees. Opensea takes only 2.5%. Art theft is an issue no matter how/where an item will be sold, but the IMO when people steal digital art and sell it as NFTs, it just validates the market for the artist it was stolen from. If those artists decided to sell NFTs they would make a killing and squeeze out the thieves.

randomhodler84 5y ago

There is no way to know someone didn’t run remove_watermark.py on your jpeg either. At least with an NFT there is a tx graph of cryptographic signatures. Fine Art is about story and provenance. NFTs do provide both.

criddell 5y ago
NFTs do neither, at least not for the thing it is associated with. In his article on Web3, Moxie Marlinspike wrote this: > So as an experiment, I made an NFT that changes based on who is looking at it, since the web server that serves the image can choose to serve different images based on the IP or User Agent of the requester. For example, it looked one way on OpenSea, another way on Rarible, but when you buy it and view it from your crypto wallet, it will always display as a large [poop] emoji. What you bid on isn’t what you get. There’s nothing unusual about this NFT, it’s how the NFT specifications are built. Many of the highest priced NFTs could turn into [poop] emoji at any time; I just made it explicit.
- nybble41 5y ago
  This is why if you're going to spend any notable amount of money on an art NFT you should ensure that it precisely identifies (e.g. by an IPFS content ID) the specific artwork it's related to. An art NFT that just points to some random server which could change its response at any time isn't worth the cost of its bits.
  - criddell 5y ago
    IPFS isn't magic. User david_ar had this great comment about IPFS and permanence: > You shouldn't read "permanent" as "eternal", but as "not temporary" --- in the same sense as "permanent address" or "permanent employment". HTTP is temporary in the sense that you're relying on a single server to actively continue serving a file for it to remain available. IPFS is permanent in the sense that, so long as the file exists somewhere in the network, it will remain available to everyone. > Edit: If you want to ensure your content remains available, you still need to host it somewhere (your own server, convincing/paying someone else to, etc). IPFS isn't so much about storage as it is about distribution. IPFS ensures the file won't change but says nothing about availability.
    - nybble41 5y ago
      I never claimed that IPFS magically ensures permanent storage, but the connection between the IPFS content ID (hash) and the content is permanent: If you have a copy of an image or other data, and an NFT with an IPFS content ID, you can show that your file is the one associated with the NFT. That's true even if the entire IPFS network were to disappear since verifying that a file matches a content ID is something you can do locally without depending on IPFS. As to permanence, IPFS makes it easy to pin any available data on your own node to ensure it stays around. Even if it disappears from the network for a time it can be re-added with the same content ID as long as someone retains a copy. Just make sure you save it somewhere, preferably before spending money on the NFT. If the file completely disappears your NFT won't be worth much.
      - randomhodler84 5y ago
        In fact the jpeg doesn’t matter at all, that’s just aesthetic. An IPFS url is a commitment to a file. It’s only the commitment that’s important really.
boopboopbadoop 5y ago
> Fine Art is about story and provenance Fine art is about being aesthetically pleasing. A JPG can do this on its own, without an NFT. Maybe you mean the value of art is determined by, among other things, story and provenance? Sure, NFTs provide those two. What they don’t provide, which in my opinion is the most important part, is a unique piece of art. Some think a unique record in a blockchain that points to a non-unique copy of a JPG is equivalent, but it is not.
- randomhodler84 5y ago
  What is the difference between a painting by Leonardo, and an exact copy by a very skilled forger and Artist? “Nothing”. Except, that we can prove Leonardo painted it as we have the history of ownership. The fact the jpeg isn’t unique isn’t the problem. It’s who minted the NFT. If you know it’s the artist, then only that “copy” is the real one. It’s all bullshit I know but there is an approximation of the above question.

criddell 5y ago

I don't think there's any reason why an artist couldn't create 500 copies of a piece and generate 500 NFTs to be sold or given to supporters. Your last sentence seems to be describing a DRM problem which, AFAIK, is an entirely different class of problem.

falcolas 5y ago
An artist can mint an infinite number of NFTs for any single piece of art. They'll all be 100% legitimate. Only one will be the "first", but that's not much of a distinction (or rather, it's the same distinction you get from owning the first of a numbered copy of a print).
- criddell 5y ago
  Right. I keep forgetting that it's the token that's special, not the item (if any) that exists at the URL it's associated with.

twox2 5y ago

You can think of NFTs as akin to Patreon. The thing is they are way better than Patreon. NFTs pay a perpetual royalty to the artist, and the few intermediaries involved mean much smaller fees. Opensea takes only 2.5%. Art theft is an issue no matter how/where an item will be sold, but the IMO when people steal digital art and sell it as NFTs, it just validates the market for the artist it was stolen from. If those artists decided to sell NFTs they would make a killing and squeeze out the thieves.