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Comment by KaiserPro | Hacker News Reader

but it doesn't come with any rights.

You don't get the copyright for this artwork, you own the token, not the art it's self.

its sheer lunacy.

I think the gold rush was for the platform, right? The expectation is that those other mechanisms will come after the crowd picks a couple winning brands to "standardize" on. You want to win the usage/traffic, then you want to create those mechanisms for enforcement by leveraging your new legitimacy. If there's such a thing as a rational NFT investor I assume that's a line of thought for doing so.

I don't own or plan to own any NFT stuff, I agree it seems a bit nuts.

The platform gold rush is exactly the problem. In the traditional collectibles market, the stuff you own exists independently of the platform you bought it from. If you buy Simon Bolivar's personal pistol, it leaves the auction house and goes into your home or vault or wherever; you get to keep it even if they go under, and a new auction house setting up shop won't be able to sell it. For NFTs, though, anyone building a new NFT platform can mint NFTs for whatever they'd like. So it seems virtually guaranteed that any "legitimate" NFT platform will eventually be crowded out by scammers undercutting its prices.

Food for thought: what is the NFT platform that Beeple used here? The NYT article (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/arts/design/christies-bee...) says his NFTs consist of "an image or video file, sometimes with a physical object attached, verified with a digital signature on a blockchain", but which blockchain, and whose conventions dictate that this specific signature on this specific blockchain is the NFT? The article says that minting an NFT "makes digital artworks unique", but how exactly does this happen - if Beeple decided he wanted to CTRL+C, CTRL+V, make another NFT, what obstacles would stand in his way? I searched around, and none of the articles I've found seem to know these answers or even acknowledge why these are important questions.

To someone with a technical bent, it (NFT creation and sales) seems pointless and crazy, but it's no more so than things like fiat currencies or stock shorting.

Essentially, people are gaming human psychology to trigger the desire to "own" something and creating an artificially limited supply of that something using crypto (which may as well be a cut and paste replacement for magic as far as most people are concerned).

Limited supply + desire = high prices for acquiring whatever is desired.

High prices plus near zero production cost for the "item" means lots of profit for little effort, hence all the interest in this right now.

The production cost is not zero but it's been mostly externalized.

These tokens are like burning down a forest so you can press the ashes into a cute little trophy.

not to mention that the art its self is cheap, derivative and with no inherent meaning, unless you count the act of getting $70m for not actually selling the work as actual art.

21.7 cents per pixel.

Stock photos cost $5 to $100 and come with distribution rights.

Somebody paid a lot of money for bragging rights.

Who are they bragging to? Are they going to print out the crypto hash and hang it on a wall in their mega mansion? And think that actually impresses anyone that doesn't already know what crypto art is? At least with a painting the rich can lay tenuous claim to a cultured pedigree or background. Imagine having visitors scanning your crypto QR code to confirm that you do, in fact, own those internet bits you claim and that you did, in fact, pay silly amounts of money for. What a club of true assholes...

When you but work from an artist, you own the “artwork” rather than a copyright of the artwork, ie you have no right to reproduce it.

The difference is that this is a digital artefact rather than a physical one, not all that different than buying a conceptual artwork (eg Sol LeWitt, which might be just typed instructions on an otherwise empty page).

In fact, you can create a NFT for anything right now and sell it even if you don't hold the copyright for that thing. Go find your favorite digital art from the web, stick it in the blockchain and create a NFT, and sell it! Literally nothing will stop you.

One main thing will: Your fraud is public record.

its only fraud if you try and sell it as anything other than what it is, a hash.

People assume that the NFT is the rights to the actual work. But its just a hash. So selling something as an NFT of "x" is perfectly legal.

Well yes, and people still successfully sell photos of game consoles when they launch because they put “NOT A PS5. ONLY A PHOTO” in the description.

But we all know it’s buyer beware. My point is more about the people who outright commit fraud (say for example by selling an NFT as a certificate of ownership for something they don’t have the rights to)

You don't get the copyright for this artwork, you own the token, not the art it's self.

You own the art in the same way that you "own" part of a company by holding shares in it.

There are real benefits to owning shares in a company. It's not as tangible as owning a more conventional object (like a book or pen), but there's actually a meaningful difference between owning and not owning those shares (like dividends or voting rights).

There are only the faintest wisps of connection between the NFT and the art. It's like an autograph on the cover of a book, but without the book inside the cover. And it's not even that tangible, because the autograph is digital, and there are no limitations on infinitely and perfectly reproducing the book.

It's not as tangible as owning a more conventional object (like a book or pen), but there's actually a meaningful difference between owning and not owning those shares (like dividends or voting rights).

That's the benefit of owning shares, it doesn't mean you own part of the company in any meaningful way. The relationship is the same as owning an NFT instead of owning the art itself. Shares can be useful of themselves just as owning an NFT can come with some benefits like, say, a secret URL that only the owner can access.

Thats incorrect.

When you buy art at auction, unless specified, or a print, you own the rights to all of it.

Its the same with a company, if you own all the shares, you can asset strip, pull apart, and generally do anything within the law to it.

unless explicitly specified in the contract of sale, the artist will retain the rights to the original work. Nothing in the NFT explicitly states that you own the original thing that you've generated the token for.

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