Two NFT copycats are fighting over which is the real fake Bored Ape Yacht Club
theverge.com
theverge.com
In this case it seems like the open seas marketplace is trying to become this organization that enforces the link. Which really defeats the point of a decentralized system.
As usual for people saying this, you do get it. Anything whose bits do not literally live on the blockchain cannot be decentralized via blockchain; the need for a centralized oracle makes ownership of the NFT's linked asset a centralized affair.
The process and theory of identifying documents is one of the oldest subjects of interest in library science[1], and the Internet is chock full of unique identification schemes (URIs, nominally, but also OIDs, DOIs, ORCIDs, &c.).
The parts of Xanadu that do exist seem to be mostly "goodfaithware," if you'll excuse the term. It's not clear that they have any real protections (like DRM) against clients copying data and/or not obeying the unique addressing scheme.
We've spent the last 20 years decrying how disastrous DRM has been, and now these supposed technologists are trying to sell us on a bold, glorious future where DRM comes knocking for our ability to right-click images.
Even if that is true, what enforces provenance of art when NFTs are created? False claims of ownership of existing art in the creation of NFTs is a thing; enforcing NFTs doesn't solve the problem if nothing stops NFTs from being frauds ab initio.
when you 'buy' an NFT what you are really buying into is someone else's/a third-party's centralized platform (like opensea or whatever it's called).
YouTube routinely deals with DMCA notices that are bogus, and it’s difficult for them to sort out whether someone is a legitimate rights holder or not.
With NFTs, it makes that a lot easier. If I have a fake BAYC, OpenSea can determine that very quickly and take it down, regardless of how many intermediate off-platform transactions there have been.
So just because there are still fakes and IP enforcement issues, doesn’t mean that having a verifiable and auditable decentralized chain of custody back to the original mint transaction is not very helpful.
What qualifies as "fake"? How many modifications would I have to make to the original images for them to count as new art? Because this is a fundamental question in copyright law RE: derivative works and NFTs don't seem to help with this at all.
There are many fraudsters who, quite literally, make fake NFT that look exactly the same. The decentralized chain of title is very useful to quickly and definitely distinguish the originals from the fakes.
Just because blockchain cannot solve all problems, does not mean it has not solved the above problem.
I agree that an artist could come along and make a derivative artwork that is right on the line of what is infringing, and in that case, you would solve it with traditional methods, e.g. an IP lawsuit for a judge to decide. Nobody said NFTs can solve all IP disputes.
But they can definitely determine the provenance of an item, even after a complex round of intermediate off-platform secondary transactions.
I can see that if there's an NFT minted in eg 2020 and no record of the associated work existing prior to that, that provides a bit of evidence in favour of the (earliest) NFT holder being the legitimate IP owner. Is that what you're saying, or something more than that?
For a well known and successful project, like BAYC or Cryptopunks, the authentic and original mint contracts are well known. If in 100 years someone offers to sell me one, which has traded hands 3500 times, it is extremely easy to ignore the noise of the 3500 intermediate transactions, pull up the source contract, and confirm it’s the authentic original.
This of course works best for “well known” NFTs, but it is a legitimate improvement over how Sotheby’s would have to authenticate a newly discovered alleged Monet, as in that case, the secondary transactions are relevant and need to be investigated as it’s impossible to just jump to the source and know with certainty that this is a legitimate Monet.
For projects that are not well known, you do not have the benefit of having a “well known” source contract, but yes, with everything on chain, you could at least do as you suggest and say, well, this appears to be the earliest example on chain anyone has been able to find.
So while there is of course still some uncertainties or some need to refer to external knowledge or sources off chain, being able to totally track a clear decentralized chain of title is very helpful, and solves a lot of problems, even though it does not solve all problems.
I think the real world equivalent is having a signed legal contract, but no courts or police. Feel free to buy and sell the contract, as I'm sure that has value as art in and of itself (which is how I see NFTs). But if you wish to lay claim to the items under contract, glhf.
Let’s say an artist creates a minting process, which contains a click through contract granting you legal rights to the image purchased, the right to make derivatives, etc., which rights transfer always to the holder of the NFT.
You now have a legal contract granting the NFT holder all IP license rights to that image. If there are 300 intermediate secondary transactions, and then I buy the NFT, make a derivative to exploit commercially, and get sued, my defense in court is simple: (1) here’s the governing IP license terms and (2) I own the NFT which is easily proved on chain. That IP license, by the way, could even be embedded on chain.
I can think of lots of examples like the above, where you can leverage some offchain system (like an IP license) with an on chain one, so that you have real world rights to an item but also benefit from easy and auditable transferability.
Again, just because NFTs do not solve all problems (eg you still need an IP license) does not mean that combining the two is not a real and useful improvement.
Totally agree. I think that's where the divide lies with tech savvy people and why HN tends to be anti-crypto. It is indeed a useful piece of a stack for solving a problem, but honestly it's a pretty minor piece. A majority of the cost and attention that goes into IP is enforcement, not contract tracing. It's definitely a part of the problem, especially for smaller players, but it's not the whole pie that the less tech savvy seem to think it is.
How is this block chain different from open sea using a centralized ledger?
But practically, nobody has ever been able to convince the world to only buy and sell on one platform, and even if they could, that would be a worse solution because better platforms may emerge and it’s nice to have alternatives.
Stated another way, today, OpenSea could not possibly track all NFT transactions in a centralized database without just mirroring the data in the blockchain, as many transactions occur off platform.
This is very true, but I don't see how NFTs are a good solution to this.
The problem you're getting at is "determining if someone has permission from a copyright holder in a given work is hard" which is a true problem. NFTs do not currently give you copyright over a work, so they don't currently solve it.
In theory, we could have a copyright token, but that also can't work trivially. Why? Because copyright can, and of often is, written with complex conditions.
Let's say I'm a podcast, and I email a songwriter and ask them if I can use one of their pieces of music on my podcast, and then they ask what the podcast and content is, and then finally say "Yes, you have permission to use it for free on that specific episode you talked about" or "you can use the first 20 seconds of it" or such. How does that get captured as an NFT, where it's okay use it on a youtube video which is the audio of my podcast episode I got rights for, but it would be infringing to use it on a different video?
How would fair use be checked? Would lawyers act as oracles in any "NFT token use disputes"? Isn't that already the state of the art?
I guess in my head, "legal use of copyright" requires checking fair use, and requires checking arbitrarily complex legal conditions, so I don't see how you can make an "nft" of this without having a lawyer review or write every token... which scales just as well as having one lawyer at youtube hq watching every video.
For another fun challenge in copyright, how might your idea model copyleft / gpl / the linux kernel copyright issues, where someone uses GPL software (a conditional copyright license, conditioned on releasing their source code), but did not give the source code out after making changes and distributing binaries?
A verifiable and auditable centralized chain also works here if you trust the centralized party? I'm not seeing why decentralization is core to this premise.
It's difficult to say the same for NFTs: it's not clear where the original is, or why it should be emotionally/aesthetically rewarding to look at its digital attestation. I didn't frame the certificate of authenticity that came with the rug in my living room, after all.
I do some hobby film and digital photography, and it's been my experience that people love getting prints of the photos I've taken of them on film. Digital photos can also be printed, of course, but there's something (not clear what) special about knowing that a physical process other than an inkjet printer produced the image.
Photographs exist as art basically because the photographer or their agent promise to only produce a limited number of prints from an original.
If they were the case, then Open Sea wouldn't be fighting to ensure they are banned. They'd know they'd just be ignored. The reason why Open Sea wants them banned is because they know that the people will readily substitute them for the others as they are an easily substitutable good - and if they become common/understood/accepted it blows up their business model.
Once again, when push comes to shove, the "decentralization" aspect is shown to be a farce, and it's nothing but a zero-sum money grab.
Yes exactly, and now Open Sea is taking on the responsibility of a centralized entity who declares what is legit and what isn't. And they get all of the power and control that comes with it. The antithesis of this supposedly 'decentralized' system.
And with that centralized power soely based on their reputation, and no system of accountability to anyone (except their investors), will come the same conflicts with society (ie 'the community') where someone will add a work that is legit derivitate artwork and Open Sea will ban them and then there will be an uproar about how Open Sea is de-voicing them or de-platforming them just like people do when kicked off of Youtube. And then people will start spaming differnent derivitate works and Open Sea won't be able to manually keep up with it, so they'll automate the process. And then they will add in "Copyright Takedowns" just like any other company. And people will complain about how defi or crypto 'has been corrupted and lost it's ideals', and now it's nothing but another corporate take over. With all the same rules and regulations of the previous sytem. And this isn't some crazy soothsayer prediction, this is blantantly obvious. Just as obvious as people who said "yah they claim the source code is law, but the first time someone important is about to lose a lot of money, they'll throw that aside and find a way to veto what was in the code." And low and behold, almost everytime someone of reasonable importance is about to lose their value due to crypto's decentralized source code is law, groups with power step in and ensure that doesn't happen. Just like in the real world. All of this decentralization/democratization/libertarian fantasy is all just facde. In the end it's just a the veneer to lure people into what is essentially zero sum racetrack betting and centralization.
System's evolve in certain ways. Reputations become entrenched. Power centralizes. Resources are distribued via power laws. Unless a system actively actively it, that is the 'natural' state of the world. Just like humanity at war and murder is a natural state. It takes concerted effort to build and maintain a society free from these things (or reduced).
Democracy is an example of a system that actively fights it, "everyone" has a single vote (not based on their resources). But even with that, unless you continuously actively enforce it, systems still centralize, and resources overwhelm it (as you see with lobbying and other contemporary "influences" on democracy). The point isn't "don't try", the point is that this haphazard thing of crypto/defi/nft that people are claming will someone be for the people, is not, as nobody is actually trying to enforce that. Whenever an issue comes up, it instead people in these communiciaties go towards centralization. Meaning they'll end up with the same centralized systems as in the real world.
But on top of ending up with the same systems as in the real world, there will be an incredible centralization of resources to the 1% of the 1% who will set the new rules of the system. And we'll waste a ton of energy while doing so.
So yes a bit of a rant. But the hyprocracy is just so blantant it's hard to not comment on it.
I'm not a decentralization purist so I can't say that "Web 3.0" centralization bothers me in and of itself. I do think it dulls a lot of arguments of there being great innovation in this specific area, especially when your non-fungible token consists of a URL string. Real-world, existing laws and regulation apply to this new stuff already, as you indicate.
What does it mean for an NFT to be booted from a marketplace? It's still tradable on the blockchain, right? Does getting booted affect the hosting of the .jpgs the NFTs point to?
Which itself is ironic.
This is one of those things I still don’t fully understand.
While commodity money has “intrinsic” value because it is useful, that doesn’t mean that much of its value is not due to people’s belief in the value. The value of gold exceeds any true value from its usefulness, but it is value stemming from people’s shared belief in the value.
So I don’t think it’s at all accurate to call this a ‘fiat’ system.
Crypto/NFTs have no intrinsic value. They actually have intrinsic liabilities in terms of resource usage to move it around and keep it alive. It only has value because the buyers/sellers/miners claim/believe it does, which is fiat no?
The defining aspect of a “fiat” system is that it has value only by decree (“fiat”), from men with guns.
Both crypto and gold, conversely, have value primarily because humans say they do (because they have certain other features, such as are scarce). While gold has certain value as jewelry or in industrial uses, that is not why it has value as money; its value far exceeds that of its practical uses and is based on a shared belief that it is valuable.
I also disagree that crypto and NFTs have no intrinsic value, but that’s not the point here. Even if you believe they have no intrinsic value, I think jumping to therefore call it a “fiat” system is a semantic mistake that misunderstands the distinctions being fiat and other monetary systems.
I agree on all fronts in that case. When I said crypto and NFTs had no intrinsic value I was referring to the use case, not Blockchain itself, or at least that's what I actually believe thinking about things after this comment.
There's only a few marketplaces big enough to make big money on, so those marketplaces will ban your NFT on copyright grounds.
Copyright laws and banned seller accounts, sounds very "web3" right?
Outside of the world of NFTs, you're just submitting a url to be hashed into a token, that's fine you can totally do that, it's technically possible and it'd be fine. Obviously people would know that yours isn't the original because the other is on the block chain too.
However, within the world of NFTs they contend that the NFT confers some kind of ownership over the underlying work, so since you don't own the work at the URL you don't have the "right" to mint an NFT of it and the copyright owner ?could? pursue you (I'm not sure if they really could successfully, not a lawyer but this is currently being tested by Tarantino[0]), and (much more likely) you'd be breaking the terms that OpenSea enforce (a centralized authority that determines whether you're allowed to functionally participate in the market) and ban your tokens from being bought or sold through their site. Since OpenSea and a few other exchanges account for almost all the trading volume, their (self-serving) enforcement of this interpretation of NFT ownership means you wouldn't make any money from minting these duplicate NFTs.
So what happens in this case is the people copy the NFT, literally mirror the image left to right thereby "transforming" it, and contend that they now have a new, unique, transformed peice of work which is their intellectual property and function as a parody of the original. This means they can then sell them on the market place. But oh no! The original owners of the images (copyright holders) go to OpenSea and go "They're infringing on our rights, take it down" and OpenSea, as the trusted central authority in this decentralized trustless system, delists the rip-off NFTs.
[0]https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/tarantino...
This is a cycle that will repeat until the joke is played out and boring. Then it'll have to wait for a new generation that hasn't played the game yet to come along and revive things. Meanwhile the old people will laugh, and some of the children will laugh back, because, well, look at all the money they are making.
I see real value of blockchain as a technology, but this makes me think, maybe it's value is more like a trustworthy public database and less like a new economy.
It was not meant in a rhetoric way and I didn't meant to discredit anyone. If you got value out of it, that's good.
HN has a rather critical approach against NFT and crypto space - not the technology, but the market - and I completely agree. The article bothered me a bit, because if we spend time on short-lived stories like this, we'll spend less time discussing on what's actually there to criticize. Giving to much attention to drama like this is kind of (passively) down playing the real problems. However, what I said with this paragraph is not to be given too much weight. It just rubbed me a bit. I'm not outright anti.
Happy new year, Bobby and Traster!
Its these two copycats fighting with each other and being silly.
For the consumer/investor, none of this matters because the technology solves the problem here. It is extremely easy to prove which one is the real Bored Ape (none of these two), and it is easy to prove that the one in the consumer's possession is a real one too (appraisers and insurance and distrust in the marketplace is disintermediated). Its all about the transaction hash which cannot be modified, it isn't about the image. Its just being in the collection.
It really is just irrelevant drama that has nothing to do with NFTs or copyright. One of the copycats made 7 figures from sales, for who knows what reason, hundreds of people paying a few hundred dollars and taking a bet. Good for them, yes this is something you can do, or you can just assume its "all wash trading" (something other non-player characters say). Doesn't really matter.
I kinda like it!
It could be a satiric piece.
These types of NFTs will be the first to fall when the buyers realise that the NFT sellers are running out of ideas for their JPEGs and remixes with no-one else left to buy them.
The right-click-save people will soon declare victory of the fight overall, given that these fake NFTs will both lose this small fight. But it won't be the last of NFTs in general.
Someone will find a 'killer-app', that uses NFTs.
Like a QR code that can be scan once, then change a state on-chain once it’s done.
And peg to a stable coin.
Could that allow to “print money”?
Maybe some wallet can already do that.
Maybe land/home ownership rights just transact and you'll be the new land/home owner no need for government interference and administration costs. Here in the Netherlands its a good 3~4k of costs you need to pay up, you can get a part back when filling taxes.