NFTs also annoy me because it's literally the worst part of art industry - "buying" the "rights" to a piece of art so you can turn it for more cash later on, and not as an appreciation of the work. Bored Apes might be one of the few exceptions where people are doing it for "bragging rights", which is infinitely better because you're buying it to say you own it, much closer to normal art purchases.
For legal purchases and activities crypto is useless, regular money is much more practical.
[1] depending on which crypto and how it's used tracking is possible, so care is required (especially) when converting dollars to crypto.
Can you? After that huge bust a few years back, I figured that particular usage was marginal at this point. Seems like the only use for crypto is ransomware, dodging taxes or smuggling embezzled money out of your country.
Anything but USDT. USDT is poison.
They have no access to Swift.
Western Union (didn't exist until a few years back) has like 20% fees.
Paypal effective total fees 20% as well.
Bitcoin? $0.30 to pay him/her, 0.30 to get the btc to his/her exchange and then cash out.
While I’m not a fan of NFTs this does somewhat weaken the proposition that any “rights” cannot be sold with NFTs because IIRC this is the status quo in meatspace art purchases too.
It does mean that.
> The public domain consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply[0]
Think of it this way. Imagine I wrote some code, and when I ran it it generated a piece of art. Surely I would have IP rights over the artwork? Otherwise you could make the same argument about art made with a somehow automatic paintbrush I built.
I hope I’m not talking at cross-purposes here and using a completely different definition of “public domain” was was intended, apologies if this is the case.
Now, the individual visual components of the weapons could have a copyright but the computationally assemblaged work based on the components would not because they've just run a job to "generate all the permutations".
For something like No Man's Sky, which is extremely procedurally generated I reckon it's very grey and they could try to make a case but the actual world they generated for people to play in would not be protected by copright. I don't think it's well tested in court.
In the case of the monkeys the hat, the basemonkey, and sunglasses could have a copyright but the assembled monkeys generated by a computer with no creativity would not. But it's a derivative work of things with copyright so that aspect becomes super grey.
The UK government issued a call for views to figure this area out and try to legislate it. Hopefully something useful comes of it. https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/artificial-intel...
As you say, it seems like there’s a significant grey area that needs to be resolved, and I could see it being quite difficult to figure out where to draw the line in practice.
Is AI art (eg. VQGAN+CLIP stuff) public domain? Doesn't the seed image and text prompt constitute artistic work?
How about using photoshop smart features like autofilling?
At what point is the threshold placed?
Iirc cdpa 1988 in the UK holds it to be copyright of the authors of the program. But I'd be surprised if the law was a comfortable fit for practice 30 years on, or that it had been tested much in court.
Define algorithmically generated? There are certainly tools for randomizing the mix of image elements that are present in a piece of art, and combining them, but does that only apply if I used a computer to do it? What if I draw 300 reference images, photocopy them, cut them out, and sit down with a set of dice and tables, and make collages using glue?
Does the inclusion of random noise as a processing step in creating digital art count as algorithmically generated?
What if I use a custom programmed brush that simulates the randomness of physical brush bristles to simulate in a digital painting?
> A claim based on a mechanical weaving process that randomly produces irregular shapes in the fabric without any discernible pattern.
That is so specific that I have to believe there was a court case where someone attempted to claim copyright for that kind of process.
But to answer your question to define algorithmically generated, the requirement is that “whether the ‘work’ is basically one of human authorship, with the computer [or other device] merely being an assisting instrument, or whether the traditional elements of authorship in the work (literary, artistic, or musical expression or elements of selection, arrangement, etc.) were actually conceived and executed not by man but by a machine.”
(Citation to: https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap300/ch300-copyrightable-..., see §313.2).
They are pulling a bait and switch.
How very decentralized /s
Also whenever people talk about ownership in regards to copyright, it's a flag that they probably don't know what they are talking about.
A separate question is would the copyright holder win a lawsuit or DMCA takedown request? I don't know
With that said, there are some NFTs that do attempt to tie property/copyright to the token ownership.
Again, this is a different problem. One can imagine a service with a seignorage fee to verify such things when an NFT is minted after which that particular question is settled. The point of it being on a blockchain would then be subsequent ease of sale, transfer etc.
By service, I think you mean company, now I have to trust said company, also I need to check NFT is minted by company I trust, and that I trust the identifier of said company on the NFT. Now if it turns out the company wasn't doing a good job, what happens then, do the NFT's get revoked, by whom, what are the remedies and the compensation process?
All this gets bumped off chain fairly quickly with a hand wave whenever discussed, which quickly puts the block chain solution into question. If the NFT only works when minted and managed by trusted party, then is what we really need is data interoperability rather than blockchain. And even there, NFT's don't actually contain any on-chain or off-chain data expressing what the semantics of the NFT is.
What's to stop the buyer unbundling the property which is worth something (the copyright) from the pointless NFT?
You are buying the rights, but they're rights that exist in a pseudo-legal system that has no enforcement and isn't recognized by any existing legal authority. Some kind of enforcement could exist one day though.
For instance, it's possible that your house in a "metaverse" might only display art for the NFTs that it verifies you own.
If anything, metaverse should allow you to see all works of art as if they were the real thing, all the time, for "free"*
* assuming the efforts of building and maintaining the infrastructure are properly compensated
Aren't virtual economies old news by now? Plenty of games and game networks have accomplished this with virtual goods.
The 'metaverse' stuff doesn't scare me personally (where this concept could become widespread). I don't buy for a second that it's going to be a big deal where it will be anything more than a niche glorified game lobby.
Buying an NFT is buying the right to the NFT. It's not buying the right to the art.
Even if NFTs were backed by law, so that if I use your private key to transfer the NFT to me you would be able to use the law to come after me for theft, what I stole from you wasn't the rights to the art.
What the grandparent post was complaining about was that it's not even the rights to the art.
If you buy the rights to the ape, then you can sell copies.
I suppose the holder of an NFT can sell a "copy NFT". Maybe that's the next thing. Selling an NFT of an NFT of an NFT of a Beatles song. With a holder chain making sure that whoever minted the NFT-of-NFT at the time did hold the parent NFT.
That last paragraph is of course exactly the kind of nonsense that is at the core of NFT, so you should expect these derivative NFTs to start becoming a product soon. If you can sell NFTs-of-art, why not NFTs-of-NFTs?
Anyone can sell copies of the Mona Lisa (because expired copyright). Anyone can make NFTs of it, too. Why would NFTs minted by the Louvre be more real?
To me, NFT is performance art. It makes you think about intangible ownership. But outside of being performance art it's worthless.
That's what I heard once anyhow.
Resolution 7,479 × 11,146, or 83 megapixels.
From that page:
The official position taken by the Wikimedia Foundation is that "faithful reproductions of two-dimensional public domain works of art are public domain". This photographic reproduction is therefore also considered to be in the public domain in the United States. In other jurisdictions, re-use of this content may be restricted; see Reuse of PD-Art photographs for details.
It may well be, but unless the WMF created the piece, it has no standing to declare this. I may well be reading too much into things, but I know also that the WMF has taken "interesting" legal positions on art (a famous recent photo set up by a wildlife photographer where a curious primate, IIRC, wandered up to the camera and depressed the shutter).
And the monkey selfie you mention was actually not obvious legally one way or the other. I believe the human eventually won, but it was down to the details.
In order for something to be copyrightable it needs to have minimal "threshold of originality" to it. In the monkey copyright case the photo clearly had. In the photo I linked to? Much less clearly so.
The EU (because Mona Lisa) is summarized as "The test for the threshold of originality is in the European Union whether the work is the author's own intellectual creation". (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality).
One would have a hard time arguing that framing a painting perfectly in the viewfinder is "the author's own intellectual creation".
In the US it's "at least some minimal degree of creativity".
But yes, both could be circumvented by injecting the painting equivalent of "paper towns", I suppose.
But in any case any of these people could start selling copies:
https://jeffhaltrechtphotoblog.com/2015/09/01/selfie-mayhem-...
But of course we could then worry about what a court would say about a "no photos, please" sign and whether it's a binding contract that signs over any copyright over photos in the place (uh, doubtful).
It's an interesting legal area, and I don't reject the idea you mentioned of de facto re-copyright as a whole. I just don't think it applies to Mona Lisa specifically, for these reasons.
But you should also remember that there's a difference between "You're not allowed" and "You are not able" to take a photo.
Unless you have a contract signing away the copyright to the photo, all the establishment can do is ask you to leave after you've already taken the photo.
And I highly doubt a checkbox ToS when you bought the ticket will be considered informed consent of reassignment of copyright.
Sorry, you're right there - my phrasing was definitely ambiguous. Like you say, there was a lot of nuance. But Wikipedia (initially contributors, then I believe, the Foundation itself) was very aggressive from the outset with "Screw you, no copyright to be found here!" which is an "interesting" stance to take when it's not at all so clearcut.
Doesn't mean this can't be done, but in each case I've looked at, granting of rights (and which specific rights do we even mean?) is not happening.
Further more there is no obligation for anyone to do anything with the image linked to the NFT your the holder of.
I checked out the Doctor Who NFT thing after Team 17 was teaming up with the people behind that thing, and the domain where the NFT metadata and images are being hosted was due to expire next summer. They didn't even splurge on a five-year registration for the domain. Hopefully auto-renewals don't stop working.
Or if this is just hyperbole, perhaps accept that Sturgeon's Law is valid even for human behavior in relation to finance and economics?
People were making unbelievably stupid decisions and came up with the most ridiculous rationalizations for "investing" in the dot-com bubble. Same thing with real estate a decade later. It is not just because a market is overheated that we should dismiss the industry entirely.
(I am not saying that those with better judgement should just go and exploit the irrationality of the masses. What I am saying is that there is no way to argue anyone into making rational decisions.)
There is no soul.
I've only seen one example of nfts having some kind of soul and that to do with ensuring collaborators on musical projects get a kind of transparent split of the proceeds. where the token is the music. Make a remix, then it also tracks what part of which source you used etc. Open royalties when the tracks are sold.
I have a hard time believing they don't ask the questions that get to the heart of the long term viability of the projects they invest in. Yet as a tech creator, I don't see much use for the game theoretic additions for the extra complexity and waste from adding blockchain.
They are looking for the kids that think they can takedown PayPal and visa. Give them 500k each and hope one figures it out.
See the case of https://www.wired.co.uk/article/nft-fraud-qinni-art.
And now I see comments in this thread hoping that tech companies enforce NFTs. No thank you
We're hurling towards an era of false economy, the results are likely to be harsh if we allow it to continue without being reigned in. The celebrities that back scams, as well as corps need to be held accountable because the main problem that it's growing in popularity is all of the glossy polish on the lies of phony payouts.
(If it was just “I don’t like it” I would also list Cubism, but I can get that there are well-made examples of Cubism without liking the style).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piss_Christ
Anti-art is more like a sort of trolling meta commentary on art. The "performance art" of the art world, really. People who like it like it for the iconoclasm and/or humor of it, I think.
I do agree with your view of contemporary work though, it's hard to see the value of a lot of it (diamond skulls, broken mattresses, etc etc). Art has become an investment vehicle with a veneer of cultural education, so now the rulebook has gone out of the window.
> While I generally agree with your sentiment, some of the most iconic art in the world seems to me to be poorly made and I have no idea why they are valued or admired. I don’t just mean modern art like Serrano’s “Piss Christ”[0] or Emin’s “My Bed”[1], but even some older stuff like Klimt’s “Der Kuss”[2] (the woman has always looked to me like she has a broken neck).
I don't think "Serrano’s “Piss Christ”[0] or Emin’s “My Bed”[1]" are in the category "most iconic art in the world." IIRC, most iconic art is such because of it's place in art history, and sometimes what looks poorly made actually required quite a lot of skill (e.g. if you try to flick paint on a canvas like Jackson Pollock did, it won't turn out). Sometimes skill requires skill to appreciate. Can someone who can't code appreciate the difference between good code that works and some spaghetti codes that also works?
I think the issue with NFT "poorly drawn pictures" is there's nothing special about them: not innovative, not influential, not especially pleasing, not made by anyone with any reputation (for art). Just common stuff that doesn't stand out from the crowd. Like a sibling comment said about modern art, NFTs are "an investment vehicle with a veneer of cultural education," without the veneer (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30285259).
https://www.sothebys.com/en/videos/preview-silver-car-crash-...
Honestly, I can't imagine Warhol would not be involved in NFTs if he was alive.
I think NFTs are beyond stupid but so is 75% of the art in a modern gallery.
In 1987 in a far more Christian society, you can see how Piss Christ is going to make noise.
Buying index funds is a great and easy way to enhance your personal financial situation – over time. But you will not get rich quickly. So people still seek out alternatives that are incredibly risky and unsound.
Even the careful people I know now are saying; yeah, you keep saying it’ll crash for years but it doesn’t so I am going in. And that effect is spreading. I have, in my circles, way too many people who are living off crypto interest fully.
The narrative has a type of theta/time decay as there is just no way for the majority to 10X their investment periodically.
I think it is also very hard to think about the global entertainment dollars that have been locked up for the past 2 years. It is an enormous amount of money and as the pandemic fades people are going to splurge on the non-digital services and goods that they have not been able to for the past two years.
The pandemic fading throws the whole process that has pushed crypto to these levels in reverse.
The fact crypto has continued to make new highs is basically meaningless as far as the future is concerned.
We were looking at somewhere to park €50k while we hunt for a house. Growing up we're always told about savings accounts. We should have a savings account, we should be contributing to savings accounts, blah blah blah. So we asked our bank about a savings account, and they offered an annual return of €78. And I don't even mean 0.0015%, but the return is capped so it's not allowed to compound.
I think its easy to underestimate the amount of global entertainment dollars that have been on the sidelines the past two years.
It is a fashion trend that will turn to dust as the pandemic fades. No one is going to want to be reminded of the pandemic in two years when people were so starved for entertainment they were buying these stupid ape pictures.
not even the picture. The url to a picture on a random site.
I don't see the difference here.
Now, I also don't get why NFTs have taken off AT ALL. But I don't see how they're really different than anything I listed above, except maybe more unstable or even more useless than a 2000$ pair of sneakers, which you could still wear if you ever ran out of shoes.
A lot of NFTs don't do this for their owners. Its just the belief that there's a high probability of being able to resell for more.
The question is what % of the market participants see genuine value in the asset itself.
Crypto assets have one rational thing behind them - as an asset class their value seems to fluctuate more or less randomly, hence (as long as the value fluctuates above zero) they provide a nice asset class that is detached from every other asset class - which means they are a nice way to pad an investment portfolio.
I'm also mystified by the prices that modern 'art' can command.
>It's astonishing to me that people will just buy into any success story
'get rich quick like him' is as old as the hills.
I'm not being snarky i'm just pointing out that the underlying principles behind your complaints have always existed to some extent. I think it's just a symptom of 'post truth' and and cynicsm at the system that allows the illusion to be even more blatant.
These are the questions that need to be asked.
You can.
> What part is the bank actually playing in this transaction?
They're lending you the money.
I assume you have some different, less obvious answers to this? If you're against the lending of money for interest, how about a halal mortgage? https://www.qardus.com/news/halal-mortgages-everything-you-n...
Practically speaking, not really. A tiny fraction of people might earn enough to save enough to buy a house, but most will be priced out at every stage by people taking mortgages. Some people inherit existing property and trade it for other property. But if you are starting from scratch it's virtually impossible. Do you know anyone who has done it?
> They're lending you the money.
Are they? If I lend you my car, I don't have access to my car during that time. But money is just made up. There's nothing moving around. Banks aren't losing anything when they lend you something. They just create a deposit and a liability and get on with it. As long as they are all doing it at roughly the same rate nothing stops the economy filling up on debt, as it has done and continues to do.
Remember, banks lending money is nothing like you or I lending money. The banks control the ledger. They don't play by the same rules as us.
I'm not sure are about states granting banks the right to create money. Do you have a source for this? As far as I can tell they do it simply because we all use them and trust them to keep the ledger. The state (meaning, the US or UK) doesn't seem to have much control over it.
The banks are obviously granted the limited right to create money by the government. Whether it's through regulation post facto or a charter a priori, by now virtually all modern states have a wide control over their banking systems, including setting required reserve rates.
> by now virtually all modern states have a wide control over their banking systems
This doesn't seem to be the case.
> including setting required reserve rates.
Can you find what the required reserve rate for the US and UK is? From what I can find the US does have a required rate but it's 0% and the UK doesn't have one at all.
A piece of cardboard print with graphics on it, no rights to the image, art, athlete or organization.
Not really in a lot of cities, most scarcity is based on government regulations (=not allowing more of them to be built, or not allowed to build larger ones). There are a few locations where there is no actual usable space to build more, but mostly, that is not an issue.
Or you could create more "limited edition" monkey pictures at essentially zero marginal cost.
cf NFTs where digital art itself can be copied and viewed infinitely, and the NFTs themselves are just tokens issued at near zero cost by providers which could happily issue infinitely more tokens referencing the same art (even though at the moment, for the sake of trust and collectibility and not dampening the hype yet, it's more lucrative to issue finite numbers of additional tokens referring to more low-effort variations on the original art instead.)
After a bunch of regulation, now, the "papers" cost more than materials to build, and most of the area is zoned as eg farming area, even though there has never been any farming there. Of course, prices have gone up A LOT, there is a lot of NIMBYism, by people who already build their house, and don't want another one next to it, and young people are basically fucked.
We might disagree, but in places with available land (and there are many), the only thing that stands between housing and non-millionaire people are (local) governments and regulations.
The best time to start building was 10, 15, 20 years ago, the next best time is now.
I thoroughly recommend the book Other People's Money by John Kay. In it he reminds us what the actual value of the financial system is and talks about what it has become. Bitcoin was an attempt to get the actual value of cash (just one facets of finance) without paying tax (interest) to the banks.
I would guess that many people are well aware that 85+% of NFT hype is based on scams, money laundering, and bagholders. But their voices get drowned out.
I feel bad for the people who fall for it; I do. And I even feel a little bad for the conmen who have to live with themselves.
However, the BBC have no excuse for letting such a documentary get so far without doing basic checks on a scamcoin that was so scammy it actually got shut down, four months ago. That's egregious.
Not supporting illegal wars for oil egregious, and not quite smearing Corbyn for years egregious, just ordinary "this is what happens when you put terrible Tories in charge" second order effects.
> smearing Corbyn for years egregious
This really has been egregious.
> internet conmen are charismatic
Half-baked theory, but I wonder if the prevalence of voice comms - Discord, Clubhouse and its twitter ripoff - in this space is used to enable charisma to ensnare victims.
All conmen are charismatic (well, the successful ones at least), the new generations just happen to use the internet - like in any other profession.
> The Guardian asked the BBC if it was confident in his claimed financial returns and questioned why the programme’s promotional material did not mention that Hassan’s cryptocurrency Orfano was abruptly shut down in October, with many unhappy investors claiming they were left out of pocket as a result.
The real priviliged class uses regular banking, private banking services[0], they don't need bitcoin.
It's the Engineer in Nigeria trying to conserve his 5 figures at most wealth for his family who needs Bitcoin.
The 7 or 8 figures guy just calls his nearest bank and they will give him the whole package and even launder the money for him.