Comment by cs702 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cs702 | Hacker News Reader

Society deems that an original work of art by, say, Pablo Picasso is more valuable than an indistinguishable copy by an unknown or lesser known artist.

Making a good copy of a Picasso is not that difficult. Go to any decent art school, and you will find artists who can competently forge a Picasso.

Many owners of Picasso artwork in fact display forgeries, which they call "replicas" in polite company, and keep the original works in secure storage, safe from any possible damage. Most people cannot distinguish between an original work and its forgery anyway.

In fact, even expert collectors are routinely fooled by forgeries![a] The authenticity of many works of art can be ascertained only by looking at provenance, documentary evidence, and historical context -- an imprecise process riddled with human bias and error.

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are like authentic works of art, except that their authenticity, contents, ownership, and provenance (including date of origin) are protected by strong cryptography, making forgeries impossible for all practical purposes.

And society deems that an NFT representing the authentic first tweet by Jack Dorsey -- with its contents, ownership, and provenance protected by cryptography -- is more valuable than an indistinguishable copy of the tweet made by an unknown or lesser known person.

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[a] For example, see https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=fake%20picasso and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_forgery

It’s not really ownership though is it. The tweet is Jack’s, he can delete it if he wishes. It’s more like buying a slip of paper that says you own this particular Picasso, but the person you brought it from still has full control of it and the only thing you can do is look at it through glass like any other visitor regardless of your slip of paper.

And the whole fake/original breaks down in the physical world. How do you tie it to the physical goods in a way that can’t be fraudulent?

> he can delete it if he wishes

or by Twitter itself if Jack is at some point deemed problematic enough by modern puritans.

If he turns out to be a Nazi, sure. Probably for the best.

Whether it's for the best seems irrelevant, the point is that it is a possibility.

> It’s not really ownership though is it. The tweet is Jack’s, he can delete it if he wishes.

Would there not be some liability in doing so? Legally the buyer does own it (it seems) and Jack simply has control over it.

First, is a tweet even a thing you can own, legally? You can own the copyright and you can enter into a contract where you promise not to delete it, but a tweet is ultimately something that is displayed and processed by, and exists at the pleasure of Twitter; they're not a party to your NFT shenanigans and therefore not bound to any of it.

As for the hypothetical contract not to delete it yourself, you'd probably have a good argument that there was no clear meeting of the minds - without an explicit description of what the author intended to be bound to by selling a NFT you'll have a hard time getting the courts to enforce anything about it.

What if I sell an NFT of one of my tweets that is subsequently taken down for violating Twitters terms? Am I liable? This whole concept IMO is absurd.

There's nuance to what it mean to "sell one of your tweets". What does it mean to own a tweet? What rights are you selling?

Ignoring NFTs you could define selling your tweet as:

* Selling the copyright to your tweet

* Selling the right to delete your tweet

Digital ownership is a new and nuanced concept that doesn't have good analogues. Ownership through public/private keys has no analogue and also feel absurd in any analogy using safes and keys.

This is really the problem, digital ownership outside of asymmetric cryptography is not well defined in law.

Digitally, it is perfectly clear:

You own the NFT. Through what is written on a tweet and a website it can be interpreted as the representation of Jack's tweet. You don't have any further owenship or rights.

I doubt it but we're also in uncharted waters. There are no technical definitions to own off chain items or legal rulings about what ownership of an NFT means for the off chain item.

As I explain in this comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26372130) there's a nuance between owning the NFT representation of the tweet and owning the ability to delete the tweet.

I think it depends, strictly ownership means owning the NFT token. By itself a token is just data.

Taking a step back the value of the token comes from Jack using the platform to mint it (which is purely off chain and you have to trust the platform verifies against the twitter apis correctly) and tweeting about it (again, off chain and you have to assume his twitter wasn't hacked).

Jack can delete his tweet but he can't delete a token that represents the tweet he sold. I can appreciate if you don't think this nuance matters but obviously there are some who think it does.

The same applies to physical goods. There's nothing stopping the original from being destroyed, your item being a near exact replica but if the interpretation that ownership of NFT is psysical ownership is accepted then you can't steal it and claim you are the owner without my private key.

It seems it's not that hard to create fakes that even experts cannot distinguish. See "Made You Look" documentary on Netflix.

An authentic painting is one the painter touched. An NFT? He never touched it. I just don't see the attraction.

Some counterpoints: Paintings largely done by assistants are nothing new. Bronze statues are cast by foundries, not the artist themselves. And the artwork connected to an NFT can very well be as directly created by the artist as a digital "object" can be. (obviously with selling NFTs for tweets there isn't exactly a quality artwork attached...)

It also doesn't really appeal to me personally, but I can see how the logic works.

There's a famous story about Picasso.

People would often approach him asking him to authenticate their artworks. One day this happened while an art dealer friend was present. "Fake!", says Picasso.

The art dealer was skeptical, so he gave one of his own Picassos to a third party and asked him to check.

"Fake!", says Picasso.

"But Pablo, I saw you draw that. You gave it to me with your own hands!"

"Bah. Anyone can do a fake Picasso. I often do them myself."

The analogy breaks down at a copied painting being hard to distinguish but a copied piece of digital art is literally impossible to distinguish, right down to its hash.

People who collect Picasso’s want the piece the artists hands truly created, that’s why copies hold no real value. By copying digital art you _are_ getting the work the artists hands created, the identical hash can prove it.

Most of them want it for investment purposes + to be able to impress their peers/strangers. This might provide that same utility.

NFT art pieces have an associated file that can be copied but the (nft token, public key) pair on the blockchain is unique, where the NFT token is created with a public key associated with the artist.

Your copy of the associated file is just a copy of the file. You cannot associate another public key with the nft token.

As far as we know this is the only reasonable and foolproof way to define digital ownership, digitally.

What is to prevent duplication or deletion of the private key though?

There are 2^160 possible ethereum addresses so duplication is effectively impossible.

Like any kind of asymmetric cryptography if you loose your private key that's game over.

This is incorrect because it conflates non-fungibility with uniqueness. That is to say, if Jack Dorsey wanted to, he could simply mint /another/ NFT of his first tweet. Now, whether he does this or not is sorta up to him, but it's possible. As other folks have said, it's similar to an autograph or limited edition trading card rather than a one-of-a-kind.

art fakes are also a tax dodge. must have the piece in a museum share for a set % of time, in a freeport, etc.

Was a great storyline on this in the recent half season of Billions!

The billionaire keeps the real ones at his house & the fakes in a freeport (probably happens in real life a lot of Billions story lines are based in real world gossip - e.g. BDSM Schneiderman)

In a funny scene prosecutor Chuck finds out and 'spills' wine on the real Van Gough and Bobby the billionaire has a epic grimace

the end solution was the billionaire brought in the works by stealth helicopter at night then opened a new non-profit museum for fake art in his apartment to get the tax deduction. totally unreasonable and pointless but an entertaining show.

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