So if I made an NFT of the Constitution, does that make me the owner of the Constitution?
What's the Constitution? It is a piece of paper with ink on it. The paper and ink aren't that valuable, actually I have many better pieces of paper and some better ink. So that isn't where the real value is.
I could also buy a modern copy of the Constitution which would be, practically, much better than the original (in the sense that it would be made of modern materials and more durable as a result), so the value must not be there either.
I guess it could be in the investment value of the Constitution. I mean, I bet if I had the Constitution and held onto it for a couple decades, I could sell it to some collector for more that I bought it for. But that's not really a satisfying answer -- clearly the investment value is derived from some other underlying belief that the thing is important.
Anyway, if I was really good at writing I could string you along indefinitely and keep cutting away aspects of the Constitution that clearly don't provide the value, but I'm just a programmer so let's get to the point: I think the value of the Constitution is actually completely divorced from the physical thing itself. It comes from the history that it represents -- which is actually an intangible idea.
So, if someone were to mint an NFT of the Constitution and we decided that it also represented that idea, I guess it would be just as valuable? Good luck convincing other people! But I don't really see why the physical piece of paper is fundamentally a better representation of the idea, other than that's just the way we've always done it. Maybe you can mint an NFT of the Constitution for yourself, and convince yourself it represents the idea better than the piece of paper did. I think this would be a pretty silly thing to do, but no more so than trying to own the paper representation.
These are all just ways of satisfying our irrational desire to own part of an idea, the problem comes from our belief that ideas are ownable, not the shape of the token.
If Alice makes a Constitution NFT, and Bob makes a Constitution NFT, which NFT is the legitimate one? I'm not sure how using "Blockchain" to track the trust issue helps at all.
If you say "The first one to file the NFT wins" (lets ignore the fact that this only works if both Alice and Bob are using the same blockchain with the same concept of time), then what if Bob files the NFT but doesn't in fact, have ownership of the Constitution? What if Alice is the true owner, but heard about NFTs later and thus does the filing process after Bob?
Unless Alice or Bob are minting an NFT which they claim is redeemable for the Constitution, which isn't how these things generally work I think, either of their copies has some argument for representing the Constitution. In any case these are all just mementos that represent the idea of the history of the Constitution, as is the real one, as is Ben Franklin's switcharoo copy, as would be your own privately minted copy. I think it is impossible to meaningfully get it right.
The same way you can buy or even make replicas of nearly any artwork out there. The one blessed by the creator has value that the illegitimate copies do not.
Says (s)he as multiple artists see their artworks stolen and sold on OpenSea.
Except ownership is difficult. Eventually the creators will die, and the ownership of their IP will transfer to their estate. Those estates have arguments. If two people, part of a hypothetical estate with a claim on some IP / Artwork / whatever make competing NFTs, how does "blockchain" resolve the issue at all?
Suddenly, we're back to courts and arguments. No technology seems to be able to magic-away the agreements we have with each other as a society.
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The other issue is: if you aren't using blockchain for trust, then blockchain is no better than a literal physical certificate. A fancy piece of paper with the signature of the artist.
Here's the full claim: "Provenance is a thing, so no. You're just some rando and nobody would care about your NFT."
It turns out, that "some randos" have a jolly good time on NFT platforms selling stolen goods, and it's not an exception, considering how many of them are. NFTs provide exactly zero help with provenance that "matters".
> tolen art isn't the norm, it's the exception, IRL and on-chain, it's not honest to imply otherwise, and you know better than that.
OpenSea had so many complaints about stolen art that they decided to just remove the complaint form. Because stolen art is the norm on-chain, and NFTs provide exactly zero protection against that, no matter how much you claim that "provenance matters".
It's a norm to such a degree, that it's easy to watch this in near real-time (e.g. https://twitter.com/NFTtheft).
Now let's have some numbers on how many legitimate mints/trades are made every day, and then this will be a useful comparison.
Nobody can (or should) take NFTs for Real-Life goods seriously until this problem is solved for good.
I myself doubt it can be solved properly without a centralised authority which would contradict the whole "trustless" selling point. But I'd be glad to hear approaches how this and the Oracle problem could be solved in a trustless manner.
But the application-level definition of parsing and comprehending what an entry in a ledger stands for is not universal. These are proprietary, or at least, communally-held paradigms being set up independently by each ledger designer.
We're lacking universal grammars so that the logic of an item designed to operate on distributed ledger X would be recognized or honored if migrated to distributed ledger Y.
Assuring ownership of the data itself in a decentralized way has value outside of this current fake / grifted meme of owning a random PNG. It's tiring that a community that seemingly prides itself on technical understanding gets so hung up on an overused fake use case.
I actually own around 200 frames of a certain movie (bought them from the production company as a way to help sponsor the movie) and I would like to put them up for sale as NFT's, but I dont really see how everyone else could just claim the ownership and do the same.