Maybe it is better to think about NFTs as public official (blockchain-backed) certificates of donation (or support) rather than assets.
NFT can be exchanged without the original artist doing anything and the artist can still get a provision from that.
> That's not machine readable and it needs action from the original artist.
That is the whole point, I donate to the artist and the artist shows me gratitude by performing an action for me, like including my name in his videos!
Right. If you want to support an artist, you can just commision to produce a new original piece.
> That is the whole point, I donate to the artist and the artist shows me gratitude by performing an action for me, like including my name in his videos!
If that's what you want that's fine. But there are artists that don't do videos and some people want other kinds of rewards.
Also imagine if e.g. Twitter would implement support for profile pics with NFTs. Then as an owner of a NFT you'd have something unique to display.
Although I don't think there is any problem in doing a NFT like an ebook or a movie that is encrypted and the decryption key would be transferred to the wallet of the buyer when you sell or resell the NFT.
But that's not how NFTs are used currently. Right now it's just "I bought this" (with not many rights being actually bought).
What NFTs allow are open markets for these NFTs. Imagine the million dollar homepage redone with NFTs. Every pixel would be a single NFT. The homepage could automatically be generated from the public data and more importantly, the buyers of the pixels could try to buy more pixels on the open market after all pixels have been sold without the original artist/seller being involved.
Or gaming assets. DLCs today can only be bought from the game developer. There's no secondary market (or at least not a legal one). Why? Because the game developer doesn't get a cut from resold DLCs. With NFTs this could change. The game developer gets a cut on every resell and even more important, you wouldn't be confined to the game developers shop system but could sell the DLCs on any shop that is compatible with the NFT standards.
This opens up new market opportunities.
Which only goes to prove that NFTs don't provide ownership. The doctrine of first sale limits the power of IP by giving consumers ownership. This mechanism eliminates the doctrine of first sale, giving even more power to IP holders and destroying the concept of ownership.
The only thing I can think is proof of authorship, but private key cryptograph already solves that.
Edit: after reading some other replies I've come to the conclusion that NFTs provide a way to prove who put a file on the blockchain first. Thus the use case is trustless transfer of the ownership of this fact of "being first", which is where the scarcity of the NFT comes from and thus the value.
1. For example, say they sell to one of the big companies and the new boss with an MBA in gamer milking decides that virtual land needs annual property taxes, utilities, and improvements purchased from the company store or it’ll be reclaimed or simply that they’re creating new, more desirable terrain which will devalue yours. They control the code and servers, so your options are paying, giving up, or trying to convince other players to build, operate, and adopt a clone. The blockchain’s heavy cost doesn’t appear to be providing anything significant.
Now suppose each of use are selling the 'first' post of that data. How does a buyer know that we're really the first?
And so I'm saying that even claiming 'first' is practically impossible via blockchain. Even if someone knew about both of the instances above and could arbitrate between them, there might be a third, older instance yet.
To be what you define, I should not be able to copy-paste the digital artifact and then create a second token. The token should, in some way, behave like a hash, where the blockchain should complain that this digital asset has been accounted for already.
now that I've thought about it for a bit longer, I think you're right.
> I should not be able to copy-paste the digital artifact
no, because then the NFT would be exactly the same as the digital artifact, and they're not. that's the point I'm trying to make.
I suppose they fact that NFTs can be traded is what's so weird about them (and why my own argument fails).
I should not be able to copy-paste the digital artifact and then create a second token.
You should be able to copy the digital asset, but the second part (creating a new token) should fail. Otherwise what’s the point?
Of course, there are other NFT implementations that store metadata directly in the smart contract, but that requires a lot more gas.