Person Furious That Someone Right Click Saved Their Precious NFT | Hacker News Reader

Person Furious That Someone Right Click Saved Their Precious NFT

futurism.com

54 pointsgabea60 comments

“Sure, you can make your own gold-coated steak for 65GBP, but then you don’t have the satisfaction, flex, clout that comes from having eaten at Salt Bae’s restaurant… “The value is not in the cost of the steak,” Milhouse argued. “It’s all about the flex.”

The Flex!!!!!

$2k gold plated steak for “clout”. This is exhibit A for social media making us stupid at scale.

I would rather run naked through a thicket of thorn bushes than eat at the restaurant of some internet “chef” named Salt Bae.

The classic mistake of assuming that as you personally see no value in something, everyone who does is stupid.

The point of all this is to impress others. If others aren’t sufficiently impressed, the steak or the NFT are failures.

Assuming stupidity is actually the most charitable thing to do for something so objectively ridiculous. The alternative motivation being a calculated, manipulative, attention seeking stunt.

This article misses the very deepest level on which this is all utter nonsense:

An NFT does not actually grant you "ownership" of an image in any meaningful way. The only real way to "own" a digital image is to own the copyright to it, but NFTs do not grant you that. Sometimes, you may have a separate contract of transfer of copyright that you get along with the NFT, but the NFT is not part of that contract. You can sell the NFT on and keep the copyright, if you want.

The only thing you "own" when you buy an NFT is the NFT itself, which is basically nothing but a receipt.

Exactly. There isn't anything "exclusive" about the content referenced in an NFT. The closest analog in physical artwork would be a signed & numbered print from a limited series—there may be many other copies of the same image, but this particular one is yours.

The protocols for NFTs basically dictate that the underlying image must be available to everyone so that whoever purchases the NFT will be able to access it. Usually this means publishing the content on a decentralized network like IPFS. For the particular NFT in this story, the metadata can be seen here:

https://api.opensea.io/api/v1/asset/0x8943c7bac1914c9a7aba75...

Note that there is nothing in the metadata about a transfer of copyright or an exclusive license. The original image was shared to the world by the artist through IPFS here:

ipfs://QmaeqEgbu2sEHpJ9ghur44kcvGqBc5cvRTTu3YsRzkGFSh

… which you can access using your own IPFS node or through any IPFS gateway, for example ipfs.io:

https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmaeqEgbu2sEHpJ9ghur44kcvGqBc5cvRTTu3Ys...

Right, many seem to have forgotten that Getty Images exists and is still probably more foolproof than NFTs at regulating ownership, at least in the commercial space

Yes! On this point, it's funny to see how Beeple gets extra animated in this interview to make absolutely clear that he still retains copyright on all his NFT'd artwork:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=13U573keZ3A&t=1374

I don't remember where but a guy made the comparison between NFT and those companies that sell stars, or land in Mars or the Moon, like they'll sell you a paper that says you own Proxima B.

This is the best way to understand NFT.

Imagine getting angry over someone saving an image from the public internet. How vain and stupid does one need to be, to get pissed over this?

Sometimes I feel I am the one out of touch. Or maybe we are living in a simulated (bad) parody of life?

You only feel that way because only stupidity and anger is broadcast widely over all forms of media now. It’s what sells ads and clicks. Until that changes we are living in a rage world and it’s great for sales.

Lol and everyone is programmed to have their Karen moment at some point

the person sending the dm is clearly trolling/joking. wild they wrote an article about it, but i guess the idea that people are angry gets clicks.

Prove it.

People get pissed off about downloading movies and books from the public internet. The precedent has been made.

The difference in this case being that the image was uploaded to the public Internet (IPFS), with no access controls, by the original artist (and presumably the copyright holder). Regardless of your stance on copyright, it's hard to see how anyone should be upset about someone downloading content the artist shared publicly of their own free will.

Copyright holders upload their music and videos on youtube, pictures on photo sharing sites, yet they get upset if those are used by someone else.

You could say that copying the data was not their intention, but can we say that copying was the intention of the copyright holder of the NFT data?

At most, this is only the next logical step from what we already have.

The problem is that the way the medium works is that the only way to post something for someone else to see utilizing the wildly adopted protocols (http(s)/html/etc) is to have the item downloaded and copied. The attitude is very much like if someone performed a song, and then got upset that people could remember the song in their heads ("You owe me everything you recall the tune from memory or sing it to yourself in the shower"). This is just how the brain works.

I agree, but that's no different than making songs/videos public on youtube. Pictures too, unless watermarking is used.

I'm not a fan of this, but this is where the copyright zeitgeist seems to be headed.

If you post a video publicly on YouTube then you expect that anyone can stream it. One could quibble over whether you intended for anyone to be able to save the video since the site places some minor technical obstacles in the way (plus the ToS visitors are supposed to agree to), though it's hard to argue that you weren't at least aware that it could be done easily given well-known tools like youtube-dl.

If you upload your content to IPFS there are no obstacles to downloading, and no ToS. It's like hosting the file on your own site with no restrictions, except that the system is explicitly designed such that you can't take down anything that's been published. That makes it hard to complain about people saving the content; you've basically given everyone an implied license to access and pin the files. Republishing outside of IPFS might be a problem, copyright-wise, but since anyone can get the files from IPFS directly that isn't a major issue.

> You could say that copying the data was not their intention

That seems strange since without copying, the data stored on YouTube etc. would be useless.

The issue was much more subtle and hilarious :)

In the whole digital world authors habe IP rights for digital content and have (sometimes) ability to enforce them (e.g. DMCA). Copying images without permission doesn't run afoul of IP rights but later using them commercially - does. But that is not what is interesting here.

Person we are discussing is promoting NFT as a technology to sell stuff, implying that it is also possible to transfer IP rights via NFTs (which is complete lie). Next he is social engineered (swindled) of 3 pictures which he voluntarily transfers via NFT blockchain to the scammer. And THEN he proceeds to claim that he is still the original owner (indeed he is, because no IP rights were transferred via NFT same because it is impossible), thereby completely devaluing the NFT tech he is promoting :) .

On 9/11 I was pitching website development at a large architect bureau in the Netherlands. As internet was pretty new for the "normies", the ceo insisted that visits to the site would cost money for the visitor so he could make back the money he spent on having it built and that all images cannot be saved (including by screenshot) in any way. We got interrupted when the first plane went into the trade center and the day ended there as it did for most people.

We got a call (guy didn't use email yet) that he talked to a few companies after us and he was having a custom Windows application (there was a company actually in NL that did not believe in the web and made website 'apps' and had a framework in Java swing to make them; you had to download the jar and sometimes pay to view the 'website' content) made which would act as his site which worked as he specified. I am guessing he sold (it was E1 per download) zero, but it is not that weird actually. I still encounter the request to make it impossible to download anything from a site at clients ceo/cfo or lawyers this day.

I worked for a price-comparison website and they wanted the data to be presented within a Java applet to prevent copy-pasting. That went nowhere and the functionality only survived in the vestigial power price comparison feature.

Internet was still new to most people in 2001, even computers were a novelty back then. So it is somewhat understandable that people had trouble understanding computers back then.

Today everyone is walking around with a mini computer in their pockets. It is less funny today than 2001, if someone doesn’t understand copying an image from the public internet

This story makes me happy. NFTs for digital artwork are one of the most ridiculous use cases.

I disagree in principle. It's a form of patronage.

In practice, it's evolved into some kind of very expensive Beanie Baby collecting. Strange stuff.

Thats probably one of the reasons I like them, ridiculousness is fun. We're not beep-boop-logical vulcans, we're humans following bliss.

Agree.

We need it for trading tranches of currency (cryptocurrency especially), shares of stock, ownership of physical items like real estate/trading cards/authenticity documents for signed memorabilia/trading used games (GameStop and Loopring!), much more.

Just wait until people discover you can essentially clone not only the image itself but also all of the metadata and simple mint it again on the same blockchain, a different blockchain and/or marketplace.

Additionally, while the original creator always maintains copyright ownership any terms associated with the purchase are essentially lost when it’s resold because presentation of the terms and agreement to them almost often aren’t always presented and agreement enforced, acknowledged, and recorded.

cant believe people are paying artists for their contributions to the world, don't they know the data is all freely available?! just wait until they discov.....

for real tho, im very happy that there are people making a living drawing jpegs and making mp3s and collecting royalties on resales (with their own distribution rules coded) whilst still able to make their work freely available to the world. Im happy that people value reputation, legitimacy, and provenance represented by digital signatures.

its funny i keep seeing this criticism directed at the nft space, that it is obsessed with money, yet those making the criticism never seem able to go beyond the money/legal rights aspects themselves. meanwhile we're making cakes and clothing: https://twitter.com/creatureNFT/status/1456758941753528326

"wait it's about social agreements, trust, and culture?" "Always has been "

Royalties on resales is probably the first actually interesting pro-NFT argument I've heard. Otherwise it always just makes me ask: "you do realize it's possible to pay people for art already, right?" Hell, you could use cryptocurrency for art credit card companies wouldn't touch already.

I quite like them for token gates chat rooms, i'm in a few discords that use nft ownership as keys, keeps out the spam, and I can always sell my access by selling the token, and if I do the creator gets 10%(standard but varies) of the sale.

I can use them for voting in https://snapshot.org/#/

I can rent them out on places like https://dapp.renft.io/ for example if you have a stonercat nft (mila kunis and ashton kutchers new animation series) you have a key to watch episodes, but you could always rent that key out to others to watch episodes.

I could (and do) buy music and art that isn't nft'd, but i like that it gets stored in my wallet. I can open rainbow and it has all the links to everything ive bought.

I like that i can deploy a contract and then add some js to my website to connect it to eth, and then people can come to my website and mint/buy my art. I dont need to set up stripe or shopify and get it connected to my bank account. I can have a shopfront up in like 30 mins, even less if i use zora/opensea. I dont need to store databases with peoples emails and passwords, they just use their wallet to log in.

I can easily gift them to friends, I can pull the meta data into whatever website/app/display i like.

I can make rules in my contract that it can only be transferred once a year, or that it gets split into two on each transfer, or that you have to feed it and play with it like a tamagotchi. I can play with the responsibility of ownership, make it much more involved and participatory. Maybe all the owners of my nfts have to work together to activate it.

You could probably still do some of that without cryptocurrencies, but programmable tokens and a big shared database/computer make it much easier.

Good luck enforcing 'ownership' of an 'NFT' that is 'downloadable' and 'right-click-saved' on anyone's computer.

Better not click on a random NFT giveaway. You might lose more than just your expensive certificate of purchasing a useless JPEG minted by literally anyone.

You're writing off a technology based on its worst-case, early-days, memeified usage of it.

This is like saying AI chat bots are a write off because Microsoft's was racist.

This is a core architectural problem which cannot be fixed without completely changing how the system works. NFTs require non-tiny content to be hosted publicly on a separate system. You can build separate access control systems but doing that means you don’t need to pay for a blockchain in addition to the independent system which actually works.

I specifically said:

   > ...that is 'downloadable' and 'right-click-saved'

That does not mean all NFTs. There are some that are not 'downloadable' and have more utility than others.

This generations beanie babies.

At least you actually get to own beanie babies.

You could play with them to. My sister had loads as toys, bought for around £10 and given away to other kids when she was too old. There was a point to beanie babies other than trying to convince some bigger sucker it had rarity value and they should pay more money for it. I bought my niece a beanie baby recently. I doubt she'd have as much fun with a cryptographic signature claiming she owned a gif.

What if Beanie Babies had had authenticity NFTs on the Loopring chain (meaning secured by the Ethereum chain, if Loopring encounters a escalator-becomes-stairs moment),

in order to cut down on the knockoffs, fake tags etc that ate into the LTV of Beanie Babies?

Is there any advantage to doing this over just having a certificate of authenticity signed with the manufacturer's key?

Ease of transfer, even/especially if their centralized app and server goes down.

But that's still detached from the actual physical object. I'm thinking you'd want a physical certificate with a verifiable signature, which would be easy if we have the relevant public keys. Or equivalent, something like a tiny QR code on the actual physical thing that can be scanned to verify the details + their authenticity. Digital stuff is blurrier but actual physical possession of an item is the only absolute way to determine its owner at a specific point in time, all contracts be damned.

Yes, you can etch the key onto the thing as a QR — but I'm not beating away the evangelicals who will call you the Antichrist when you do!

You don’t need a centralized app to make or verify a public key signature and it’s many orders of magnitude less expensive than a blockchain transaction.

Those can be copy and pasted.

Ownership of your unique token, from the Beanie Baby collection on Loopring/the Ethereum protocol, cannot.

And, of course, you wouldn't take one without the other, in most cases....

They can be copy and pasted just like messages on a blockchain — all that does is give someone else a backup copy of your signature. They can’t use that to forge messages to create new copies - only the holder of the private key can do that, and if you try to cheat by issuing the same transaction multiple times it’s immediately obvious.

The key to understanding how this works is remembering that blockchains are only useful when none of the parties involved have identities or trust relationships. In this scenario, you’re exchanging physical objects in the real world which need to be verified for authenticity (which cannot happen on the blockchain) and the trust is rooted in the idea that the manufacturer will not issue the same serial number to multiple people. A blockchain doesn’t add trust or safety, just overhead and expense.

Sorry, I'm out of crayons.

I'll sell you a paper that says you own a Beanie Baby. That's NFT for you, but without the paper, so you don't even own a paper.

I don't really disagree but it's worthwhile noting that Beanie Babies were the first "killer app" of EBay (from Peter Thiel's "Zero to One: ...", pg 43-44 [0]).

> eBay also started by dominating small niche markets. When it launched its auction marketplace in 1995, it didn’t need the whole world to adopt it at once; the product worked well for intense interest groups, like Beanie Baby obsessives. Once it monopolized the Beanie Baby trade, eBay didn’t jump straight to listing sports cars or industrial surplus: it continued to cater to small-time hobbyists until it became the most reliable marketplace for people trading online no matter what the item.

[0] http://morfene.com/021.pdf

This sounds funny now, until somebody tries to sue someone or even pass laws that would make it illegal.

coming up next: DAO court for NFTs dispute resolutions, funded by meme coins, official legal authority: nowhere. unofficial official legal authority: the metaverse.

Entertainment News dominates Western citizens' political views, why not scale it?!

NFTs are stupid.

Currently, yes.

In about...35min, no.

at first I though it was from the onion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMDBmP56s8o

in the words of Stuart Brand "Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive, that tension won't go away" - people often only write the first half of the quote, but nfts address the tension.

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