Comment by ethbr1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ethbr1 | Hacker News Reader

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The problem with enforcing resellability on digital goods is the technical ability to copy them.

If I have full ownership of a digital good, then I have the ability to copy it.

Any limitation of my ability to copy requiring removing some control from the owner and escrowing it with another party (e.g. DRM).

As much as I hate to say it, allowing digital good resale is a good use for a blockchain: uniquely identifying an instance and then keeping a decentralized ledger of who owns it at any time.

However, there would still need to be a carrot to make this system attractive.

If there isn't, then why wouldn't people just create infinite copies off-ledger and ignore it?

And without any viable digital goods ownership system, who wouldn't companies default to the current model of only offering licenses / subscriptions?

Piracy has always existed and will always exist. The issue is that it only takes one determined pirate to overcome the DRM and that piece of information is freed from DRM. You can already do all this even without a legally recognized right of ownership.

I assume plenty of people are willing to pay for things they appreciate. Maybe the carrot can be some kind of recognition: you get to make a digital signature from that token that you can display as a part of your digital identity. There could be discussion forums that require you to have such a token to participate in.

GoG survives selling DRM free games. Unsure if this would work on all markets.

GoG doesn't allow you to re-sell games on a secondary market as far as I'm aware.

I hate that crypto ever had this big money swell associated with it. If we could divorce the technical protocols from the scams and shilling people associate with it, it actually has some interesting uses that barely anyone is willing to talk about it a non-shill or non-disgust way.

yeah people in this thread are fumbling around in the dark pining for something they don't realize is.. NFTs

resaleable digital licenses. that's why Steam banned them, not because Valve is noble but because if your video game license was an NFT you could resell it outside of their marketplace and they like their little monopoly

Yes. This is the killer app for blockchain. I want Movies Anywhere, but for everything and without an industry gatekeeper. If I am subscribed to Netflix, I should be able to watch every video in their catalog through any service that has the bits.

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