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Comment by le_isms | Hacker News Reader

As much as HN hates NFTs, they could really help solve this problem. Decentralized online digital ownership is a great use case.

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NFTs don't let you include the movie itself as a payload, so they are just a token that gives the owner to a claim to a movie via some external system. In this case, there is no disagreement that the consumer purchased the movie, just a refusal to honor that purchase. An NFT that said you bought a movie is meaningless if the system streaming the movie to you to stops honoring it. It's no different than what is happening here.

> so they are just a token that gives the owner to a claim to a movie via some external system.

Yes, but that's exactly what you don't get with a central database. There is no way to use your Sony-database-entry to access the movie from whoever holds the rights right now. Companies also go out of business or change plans, so that central database will cease to exist in the future anyway.

With an NFTs you have a proof of ownership. You still would need a service to honor your NFT token, but NFT usage would be the very thing that makes those services possible to exist in the first place.

We have seen with MP3 that this can work, just in that case the MP3 itself was used as the ownership token to move content to other services. With movies that doesn't work, as companies don't even give you a raw file of a movie, but they might be willing giving you NFTs, as those don't circumvent the DRM measures they have in place.

Either way, NFT are of course only a small piece of the puzzle here, there is a lot of supporting infrastructure that would need to be build and that nobody is building right now. And given the energy usage and cost of blockchains, it's not really usable for your $3 movie anyway. So it's not a workable solution at the moment. But even with all it's faults, it's still the closest thing to a possible solution for digital ownership that we have.

Sorry, we don't accept Sony Media NFTs, you need a Sony Xperience Plus NFT. The old ones were phased out last year.

The beauty of NFTs is that that doesn't matter. You just go to another provider that still accepts your NFTs. NFTs are a proof of ownership, not a right for getting free downloads from Sony forever.

The only thing you have to be careful about is what ownership the NFT grands you in the first place. An NFT to a public link to a monkey picture is of courses quite useless, just as an NFT for items in MMORPG that will stop functioning when the servers are switched off. But with static data like books, movies or single-player games, you can very much make an NFT that gives you the rights to that digital thing.

Why would anyone accept such an NFT?

"Yeah, we can see that you paid someone else for this content, so we'll pay the bandwidth and any licensing fees needed for you to stream/download it from us.".

A business model like that makes no sense.

You pay for the bandwidth, either directly via a subscription fee to the service (Prime, iCloud, etc.) or indirectly by using the service, e.g. Steam lets you import CD-keys for free too, since they value you more as customer than they care about the money lost for downloading games for free.

Also there would be no licensing fees. People paid those when they bought the games. Companies providing those games after an NFT-check would just be a digital storage lockers, not a movie/game/book seller. Content companies don't get to double dip:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

The only reason why they get away with that right now is because there is no concept of "digital ownership". Everything in that space operates in a legal gray area. NFTs have the potential to change that and put digital goods an a solid legal ground, as most of the same rules we have for physical goods could be applied to digital ones.

>The beauty of NFTs is that that doesn't matter. You just go to another provider that still accepts your NFTs

Disney: "sorry, we don't accept your Sony NFTs either"

Netflix: "same"

Amazon Prime: "same"

> We have seen with MP3 that this can work, just in that case the MP3 itself was used as the ownership token to move content to other services.

In the early 2010s or so, companies like Amazon, Google Play Music, etc briefly offered the ability to scan your MP3 collection to instantly get access to your music via their library as a way to suck you into your ecosystem.

It was neat, but all of these services have since switched off because it was just a means to get you hooked on their platform. It all went away because there was no on-going business case to support it . Now all that remains are a few scattered "digital locker" services where you are just streaming your own files back to yourself instead of using them to unlock a music library. Otherwise, you are locked into replacement streaming platforms with the same limitations as before.

The point is that NFTs solve a problem that already has other solutions - keeping track of who paid for something is relatively easy. The hard part is actually providing the product that was purchased in perpetuity. NFTs don't yet have an answer to the harder part of the problem that is profitable for a business.

HN hates NFTs because of 'self evident' statements like this, it's seen as little more than micro-hype statements to up the value of something seen as useless.

NFTs do not solve this problem, the content has been removed. If you feel they do, feel free to explain how it would have helped in this situation.

Only in theory - multiple streaming services would have to be licensed rights to the movie, so that if PlayStation revoked your right to watch it, you could use the NFT in another service like Netflix. This is unlikely to happen with big Hollywood movies cause of their tight IP laws.

NFT could be applied to movies in new ways[1], but probably not in the way of limiting access to the file.

[1] https://www.billboard.com/pro/camp-chaos-songcamp-nfts-50-pe...

How does that help when the google drive link on your NFT goes offline?

Don't mean to seem like I'm piling on, but I sincerely would be interested how they would help here?

NFT's: Anyone can check and verify ownership.

Receipts/Credit Card statements: only people with access to the finance system and authorization to check, can verify ownership.

For some things, a common public ledger is appropriate. For everything else, there's Mastercard ..

Verifying ownership is kinda useless when the distributor no longer distributes, though.

You can prove you own a copy. Congrats. So can everyone else with a receipt. However, that doesn't somehow coerce Sony into continuing to provide access.

Where do you stash your receipts? Somewhere you'll find them in two years time when challenged to prove you paid for something? Think that solution scales through the entirety of society?

Sony could make a blockchain/NFT solution to their problem and everyone would be happy - it'd be future-proof, licenses would be in-perpetuity, and nobody would have to pay much for the effort. Heck, it'd even give pirates a way to become legitimate service providers.

Sony et al., are not doing this, because of antiquated business ideas that serve more as dark patterns than anything else.

> Think that solution scales through the entirety of society?

It does when I need to get a repair for something I bought that is still under warranty.

EDIT:

Also: does keeping a cryptographic key safe scale through the entirety of society?

>It does when I need to get a repair for something I bought that is still under warranty.

This simply doesn't scale through the entirety of society, because its only relevant to you and your relationship with the content provider.

If I'm being challenged on the ownership of movies on my personal laptop - having a publicly accessible register of my purchase of those movies is entirely more useful to me - and society at large - than the "private receipts stashed in a drawer" model you propose is superior to NFT's.

>Also: does keeping a cryptographic key safe scale through the entirety of society?

Yes. I can depend on it if I need to defend myself against claims of piracy and theft of intellectual property, no matter where I am in the world.. Having a globally-accessible register of my licenses is quite a bit more useful than if those receipts are stashed in a paper file somewhere remote.

> the "private receipts stashed in a drawer" model you propose is superior to NFT's.

I've never said it's "superior". I simply mean it's good enough. I should probably have been more clear on that.

Also:

> This [physical/digital receipt] simply doesn't scale through the entirety of society, because its only relevant to you and your relationship with the content provider.

But then

> I can depend on it [NFT/public ledger] if I need to defend myself against claims of piracy and theft of intellectual property, no matter where I am in the world

Sorry but I find this contradictory. Can you please explain why the receipt is only relevant me and the content provider but a public ledger isn't? You mean "relevant" as in "there are more actors that can give a 'truth value' to the transaction"?

The paper receipt is in your drawer somewhere, you cannot provide it when you're crossing a border and need to convince the security thug that you do in fact own all those movies.

An NFT, on the other hand, can be looked up by anyone, anywhere.

I don't know what is so difficult to understand about this. The NFT receipt solves a lot of problems that a paper receipt simply makes worse.

There's nothing hard to understand. I'm simply wondering whether these use cases ("crossing a border and need to convince the security thug that you do in fact own all those movies") are really so pressing AND don't depend on other problems being solved first.

Libraries exist. You don't need Sony when you can proof ownership. Getting a hold of a movie has never been the problem, redistributing it legally is and NFTs make that possible, even without Sony's approval.

This is part of why distribution platforms all have their own cut. You don't own a copy of the movie. You own a copy of a _specific_ movie that was carried by Sony's streaming service and not a library.

If the distributor isn't distributing, then there's no legal way to get it. And NFTs don't contain the item purchased. It changes exactly nothing about the situation.

> If the distributor isn't distributing, then there's no legal way to get it.

Many countries already require that a copy of every book published has to be send to the national library:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_deposit

Just extend that to digital media.

> It changes exactly nothing about the situation.

NFT provide you with a transferable proof of ownership. That's a pretty ginormous piece of the puzzle that is missing right now when it comes to digital content. How to download a copy is quite a trivial problem by comparison.

Yes but what about NFT specifically could not be solved by any other form of electronic (or analog, for that matter) receipt?

NFTs are transferable and service-independent. Meaning you can trade used digital media and they will continue working even when Sony goes out of business, just like physical media would. Another big advantage is that they are generic, they are just abstract "ownership", you can use them for books, games, monkey pictures or concert tickets. Any normal commercial alternative would almost certainly be locked to a specific type of media and to a set of companies, along with strict rules to follow, if they allow any outsiders to participate at all. NFTs are an open system where everybody can build something with them.

That said, this is all very theoretical. Blockchain needs to get fast and cheap before any of this makes sense.

Unlike a normal receipt, a well built NFT is virtually unforgeable and uncloneable, even by the receipt-issuing entity.

This changes the trust model significantly, so that different legal principles can be applied. So the download access from the "legally acceptable archive for proven owners" could be automatic, fast and secure, without depending on a single company (eg Visa or Sony) to uphold their side in perpetuity, and allowing multiple download services to be legally in the clear, because they are enforcing contractually agreed checks.

No human in the loop to check your receipt (which costs), cheap automatic fast and secure service, no single company database that has to be trusted to authorise your access once you have obtained the receipt, and (if the rules are so designed) no further access once you have settled a transfer to another person.

For technical reasons that automation can distributed so that it is highly available, decentralised so that download and effective ownership is not managed by one company that might backpedal. And because of the changed legal relationship (ie no court would consider it piracy if legit terms are agreed in the contract) it could, potentially, be legally safe to operate high quality service.

There would still be risk of fraud (you transfer your receipt because someone tricked you), and some people will be disappointed m that DRM would be technically possible even when decntralised (the guaranteed access might be access to something you can stream but not save).

I am not particularly a crypto enthusiast (despite working in the field, currently zk-EVM if anyone's interested) but I think this idea of NFT-guaranteed access to data which is authorised by conventional consumer contracts has a lot going for it. It would solve the Sony problem.

> It would solve the Sony problem.

It solves what part of Sony saying they are aware that people have bought things, but that they will no longer distribute those things?

There is no archive where you get to download the things. Sony is the sole distributor of the purchase. They've said they will no longer provide access. Fin. End of story.

> It solves what part of Sony saying they are aware that people have bought things, but that they will no longer distribute those things?

Yes, in the model I and others have described.

> There is no archive where you get to download the things

Currently there is not. The idea is that in future, consumer contracts may adopt terms that say if a person has a suitable kind of proof of purchase (such as an uncloneable NFT) then "the storage net" (third party services) may provide the purchased file or stream under that entitlement. Those services would be "legal" rather than "pirate" services because the contract permits them.

By itself that doesn't solve the current Sony problem: Sony doesn't offer those terms of purchase at the point of sale.

But if the technology becomes common and easy to the point of becoming a "new normal" consumer expectation, it will increase the pressure on companies who offer "purchase" and "rent" buttons to associate "purchase" with "you are purchasing the right to 'have' this item via the storage net" contractual terms. Or, if they don't, to prominently display a notice that you are not being offered a perpetual access right and it may be rescinded later without notice or refund - I could imagine that notice making its way into consumer law eventually, if its absence is found to be seriously misleading consumers without a good reason.

It's because it will become possible and well known to be able to offer perpetual access to things like movies "as if" an actual file or physical object had been transferred, even while still complying with upstream studio's licensing and region locking demands that are designed to ensure most people pay, that some companies may start to use this approach profitably, and then cultural expectations may follow so that other companies have to do the same.

In a sense, the artificial scarcity of NFTs may help bridge the tension between file producers' desire to control access to pressure most people into paying, and consumers' desire that when you've "purchased" something it behaves a bit more like a physical object in your possession.

So it helps, but only in an idealistic world where data centres and the siloing of data no longer exist as a concept. It's precipitated on major changes to how business and regulation works, happening. That the current competitive advantage that is ruthlessly enforced by all companies becomes regulated out of existence. Something that cannot happen in the current environment. In short - it requires naivety to think that it _might_ help in the future.

The laws necessary for that "idealistic world" already exist for physical goods:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

Sometimes they are even applied to the digital world, but that's rare:

https://dotesports.com/business/news/french-court-rules-valv...

The lack of enforcement for digital goods is largely the result of there being no technology to proof ownership in a digital world. Hard to force companies to adopt a thing that doesn't exist. That's exactly the hole that NFT could fill.

> The lack of enforcement for digital goods is largely the result of there being no technology to proof ownership in a digital world. Hard to force companies to adopt a thing that doesn't exist. That's exactly the hole that NFT could fill.

The real world actually doesn't run with needs so hard and firm. A stat dec is nothing more than a signed sheet, and can "prove" any statement in a court of law. This isn't a case of the technology lacking in proving ownership. We already have all of that, legally speaking.

The reason this idealistic world does not exist, is simply because the distributors do not wish it to. In digital distribution, you don't distribute an existing item, you copy it. Thus, first sale which transfers something, cannot be enforced. They control distribution, they prevent undue proliferation.

Proving that you own something is not the problem at hand. DRM is not integrated into all of these platforms to prove ownership of an item. They are to prevent someone else becoming the distributor.

Which means that... Coming all the way back to square one... When the distributor doesn't distribute... You can't do anything. Sony have already acknowledged that they are cutting off owners. They are aware of ownership. NFTs don't add or take from that, they serve to fill a purpose that is already filled. Owners are acknowledged. Owners access is being removed.

> The reason this idealistic world does not exist, is simply because the distributors do not wish it to.

Companies can only do what the laws allows them to do, and as I already linked, laws exists to prevent companies from double-dipping when it comes to physical IP goods. Once the thing is sold, it's out of their control and people can resell it as much as they want. Apply the same principles to digital goods and the problem is solved. But to do so you need a technical framework for digital good ownership to work in a similar fashion to physical goods, which NFTs could do.

> Sony have already acknowledged that they are cutting off owners. They are aware of ownership.

It's not "ownership" when Sony has full and exclusive controller over it and can terminate it at any time for whatever reason they chose. That's clear violation of First-sale doctrine. Especially since they love to pretend that you "Buy" the things in their digital stores, without clearly labeling that it's actually a "Rent for an arbitrary and limited time".

> When the distributor doesn't distribute... You can't do anything.

Piracy exists. Companies don't have to play nice to allow any of this, the law just needs to scale back a little in protecting them.

It's already been brought up by many others, but proof of purchase is not the issue here, right? It's the right to access the content. NFTs don't force Sony to give you your content if they're not legally obliged to.

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