7 ms·

Your not buying the rights, that's the most annoying thing about NFTs, that people don't get.

_fat_santa 5y ago
I heard it varies. Bored Apes for example give you the rights to the underlying photograph, I think that's why you see them pop up in ad campaigns now and again.
nsomaru 5y ago
I looked this up the other day and I might be wrong but it seems like in most jurisdictions even if you buy a meatspace piece of art you do not own the actual copyright on the work. While I’m not a fan of NFTs this does somewhat weaken the proposition that any “rights” cannot be sold with NFTs because IIRC this is the status quo in meatspace art purchases too.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- pessimizer 5y ago
  The people who bought the pitchbook for the Dune movie that was never made should have looked it up, too.
- fnord123 5y ago
  There are no rights to Bored Ape works. They are algorithmically generated so they are public domain.
  - abyrne10 5y ago
    I'm not sure it's true that something being algorithmically generated means it's public domain. Plenty of assets for things like video games are procedurally generated, but that doesn't mean they're public domain by default.
    - fnord123 5y ago
      > Plenty of assets for things like video games are procedurally generated, but that doesn't mean they're public domain by default. It does mean that.
      - abyrne10 5y ago
        Going by this definition of public domain, I don’t see how this could be the case: > The public domain consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply[0] Think of it this way. Imagine I wrote some code, and when I ran it it generated a piece of art. Surely I would have IP rights over the artwork? Otherwise you could make the same argument about art made with a somehow automatic paintbrush I built. I hope I’m not talking at cross-purposes here and using a completely different definition of “public domain” was was intended, apologies if this is the case. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain
        fnord123 5y ago
        There is a difference between the concept of a computer being a "clever pencil", which you are referring to, and the computer generating weapons and gear to generate a drop from a selection of "$ELEMENT $LEVEL $WEAPON $MODIFIER" (e.g. fiery epic hammer of orc skull crushing) which is equivalent to generating all of them (not copyrightable). Now, the individual visual components of the weapons could have a copyright but the computationally assemblaged work based on the components would not because they've just run a job to "generate all the permutations". For something like No Man's Sky, which is extremely procedurally generated I reckon it's very grey and they could try to make a case but the actual world they generated for people to play in would not be protected by copright. I don't think it's well tested in court. In the case of the monkeys the hat, the basemonkey, and sunglasses could have a copyright but the assembled monkeys generated by a computer with no creativity would not. But it's a derivative work of things with copyright so that aspect becomes super grey. The UK government issued a call for views to figure this area out and try to legislate it. Hopefully something useful comes of it. https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/artificial-intelligence-and-intellectual-property-call-for-views/artificial-intelligence-call-for-views-copyright-and-related-rights https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/artificial-intel...
  - VHRanger 5y ago
    What's the precedent on algorithmic art being public domain? Is AI art (eg. VQGAN+CLIP stuff) public domain? Doesn't the seed image and text prompt constitute artistic work? How about using photoshop smart features like autofilling? At what point is the threshold placed?
    - conjectures 5y ago
      > Is AI art (eg. VQGAN+CLIP stuff) public domain? Iirc cdpa 1988 in the UK holds it to be copyright of the authors of the program. But I'd be surprised if the law was a comfortable fit for practice 30 years on, or that it had been tested much in court.
  - ygjb 5y ago
    I am aware of the legal discussions around the hypotheticals, but has that actually been tested in court? Define algorithmically generated? There are certainly tools for randomizing the mix of image elements that are present in a piece of art, and combining them, but does that only apply if I used a computer to do it? What if I draw 300 reference images, photocopy them, cut them out, and sit down with a set of dice and tables, and make collages using glue? Does the inclusion of random noise as a processing step in creating digital art count as algorithmically generated? What if I use a custom programmed brush that simulates the randomness of physical brush bristles to simulate in a digital painting?
    - jcranmer 5y ago
      The US Copyright Office notes that "Similarly, the Office will not register works produced by a machine or mere mechanical process that operates randomly or automatically without any creative input or intervention from a human author.", and lists in its examples: > A claim based on a mechanical weaving process that randomly produces irregular shapes in the fabric without any discernible pattern. That is so specific that I have to believe there was a court case where someone attempted to claim copyright for that kind of process. But to answer your question to define algorithmically generated, the requirement is that “whether the ‘work’ is basically one of human authorship, with the computer [or other device] merely being an assisting instrument, or whether the traditional elements of authorship in the work (literary, artistic, or musical expression or elements of selection, arrangement, etc.) were actually conceived and executed not by man but by a machine.” (Citation to: https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap300/ch300-copyrightable-authorship.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap300/ch300-copyrightable-..., see §313.2).
gitfan86 5y ago
That has changed recently, people in these communities believe that NFTs are only valid if verified by opensea. So you are now buying ownership as opensea is beginning the enforcement of copyright. They are pulling a bait and switch.
- Lev1a 5y ago
  Ah yes, relying on a single entity for authentication of the purchases in the market. How very decentralized /s
- captaincaveman 5y ago
  Opensea might be verifying the rights owner has attached their image to an NFT, but that still doesn't mean they have transferred any rights to the holder of the token. Correct me if I'm wrong I've not looked up Opensea's T&C's (have several other's). Also whenever people talk about ownership in regards to copyright, it's a flag that they probably don't know what they are talking about.
  - gitfan86 5y ago
    For most of these people the NFT is the valuable part. If Twitter verifies your opensea nft and let's you put it on your Twitter profile that is the value.
    - Hamuko 5y ago
      Wouldn't displaying an NFT where you do not own the underlying image technically be copyright violation?
      - gitfan86 5y ago
        Technically violations are determined by a court. If no one has accused you of a violation and no court has found you in violation then you are not in violation. A separate question is would the copyright holder win a lawsuit or DMCA takedown request? I don't know
mattdesl 5y ago
Similarly: purchasing a signed art print will not give you any rights to the intellectual property of the artwork. With that said, there are some NFTs that do attempt to tie property/copyright to the token ownership.
conjectures 5y ago
Fairly clearly what you 'get' is dependent on the surrounding system. It's one for a legal-crypto startup but you can imagine selling some NFT being linked to a contract for transfer of copyright. Maybe nobody is doing this, idk, but they could. It's also irrelevant for some applications of NFTs, so it would be a design error to expect every NFT system to enforce copyright transfers.
- captaincaveman 5y ago
  I agree in principle I think you could (I'm not a lawyer). However, you run into the starting problem of needing a trusted authority to verify a rights holder is in fact the rights holder. Also if the right is exclusive, how is that managed, i.e. prevent them issuing the same rights to many people. All answers thus far seem to point back to a central authority, and then what's the point of it being on blockchain.
  - conjectures 5y ago
    > However, you run into the starting problem of needing a trusted authority to verify a rights holder is in fact the rights holder. Again, this is a different problem. One can imagine a service with a seignorage fee to verify such things when an NFT is minted after which that particular question is settled. The point of it being on a blockchain would then be subsequent ease of sale, transfer etc.
    - captaincaveman 5y ago
      That's a gross simplification I think. By service, I think you mean company, now I have to trust said company, also I need to check NFT is minted by company I trust, and that I trust the identifier of said company on the NFT. Now if it turns out the company wasn't doing a good job, what happens then, do the NFT's get revoked, by whom, what are the remedies and the compensation process? All this gets bumped off chain fairly quickly with a hand wave whenever discussed, which quickly puts the block chain solution into question. If the NFT only works when minted and managed by trusted party, then is what we really need is data interoperability rather than blockchain. And even there, NFT's don't actually contain any on-chain or off-chain data expressing what the semantics of the NFT is.
naasking 5y ago
> Your not buying the rights, that's the most annoying thing about NFTs, that people don't get. You are buying the rights, but they're rights that exist in a pseudo-legal system that has no enforcement and isn't recognized by any existing legal authority. Some kind of enforcement could exist one day though. For instance, it's possible that your house in a "metaverse" might only display art for the NFTs that it verifies you own.
- gota 5y ago
  I truly hope we do not let technology be used to create this kind of artificial scarcity If anything, metaverse should allow you to see all works of art as if they were the real thing, all the time, for "free"* * assuming the efforts of building and maintaining the infrastructure are properly compensated
  - dmix 5y ago
    > I truly hope we do not let technology be used to create this kind of artificial scarcity Aren't virtual economies old news by now? Plenty of games and game networks have accomplished this with virtual goods. The 'metaverse' stuff doesn't scare me personally (where this concept could become widespread). I don't buy for a second that it's going to be a big deal where it will be anything more than a niche glorified game lobby.
- knorker 5y ago
  You are both right. Buying an NFT is buying the right to the NFT. It's not buying the right to the art. Even if NFTs were backed by law, so that if I use your private key to transfer the NFT to me you would be able to use the law to come after me for theft, what I stole from you wasn't the rights to the art. What the grandparent post was complaining about was that it's not even the rights to the art. If you buy the rights to the ape, then you can sell copies. I suppose the holder of an NFT can sell a "copy NFT". Maybe that's the next thing. Selling an NFT of an NFT of an NFT of a Beatles song. With a holder chain making sure that whoever minted the NFT-of-NFT at the time did hold the parent NFT. That last paragraph is of course exactly the kind of nonsense that is at the core of NFT, so you should expect these derivative NFTs to start becoming a product soon. If you can sell NFTs-of-art, why not NFTs-of-NFTs? Anyone can sell copies of the Mona Lisa (because expired copyright). Anyone can make NFTs of it, too. Why would NFTs minted by the Louvre be more real? To me, NFT is performance art. It makes you think about intangible ownership. But outside of being performance art it's worthless.
Hamuko 5y ago
I thought the most annoying thing about NFTs is that you're basically buying a hyperlink to a website that you do not control. I checked out the Doctor Who NFT thing after Team 17 was teaming up with the people behind that thing, and the domain where the NFT metadata and images are being hosted was due to expire next summer. They didn't even splurge on a five-year registration for the domain. Hopefully auto-renewals don't stop working.

I heard it varies. Bored Apes for example give you the rights to the underlying photograph, I think that's why you see them pop up in ad campaigns now and again.

nsomaru 5y ago

I looked this up the other day and I might be wrong but it seems like in most jurisdictions even if you buy a meatspace piece of art you do not own the actual copyright on the work. While I’m not a fan of NFTs this does somewhat weaken the proposition that any “rights” cannot be sold with NFTs because IIRC this is the status quo in meatspace art purchases too.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
pessimizer 5y ago
The people who bought the pitchbook for the Dune movie that was never made should have looked it up, too.
fnord123 5y ago
There are no rights to Bored Ape works. They are algorithmically generated so they are public domain.
- abyrne10 5y ago
  I'm not sure it's true that something being algorithmically generated means it's public domain. Plenty of assets for things like video games are procedurally generated, but that doesn't mean they're public domain by default.
  - fnord123 5y ago
    > Plenty of assets for things like video games are procedurally generated, but that doesn't mean they're public domain by default. It does mean that.
    - abyrne10 5y ago
      Going by this definition of public domain, I don’t see how this could be the case: > The public domain consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply[0] Think of it this way. Imagine I wrote some code, and when I ran it it generated a piece of art. Surely I would have IP rights over the artwork? Otherwise you could make the same argument about art made with a somehow automatic paintbrush I built. I hope I’m not talking at cross-purposes here and using a completely different definition of “public domain” was was intended, apologies if this is the case. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain
      - fnord123 5y ago
        There is a difference between the concept of a computer being a "clever pencil", which you are referring to, and the computer generating weapons and gear to generate a drop from a selection of "$ELEMENT $LEVEL $WEAPON $MODIFIER" (e.g. fiery epic hammer of orc skull crushing) which is equivalent to generating all of them (not copyrightable). Now, the individual visual components of the weapons could have a copyright but the computationally assemblaged work based on the components would not because they've just run a job to "generate all the permutations". For something like No Man's Sky, which is extremely procedurally generated I reckon it's very grey and they could try to make a case but the actual world they generated for people to play in would not be protected by copright. I don't think it's well tested in court. In the case of the monkeys the hat, the basemonkey, and sunglasses could have a copyright but the assembled monkeys generated by a computer with no creativity would not. But it's a derivative work of things with copyright so that aspect becomes super grey. The UK government issued a call for views to figure this area out and try to legislate it. Hopefully something useful comes of it. https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/artificial-intelligence-and-intellectual-property-call-for-views/artificial-intelligence-call-for-views-copyright-and-related-rights https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/artificial-intel...
- VHRanger 5y ago
  What's the precedent on algorithmic art being public domain? Is AI art (eg. VQGAN+CLIP stuff) public domain? Doesn't the seed image and text prompt constitute artistic work? How about using photoshop smart features like autofilling? At what point is the threshold placed?
  - conjectures 5y ago
    > Is AI art (eg. VQGAN+CLIP stuff) public domain? Iirc cdpa 1988 in the UK holds it to be copyright of the authors of the program. But I'd be surprised if the law was a comfortable fit for practice 30 years on, or that it had been tested much in court.
- ygjb 5y ago
  I am aware of the legal discussions around the hypotheticals, but has that actually been tested in court? Define algorithmically generated? There are certainly tools for randomizing the mix of image elements that are present in a piece of art, and combining them, but does that only apply if I used a computer to do it? What if I draw 300 reference images, photocopy them, cut them out, and sit down with a set of dice and tables, and make collages using glue? Does the inclusion of random noise as a processing step in creating digital art count as algorithmically generated? What if I use a custom programmed brush that simulates the randomness of physical brush bristles to simulate in a digital painting?
  - jcranmer 5y ago
    The US Copyright Office notes that "Similarly, the Office will not register works produced by a machine or mere mechanical process that operates randomly or automatically without any creative input or intervention from a human author.", and lists in its examples: > A claim based on a mechanical weaving process that randomly produces irregular shapes in the fabric without any discernible pattern. That is so specific that I have to believe there was a court case where someone attempted to claim copyright for that kind of process. But to answer your question to define algorithmically generated, the requirement is that “whether the ‘work’ is basically one of human authorship, with the computer [or other device] merely being an assisting instrument, or whether the traditional elements of authorship in the work (literary, artistic, or musical expression or elements of selection, arrangement, etc.) were actually conceived and executed not by man but by a machine.” (Citation to: https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap300/ch300-copyrightable-authorship.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap300/ch300-copyrightable-..., see §313.2).

gitfan86 5y ago

That has changed recently, people in these communities believe that NFTs are only valid if verified by opensea. So you are now buying ownership as opensea is beginning the enforcement of copyright. They are pulling a bait and switch.

Lev1a 5y ago
Ah yes, relying on a single entity for authentication of the purchases in the market. How very decentralized /s
captaincaveman 5y ago
Opensea might be verifying the rights owner has attached their image to an NFT, but that still doesn't mean they have transferred any rights to the holder of the token. Correct me if I'm wrong I've not looked up Opensea's T&C's (have several other's). Also whenever people talk about ownership in regards to copyright, it's a flag that they probably don't know what they are talking about.
- gitfan86 5y ago
  For most of these people the NFT is the valuable part. If Twitter verifies your opensea nft and let's you put it on your Twitter profile that is the value.
  - Hamuko 5y ago
    Wouldn't displaying an NFT where you do not own the underlying image technically be copyright violation?
    - gitfan86 5y ago
      Technically violations are determined by a court. If no one has accused you of a violation and no court has found you in violation then you are not in violation. A separate question is would the copyright holder win a lawsuit or DMCA takedown request? I don't know

mattdesl 5y ago

Similarly: purchasing a signed art print will not give you any rights to the intellectual property of the artwork. With that said, there are some NFTs that do attempt to tie property/copyright to the token ownership.

conjectures 5y ago

Fairly clearly what you 'get' is dependent on the surrounding system. It's one for a legal-crypto startup but you can imagine selling some NFT being linked to a contract for transfer of copyright. Maybe nobody is doing this, idk, but they could. It's also irrelevant for some applications of NFTs, so it would be a design error to expect every NFT system to enforce copyright transfers.

captaincaveman 5y ago
I agree in principle I think you could (I'm not a lawyer). However, you run into the starting problem of needing a trusted authority to verify a rights holder is in fact the rights holder. Also if the right is exclusive, how is that managed, i.e. prevent them issuing the same rights to many people. All answers thus far seem to point back to a central authority, and then what's the point of it being on blockchain.
- conjectures 5y ago
  > However, you run into the starting problem of needing a trusted authority to verify a rights holder is in fact the rights holder. Again, this is a different problem. One can imagine a service with a seignorage fee to verify such things when an NFT is minted after which that particular question is settled. The point of it being on a blockchain would then be subsequent ease of sale, transfer etc.
  - captaincaveman 5y ago
    That's a gross simplification I think. By service, I think you mean company, now I have to trust said company, also I need to check NFT is minted by company I trust, and that I trust the identifier of said company on the NFT. Now if it turns out the company wasn't doing a good job, what happens then, do the NFT's get revoked, by whom, what are the remedies and the compensation process? All this gets bumped off chain fairly quickly with a hand wave whenever discussed, which quickly puts the block chain solution into question. If the NFT only works when minted and managed by trusted party, then is what we really need is data interoperability rather than blockchain. And even there, NFT's don't actually contain any on-chain or off-chain data expressing what the semantics of the NFT is.

naasking 5y ago

> Your not buying the rights, that's the most annoying thing about NFTs, that people don't get. You are buying the rights, but they're rights that exist in a pseudo-legal system that has no enforcement and isn't recognized by any existing legal authority. Some kind of enforcement could exist one day though. For instance, it's possible that your house in a "metaverse" might only display art for the NFTs that it verifies you own.

gota 5y ago
I truly hope we do not let technology be used to create this kind of artificial scarcity If anything, metaverse should allow you to see all works of art as if they were the real thing, all the time, for "free"* * assuming the efforts of building and maintaining the infrastructure are properly compensated
- dmix 5y ago
  > I truly hope we do not let technology be used to create this kind of artificial scarcity Aren't virtual economies old news by now? Plenty of games and game networks have accomplished this with virtual goods. The 'metaverse' stuff doesn't scare me personally (where this concept could become widespread). I don't buy for a second that it's going to be a big deal where it will be anything more than a niche glorified game lobby.
knorker 5y ago
You are both right. Buying an NFT is buying the right to the NFT. It's not buying the right to the art. Even if NFTs were backed by law, so that if I use your private key to transfer the NFT to me you would be able to use the law to come after me for theft, what I stole from you wasn't the rights to the art. What the grandparent post was complaining about was that it's not even the rights to the art. If you buy the rights to the ape, then you can sell copies. I suppose the holder of an NFT can sell a "copy NFT". Maybe that's the next thing. Selling an NFT of an NFT of an NFT of a Beatles song. With a holder chain making sure that whoever minted the NFT-of-NFT at the time did hold the parent NFT. That last paragraph is of course exactly the kind of nonsense that is at the core of NFT, so you should expect these derivative NFTs to start becoming a product soon. If you can sell NFTs-of-art, why not NFTs-of-NFTs? Anyone can sell copies of the Mona Lisa (because expired copyright). Anyone can make NFTs of it, too. Why would NFTs minted by the Louvre be more real? To me, NFT is performance art. It makes you think about intangible ownership. But outside of being performance art it's worthless.

Hamuko 5y ago

I thought the most annoying thing about NFTs is that you're basically buying a hyperlink to a website that you do not control. I checked out the Doctor Who NFT thing after Team 17 was teaming up with the people behind that thing, and the domain where the NFT metadata and images are being hosted was due to expire next summer. They didn't even splurge on a five-year registration for the domain. Hopefully auto-renewals don't stop working.