Screenshotting NFTs

[mr moose]

NFT -    A non returnable or easily exchanged item that is in effect not the actual thing but a substitute representing that thing which in itself holds no value.

 

 

Why would anyone hand over real world money for that?

[kasugatei]

The best explanation what NFTs are that I have heard so far is the following. 
Imagine super promiscuous person that is having sex with many different people every day including you with the difference that  you are actually married to that person. Your marriage certificate would be a NFT in that case. 

[RedRound2]

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

Regardless, if any part of this were illegal it would be illegal regardless of it being an NFT since NFTs hold no legal value.

Microsoft doesn't claim to sell you "the original copy" or an item with a certain scarcity, they sell you A copy (or more likely a license). They are the copyright holders and legally agree to let you use their copyrighted software. An NFT gives you no such legally binding license, it's just a link - however it's advertised as something unique and original and therefore marketable as a rare collectible. And unlike a license for a videogame, not owning the NFT of an image doesn't stop you from accessing it, be it legally or practically.

NFTs are just a new (and legitimate) way to own things

Its useless today because it acts more as a bragging right than anything useful. But its useful and can certainly be adopted into daily lives if required (and it eventually probably will). And that's exactly what these NFT buyers are betting on. 

And even right now, NFTs are being sold as tickets and whatnot, so the concept makes sense. It just needs to get cleaner and much more efficient and we will have a decentralized way to record the ownership as a normal thing in our world

[Sauron]

Just now, RedRound2 said:

NFTs are just a new (and legitimate) way to own things

Not own in any meaningful way. I mean you can say you own something, if there's no law to back you up whether you "own" it or not is irrelevant.

2 minutes ago, RedRound2 said:

And even right now, NFTs are being sold as tickets and whatnot, so the concept makes sense. It just needs to get cleaner and much more efficient and we will have a decentralized way to record the ownership as a normal thing in our world

Except it's not actually decentralized because the consensus on which fork is "correct" is reliant on the most resourceful miners, AKA those that can afford the most and the best hardware. Or if you give weight to ownership of more tokens it will be those who have more that will be able to get more and consolidate their power. No matter what you move your verification mechanism to, there will always be a bias in favor of those who have more resources - they'll always decide the rules of the trade.

 

 

Not to mention it's not even desirable to make every transaction public and accessible to anyone who cares to look. It's just a bad idea. And good luck getting rid of illegal or harmful material, or undoing fraudolent transactions without rolling back days of transactions and forking the blockchain.

 

[tikker]

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

It is, because the whole idea is that the tokens are non fungible. If non fungibility is irrelevant because they don't make the item actually unique or rare (which is my point) then what is their purpose?

 You are right that in and of itself they don't make the item rare or unique. Their purpose is to verify ownership or uniqueness. See it as a certificate of authenticity or a receipt saying you are now the owner, recorded on the blockchain. In terms of digital art (ignoring the abuse and scams for a minute) it would represent your verifiable ownership of an authorised / licensed copy of that art piece. The NFT transfer can easily be checked if someone claiming to have ownership is actually you, if you have transferred it to one of their addresses or if you have an authorised copy of said artwork. That won't stop the copy-paste gang of course, but current methods don't really either.

46 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Except it's not actually decentralized because the consensus on which fork is "correct" is reliant on the most resourceful miners, AKA those that can afford the most and the best hardware. Or if you give weight to ownership of more tokens it will be those who have more that will be able to get more and consolidate their power. No matter what you move your verification mechanism to, there will always be a bias in favor of those who have more resources - they'll always decide the rules of the trade.

Isn't that just the difference in philosophy? In our current system we trust a central authority such as a bank to do the right thing. In the various proof of X mechanisms you trust not a single central authoritiy's word on a transaction, but a majority that is somehow determined. Proof of work will always be vulnerable to a 51% attack, proof of stake to e.g. some entity having 51% of all assets and in general doesn't push you to spend and proof of authority (e.g VeChain) is less centralised relying on "authorised dealers" again to come to a consensus. At the same time, for BTC and ETH attacks on the PoW blockchain are not exactly cheap if you'd rent the required hashpower: https://www.crypto51.app/ For PoS attacking the chain is disincentivised as it's literally your money in the system, so you are actively attacking your own profit and risk losing everything.

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

Not to mention it's not even desirable to make every transaction public and accessible to anyone who cares to look. It's just a bad idea. And good luck getting rid of illegal or harmful material, or undoing fraudolent transactions without rolling back days of transactions and forking the blockchain.

That's a valid point, and one why I don't yet see it finding its way to the masses. One of the benefits is no (fraudulent) back charges, but indeed the downside is it's difficult to get back if I transfer to an unintended or fraudulent address. It may be relevant to mention that Bitcoin originally presented a solution to the double spending problem and not as a defense against all sorts of fraud.

[Sauron]

1 minute ago, tikker said:

Their purpose is to verify ownership or uniqueness.

But they do not certify the uniqueness of anything except the smart contract itself. Or more accurately, the transaction within the blockchain. It's completely detached from the artwork (though I hesitate to call most of what NFTs link to "art").

16 minutes ago, tikker said:

In terms of digital art (ignoring the abuse and scams for a minute) it would represent your verifiable ownership of an authorised / licensed copy of that art piece. The NFT transfer can easily be checked if someone claiming to have ownership is actually you, if you have transferred it to one of their addresses or if you have an authorised copy of said artwork. That won't stop the copy-paste gang of course, but current methods don't really either.

The copyright holder can already certify who they sold the art to and who has the right to sell it. These have legal weight, unlike NFTs, and they don't waste processing power or require transaction fees.

18 minutes ago, tikker said:

Isn't that just the difference in philosophy? In our current system we trust a central authority such as a bank to do the right thing.

We don't just trust them, we have laws to punish bad behavior. It's far from a perfect system but it's better than 0 accountability.

20 minutes ago, tikker said:

In the various proof of X mechanisms you trust not a single central authoritiy's word on a transaction, but a majority that is somehow determined.

And the way in which it is determined is that whoever starts out with more can strongarm everyone else to fall in line, as we already see with crypto exchanges. Even if you don't have 51% you can still have much more influence than the average participant.

22 minutes ago, tikker said:

It may be relevant to mention that Bitcoin originally presented a solution to the double spending problem and not as a defense against all sorts of fraud.

We already have plenty of solutions for that, the only novelty bitcoin was supposed to bring was decentralization but, as I'm trying to explain, that's not a good thing. Decentralized currency is a bad idea in our economic framework.

[tikker]

11 minutes ago, Sauron said:

But they do not certify the uniqueness of anything except the smart contract itself. Or more accurately, the transaction within the blockchain. It's completely detached from the artwork (though I hesitate to call most of what NFTs link to "art").

They proof that you bought a copy of said artwork. For an unmarked image then indeed, I don't see how it would represent more than that you have a  copy of that image. If you have a numbered limited edition or something like that then of course you'll want to include that number in the NFT or similar to properly link the two together. What you say makes sense, but just like buying a van Gogh with a certificate of authenticity the either is worthless without the other.

19 minutes ago, Sauron said:

The copyright holder can already certify who they sold the art to and who has the right to sell it. These have legal weight, unlike NFTs, and they don't waste processing power or require transaction fees.

They can indeed. This is just another means of doing so, like a receipt, with the theoretical benefit that in practise nobody has the power to modify this transaction anymore. Do NFTs not have legal weight? If you claim you have permission to own my artwork and I have proof that I only sell on blockchains and never transferred anything to you, will the court reject my evidence? Genuine question, I'm not aware of such rulings.

23 minutes ago, Sauron said:

We don't just trust them, we have laws to punish bad behavior. It's far from a perfect system but it's better than 0 accountability.

I stand by that that is simply part of the different philosophies again. In our fiducial system we trust single entities and make laws to try and keep them in check and trust law enforcment to enforce them. Does it always work? No, but it works great as wel see in our economy. Crypto simply demonstrates as system where you don't have to trust individuals, on the condition that the majority is honest. Other requirements like proof of work, staking your own funds etc. are then implemented to further disincentivise bad behaviour.

27 minutes ago, Sauron said:

And the way in which it is determined is that whoever starts out with more can strongarm everyone else to fall in line, as we already see with crypto exchanges. Even if you don't have 51% you can still have much more influence than the average participant.

It's not like the rich people, banks and governments now don't have the exact same power.

28 minutes ago, Sauron said:

We already have plenty of solutions for that, the only novelty bitcoin was supposed to bring was decentralization but, as I'm trying to explain, that's not a good thing. Decentralized currency is a bad idea in our economic framework.

We don't ditch AMD because we have Nvidia, we didn't not bother investigating LEDs since filament bulbs worked just fine. Already having X doesn't mean we can't explore other means of achieving X. I'm not among those claiming crypto will be the one and only future. You point out valid flaws, the price fluctuations of an unregulated currency would be pretty bad for the economy (as I also mentioned in another thread I think), so yeah if this becomes something then it will be in a regulated more centralised form and probably just as something on the back end of things if you ask me.

[Sauron]

4 minutes ago, tikker said:

They proof that you bought a copy of said artwork.

They prove someone made a transaction on the blockchain that claims you did.

5 minutes ago, tikker said:

For an unmarked image then indeed, I don't see how it would represent more than that you have a  copy of that image.

More accurately a link to said copy.

6 minutes ago, tikker said:

If you have a numbered limited edition or something like that then of course you'll want to include that number in the NFT or similar to properly link the two together.

There is no such thing as scarce digital media. You can make infinite identical copies of your numbered ape. You can store the checksum of the image in the NFT but that doesn't make it a unique copy.

7 minutes ago, tikker said:

What you say makes sense, but just like buying a van Gogh with a certificate of authenticity the either is worthless without the other.

Certificates of authenticity only have worth because they're given out by (supposedly) trustworthy institutions. Further, they only work because authenticity can be established - no matter how good you are, you can't make a perfect copy of a Van Gogh; it's a physical item. You can easily make perfect copies of digital media.

 

And guess what? Certificates of authenticity don't require a blockchain.

10 minutes ago, tikker said:

Do NFTs not have legal weight? If you claim you have permission to own my artwork and I have proof that I only sell on blockchains and never transferred anything to you, will the court reject my evidence?

The court will see that you, the copyright holder, did not give me explicit permission to reproduce or use the art work. Me owning an NFT that links to it is irrelevant, because NFTs are not recognized by the law as certificates of ownership. If you give out your permission to owners of the NFT you can do that but the NFTs themselves have nothing to do with them having legal permission. Further, just because you gave me permission to use the artwork doesn't mean the permission will be automatically transferred to whomever I sell the NFT to. So the NFT is irrelevant in this sense.

15 minutes ago, tikker said:

Crypto simply demonstrates as system where you don't have to trust individuals, on the condition that the majority is honest.

You don't have to trust individuals with normal banking. There are laws and sanity checks. With crypto and NFTs you have to trust everyone with your transaction history. You have to trust software of dubious origins to make the system accessible. You have to trust whoever minted the NFT to not have inserted a trojan in it. Did you know you can just send people virus NFTs and steal from their wallet, without making any invalid transaction?

18 minutes ago, tikker said:

It's not like the rich people, banks and governments now don't have the exact same power.

It's almost like there's a fundamental problem with our economic system that can't be solved by code.

19 minutes ago, tikker said:

We don't ditch AMD because we have Nvidia

We would if AMD was significantly worse in all regards.

20 minutes ago, tikker said:

we didn't not bother investigating LEDs since filament bulbs worked just fine.

LEDs are better than filament in every way whereas crypto is just worse than existing methods.

21 minutes ago, tikker said:

Already having X doesn't mean we can't explore other means of achieving X.

I'm all for exploration, it's just that crypto has had its time to shine and it just doesn't do what its creators expected. It's fine to try but at this point it's clear this isn't going anywhere good.

[lewdicrous]

7 hours ago, LAwLz said:

There is nothing in the law that is specific about NFTs, but as I have stated several times over, it doesn't have to. Unauthorized copying of a work, be it a picture or movie, is against the law. Doesn't matter if it's an NFT or whatever. But it's worth nothing that the picture is not the NFT. I think that's something many people don't understand, and as a result people don't understand NFTs. 

Does an NFT owner own the actual rights to the image, for example, or do they just own a link to it?

[Quackers101]

11 minutes ago, lewdicrous said:

Does an NFT owner own the actual rights to the image, for example, or do they just own a link to it?

own just the container/block in the blockchain, no rights. could be more of them too

[LAwLz]

4 hours ago, Sauron said:

I mean that purchasing an NFT linking to a work does not automatically lift that work's copyright protections for you. If it's illegal for you to download or view that work it will still be illegal after you purchase the NFT, unless the author also explicitly gives you permission - which obviously does not require the NFT itself.

I know. I am not sure why you are bringing that up though because it seems kind of irrelevant.

It being an NFT or not does not change the law. If it's illegal to copy then it's illegal to copy. If it's legal to copy then it's legal to copy. We are both saying the same thing. 

I get the impression that you think you have "figured out" NFTs, but is actually missing the point.

 

4 hours ago, Sauron said:

It is, because the whole idea is that the tokens are non fungible. If non fungibility is irrelevant because they don't make the item actually unique or rare (which is my point) then what is their purpose?

But NFTs do make them unique. The picture itself is not unique, but the NFT is.

Why do people buy authentic artworks when they can just buy fake versions of them online for a fraction of the cost? Because it's the certificate of authenticity that actually matters to those people.

 

 

4 hours ago, Sauron said:

Going back to my previous point, if I buy a game on Steam or whatever I get legal access to it and I can download it from Steam's servers. Without buying the game I wouldn't have that. NFTs on the other hand are mostly just containers for links to content that is legally and openly accessible to anyone - and if there are limitations on that, they don't depend on the NFT, meaning the NFT itself is of no use in the transaction. Even if the website checks for your NFT the same functionality could be achieved with much more efficient methods like public key cryptography or other kinds of authentication.

You're thinking of it in too practical terms. Again, it's like saying "why does anyone care that this painting comes with a certificate of authenticity? Anyone can view a picture of it on Google" or "anyone can make a replica of the painting and sell it along with a fake certificate of authenticity".

I think you simply don't get it. There is no practical reason for it, and as long as you keep coming back to "but you can achieve similar things by doing X or Y, or it would be more efficient to do Z" you will never get it.

 

And just to be clear, I think it's stupid too. I haven't spent any money on NFTs, but I do get why some people might think it's appealing. 

[LAwLz]

5 hours ago, Sauron said:

Not own in any meaningful way. I mean you can say you own something, if there's no law to back you up whether you "own" it or not is irrelevant.

You keep bringing up laws and I am not sure why. So far it seems like you don't quite understand the laws you are talking about.

There are general laws regarding ownership of goods, and this NFTs fall under those laws. We don't need special laws regarding ownership of refrigerators for refrigerators to hold value, right? Same thing here. Just because the word "NFT" isn't mentioned in some legal document does not mean it doesn't have any value or won't be recognized by laws.

 

 

1 hour ago, lewdicrous said:

Does an NFT owner own the actual rights to the image, for example, or do they just own a link to it?

You don't necessarily even own a link. You own a string of characters that the creator have said represents an image.

Think of it like this.

 

In your city, someone puts up a massive board. On that board, everyone who lives in the city gets a little picture of themselves like this:

 

 

Now, both Sauron and I are artists.

I draw a picture of Linus and says "the numbers 1a2b3c represent this picture of Linus. The person who owns the numbers 1a2b3c owns this picture"

 

I put up the code 1b2b3c on the board so that everyone can see that I own that string of numbers. Meanwhile, Sauron does the same with some other picture (let's say a picture of an elephant) and says that picture is represented by aabbcc.

The board now looks like this:

 

 

But let's say you lewdicrous wants to support me as an artist and "buy" my painting of Linus. Well as it turns out, I am willing to sell it to you for 50 dollars. But you want the satisfaction of knowing that you bought my picture. The "problem" with digital media is that you can make copies of it. But that's the "problem" that NFTs solve. That string of characters, 1a2b3c, that's unique. It can not be replicated. Only one instance of "1a2b3c" is allowed on the board at any time. So what I do when you buy my picture is I go to the board and tells everyone that I am now transferring the numbers 1a2b3c to you. Meanwhile, Sauron sells his elephant picture NFT to Quackers101. The ledger now looks like this:

 

You don't really own the picture of Linus I drew before. I didn't even have to give you ownership of the intellectual properly. What you bought and own is the string of characters "1a2b3c", which I have publicly told everyone in town represents that picture, and everyone in town saw that I moved the string 1a2b3c from my side of the board to your side of the board. The board is recorded with cameras 24/7 so if at any point someone were to transfer 1a2b3c from your side of the board to let's say Sauron's, it could be checked if it was actually you that did the transfer. Only you are allowed to move things from your side of the board.

The result is that you can now say that you have bought my picture of Linus. Sure, anyone can pick up their phone and take a picture of it if they want, but only you have the satisfaction of knowing that you "actually bought it" and supported me as an artist. 

 

You essentially paid me to transfer the number 1a2b3c from my side of the board to your side of the board so that everyone can see that you now own what I previously said represented the picture. You don't own the picture itself. You own the string 1a2b3c which represents the picture.

 

 

If we look at it in practical terms, it's stupid. If we look at it in terms of a way to buy digital art in a similar way real art is bought, and we view it as a way to support creators while getting a bit of enjoyment for "owning" a piece of art, then it makes sense, at least to me.

[SolarNova]

The image isnt the NFT lol.

 

Soooooo many people dont know what an NFT is

[RedRound2]

6 hours ago, Sauron said:

Not own in any meaningful way. I mean you can say you own something, if there's no law to back you up whether you "own" it or not is irrelevant.

It will be a way to prove ownership. What you are referring to is individual and current situations of NFTs, where in the deal itself it is stated that buying NFT will not make you the owner. But this will become one and the same in the future, where I can sell you the rights of my image to you as an NFT. And I won't be able to sell the same thing again to someone else

6 hours ago, Sauron said:

Except it's not actually decentralized because the consensus on which fork is "correct" is reliant on the most resourceful miners, AKA those that can afford the most and the best hardware. Or if you give weight to ownership of more tokens it will be those who have more that will be able to get more and consolidate their power. No matter what you move your verification mechanism to, there will always be a bias in favor of those who have more resources - they'll always decide the rules of the trade.

What you just casually explained is a incredibly hard thing to do. With the current small niche markets crypto and NFT operates, its a pipe dream for established cryptos. Do you really think this will be possible once it starts getting mass adopted?

 

Also, if you are unhappy with one blockchain (or realistically many people together), nobody is going to stop you from creating a new one. The whole concept in of itself is self regulating. Anyone can join the blockchain, anyone can leave the blockchain and create a new one - that in it itself will force the plate to balance.

 

No one can secretly own more than 50% of the horsepower or stake without literally the whole world knowing about it.

6 hours ago, Sauron said:

Not to mention it's not even desirable to make every transaction public and accessible to anyone who cares to look. It's just a bad idea. And good luck getting rid of illegal or harmful material, or undoing fraudolent transactions without rolling back days of transactions and forking the blockchain.

Its a bunch of hashes. All you know is that a transaction took place. You dont know between whom and what. Its incredibly difficult to go start tracing transactions for any person unless you have resources and expertise like the law enforcement - and even for them its much harder than going to bank or tracing paper notes

[lewdicrous]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

~snip snap~

Then, from what I understood, the person who bought the NFT only owns a receipt, not the actual rights to the thing itself.

[Forbidden Wafer]

NFTs = modern way to increase price of digital goods, probably as a means of performing money laundering without raising too many eyebrows.

[Sauron]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

You keep bringing up laws and I am not sure why. So far it seems like you don't quite understand the laws you are talking about.

There are general laws regarding ownership of goods, and this NFTs fall under those laws. We don't need special laws regarding ownership of refrigerators for refrigerators to hold value, right? Same thing here. Just because the word "NFT" isn't mentioned in some legal document does not mean it doesn't have any value or won't be recognized by laws.

Let me clarify. If you purchase a refrigerator you get a receipt certifying that you paid for it; this means you can't be accused of stealing it and also that the purchase was appropriately taxed. The receipt itself has no monetary value of course. Printing fake receipts is also considered fraud and you can sue someone for doing it if you find out. In the case of a refrigerator you also get a physical item and not just the receipt saying you now own the refrigerator so it's not quite a one to one comparison.

 

Now suppose you buy an NFT. The NFT does not certify your ownership of the "good" it's tied to in front of a court if you're then accused of stealing it or, in the case of an image or video, breaking copyright. It doesn't even mean the person who sold it to you owned the original work; I could sell you a proverbial bridge through NFTs and I wouldn't be doing anything you could sue me for. In other words it doesn't meaningfully transfer property to you any more than me just telling you verbally or writing it down on a piece of paper would.

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

You don't really own the picture of Linus I drew before. I didn't even have to give you ownership of the intellectual properly. What you bought and own is the string of characters "1a2b3c", which I have publicly told everyone in town represents that picture, and everyone in town saw that I moved the string 1a2b3c from my side of the board to your side of the board.

You seem to get what I mean here so I'm not sure where the disconnect is - having an NFT transferred to your wallet doesn't mean you own the image.

30 minutes ago, RedRound2 said:

It will be a way to prove ownership. What you are referring to is individual and current situations of NFTs, where in the deal itself it is stated that buying NFT will not make you the owner. But this will become one and the same in the future, where I can sell you the rights of my image to you as an NFT. And I won't be able to sell the same thing again to someone else

Why do you think we need NFTs for this? If you draw original art you can sign over the rights to someone for money. They can then sell those rights again if they wish. NFTs don't even prevent you from reminting the same image whereas once you sign your rights away the person who purchased them could sue you for attempting to sell those rights to someone else.

34 minutes ago, RedRound2 said:

What you just casually explained is a incredibly hard thing to do. With the current small niche markets crypto and NFT operates, its a pipe dream for established cryptos. Do you really think this will be possible once it starts getting mass adopted?

It's already the case for current cryptos. Ethereum is highly concentrated in just a few hundred wallets, most of which probably belong to exchanges and other centralized entities that hold a strangle hold on the market. Smaller coins take that number down to a handful. Improvements on networks like ethereum have already been delayed or cancelled because they did not immediately benefit the top validators. Once a significant amount of a crypto is in the hands of a few large validators (as it is now) they have no interest in making it more accessible to others as they directly benefit from the current high volatility and validation costs.

 

It's delusional to think small stake holders have any say in the future of a cryptocurrency and unlike the banking system there are no regulations keeping this stuff in check.

54 minutes ago, RedRound2 said:

Also, if you are unhappy with one blockchain (or realistically many people together), nobody is going to stop you from creating a new one.

If it ever took off, guess what would happen? Someone would come along with 100 times the money all the founders have combined and wrest control of the blockchain. There is no proof of work or proof of stake that holds - if I can just come in with millions of money and buy more gpus, asics or tokens than you, you can't stop me from doing so.

59 minutes ago, RedRound2 said:

No one can secretly own more than 50% of the horsepower or stake without literally the whole world knowing about it.

Who says you need 50%? You just need a relatively small group of people who own most of the tokens and, by virtue of having orders of magnitude more, have interests that are diametrically opposed to small holders. Do you think someone holds 50% of all fiat currency? Of course not. And yet there are powerful interests that drive it and are beyond your control. Crypto just makes this problem worse by removing the safeguards.

[LAwLz]

32 minutes ago, lewdicrous said:

Then, from what I understood, the person who bought the NFT only owns a receipt, not the actual rights to the thing itself.

That is exactly right. 

The NFT is essentially the receipt, or proof of authenticity. 

[tikker]

5 hours ago, Sauron said:

They prove someone made a transaction on the blockchain that claims you did.

Isn't this a little bit grasping at straws? Your bank transfers are also only proving that someone made a transaction using your bank account claiming it was you.

5 hours ago, Sauron said:

More accurately a link to said copy.

There is no such thing as scarce digital media. You can make infinite identical copies of your numbered ape. You can store the checksum of the image in the NFT but that doesn't make it a unique copy.

I'm not saying adding a checksum makes it a unique copy. The checksum should be the same if it's a copy. If I paint the number 2 in say something like a series of artworks, however, then it's unique. You can sell one copy and then never sell another, meaning there will be only one person that has your permission to use your artwork for whatever their purpose.

5 hours ago, Sauron said:

Certificates of authenticity only have worth because they're given out by (supposedly) trustworthy institutions. Further, they only work because authenticity can be established - no matter how good you are, you can't make a perfect copy of a Van Gogh; it's a physical item. You can easily make perfect copies of digital media.

So is the artist themselves saying these 100 copies are the only licesed, authorised-for-use copies out there not a trustworth institution? Your second sentence is exactly the point NFTs try to do something with: make it so that authenticity can be established. The van Gogh is only worth as much as it is because it's authenticated and because it's the only one. If there were a million genuine versions of it, it wouldn't be that special or valuable. People value "the original".

5 hours ago, Sauron said:

And guess what? Certificates of authenticity don't require a blockchain.

And guess what? I never said they do. Just like I said with Bitcoin, it's simply an attempt at a demonstration of something within a certain setting. In the case of NFTs that idea is to get the concept of an original and trading it into the digital world. I think NFTs are a nice idea, but as I've said on multiple occassions I'm not convinced of the implementation yet. However, we wouldn't have most of what we have nowadays if we always stopped at "we can do that already". If it fails it fails. That doesn't mean we can't try.

5 hours ago, Sauron said:

The court will see that you, the copyright holder, did not give me explicit permission to reproduce or use the art work. Me owning an NFT that links to it is irrelevant, because NFTs are not recognized by the law as certificates of ownership. If you give out your permission to owners of the NFT you can do that but the NFTs themselves have nothing to do with them having legal permission. Further, just because you gave me permission to use the artwork doesn't mean the permission will be automatically transferred to whomever I sell the NFT to. So the NFT is irrelevant in this sense.

I can bring that into evidence and the court can see that I sold to person B and I never sold you anything be it the artwork or rights to use it. At this point I'd love to see some sources to back up that they mean nothing legally or the contractual rules that they break. I can find something about an on-going case and some bits and bobs here or there, but nothing that points me to NFTs being impermissible evidence. If you and I agree on a contract then that contracat is legally binding if it meets the legal requirements. NFTs are no different unless they breach some legal requirement for a contract between two people.

5 hours ago, Sauron said:

You don't have to trust individuals with normal banking. There are laws and sanity checks. With crypto and NFTs you have to trust everyone with your transaction history. You have to trust software of dubious origins to make the system accessible. You have to trust whoever minted the NFT to not have inserted a trojan in it.

Adn what makes you think laws don't apply to online sellers? Just last year a bank was fined: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/german-finance-watchdog-fines-deutsche-bank-euribor-controls-2021-12-29/

Quote

BaFin found flaws in certain processes meant to safeguard the quality of data used to calculate the rate, including weaknesses in regular controls and other organisational precautions, the source said.

The bank has been subject to numerous regulatory and legal investigations over the past decade. This has included rate-rigging allegations that have involved multiple global banks.

In April BaFin ordered Deutsche Bank to implement further safeguards to prevent money laundering.

So yeah, you do have to trust the bank they have their stuff up to snuff, don't use your money for nefarious purposes and that their system isn't infected with a trojan that does who-knows-what with your information. Of course you have to trust the person that minted the NFT, but again that's the same that me trusting you that the GPU you're selling me works and that you won't ghost me if it doesn't.

5 hours ago, Sauron said:

Did you know you can just send people virus NFTs and steal from their wallet, without making any invalid transaction?

Digital things can contain viruses? Who knew. That seems to be fixed though and also was more or less a classic from the book of scams: https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/13/22723092/opensea-nft-vulnerability-gift-security-researchers-wallet-hack

Quote

While the attackers potentially being able to drain entire wallets is certainly not a good look for OpenSea, it wasn’t a simple matter of just gifting someone an NFT — the exploit needed its target to click on a few prompts first, including one that might include transaction details. While being sent an NFT gift doesn’t require any interaction on your part, the malicious NFTs were harmless if they just sat unviewed in an OpenSea account.

The potentially dangerous situation occurs when viewing the image by itself (by, say, right-clicking on it and hitting “open in new tab”). For users with a crypto-wallet browser extension like MetaMask installed, it initiates a popup asking to connect storage.opensea.io to their wallet. If the target clicks yes, the attackers could snag the wallet’s information and trigger another popup asking to approve a transfer from the victim’s wallet to their own. If you’re not paying attention or didn’t realize what was going on and confirmed the transfer, you could wind up losing everything in your wallet.

That's just a textbook scam taking advantage of people not reading or thinking about what they're doing.

5 hours ago, Sauron said:

It's almost like there's a fundamental problem with our economic system that can't be solved by code.

Which is why you don't see me saying crypto is the saviour.

5 hours ago, Sauron said:

LEDs are better than filament in every way whereas crypto is just worse than existing methods.

Yeah, but how do we know that? Because we went looking for and trying out other things to generate light. And just like most things, the first iterations were almost surely poor quality compared to modern day variants, expensive or difficult to manufacture and expensive to buy, yet now you see them everywhere.

5 hours ago, Sauron said:

I'm all for exploration, it's just that crypto has had its time to shine and it just doesn't do what its creators expected. It's fine to try but at this point it's clear this isn't going anywhere good.

Yes for the big expensive ones like BTC and ETH I agree that I think it has indeed hampered them substantially having them turned into speculative assets instead of other things.

2 hours ago, LAwLz said:

If we look at it in terms of a way to buy digital art in a similar way real art is bought, and we view it as a way to support creators while getting a bit of enjoyment for "owning" a piece of art, then it makes sense, at least to me.

That's it, to my understanding. An attempt to allow trading and originality of digital things similar to physical things.

 

I stay away from them as well. I can definitely see good aspects of them, but I'm also not convinced they are complete working solution the way it is now.

 

[Edit] Thinking some more about it, yes, it's not that you own that exact image. Or you do, but because as you say a copy will be identical the image itself is fungible. However, you do own "the original" or "that copy" of it. Which is a concept people like and the reasoning behind NFTs. You selling me a random image you found on Google is completely possible indeed and doens't make for much good, but used in the right way I can see them working. And then I refer back to my last sentence: it is indeed to easy to use them in not the right way or to take advantage of something, which is why I'm also not full on board.

[IPD]

IMHO, the more bitcoin wallets are raided and NFTs are saved as JPGs, the sooner we can be done with the lunacy of GPU  global warming and electrical-demands that existing power-grids cannot sustain.

[Sauron]

5 minutes ago, tikker said:

Isn't this a little bit grasping at straws? Your bank transfers are also only proving that someone made a transaction using your bank account claiming it was you.

I'm not worried about who it was that made the transaction, my problem is with what the transaction really means. I don't own a piece of art bought "as" an NFT any more than I would if you scribbled that on a piece of toilet paper - I can maybe assert I own the piece of paper, not that I own the art. A purchase of, say, a painting through conventional means on the other hand is more than just a movement of monopoly money in a banking system; the painting is now legally mine to do with as I please.

10 minutes ago, tikker said:

I'm not saying adding a checksum makes it a unique copy. The checksum should be the same if it's a copy. If I paint the number 2 in say something like a series of artworks, however, then it's unique. You can sell one copy and then never sell another, meaning there will be only one person that has your permission to use your artwork for whatever their purpose.

You're again assuming you gain the rights to that image by buying the NFT when it's just not true. You can sell exclusive copyright privileges but that has nothing to do with, and no need for, NFTs.

12 minutes ago, tikker said:

So is the artist themselves saying these 100 copies are the only licesed, authorised-for-use copies out there not a trustworth institution?

Absolutely not. Scams are rampant in the NFT market, people sell artwork they didn't make all the time and there is literally nothing that prevents them from minting NFTs for the same artwork thousands of times if they want - none of it is illegal. Pinky promises aren't enough.

15 minutes ago, tikker said:

The van Gogh is only worth as much as it is because it's authenticated and because it's the only one. If there were a million genuine versions of it, it wouldn't be that special or valuable. People value "the original".

You literally cannot copy a Van Gogh perfectly. You can perfectly copy a digital image infinitely. There can't be an "original" version, the concept is meaningless when dealing with digital media.

 

And can we please stop pretending computer generated ape images are in any way comparable to a Van Gogh painting? Nobody investing in NFTs cares in the slightest what the image portrays; they are used exclusively as speculation tokens. Talented artists are not making nearly as much money off of this as people socially engineering MLM-like schemes to sell bad picrew avatars.

19 minutes ago, tikker said:

I can bring that into evidence and the court can see that I sold to person B and I never sold you anything be it the artwork or rights to use it.

Again, unrecognized currency transactions don't have legal worth. No legal contract was ever signed. It's your word against the official copyright holder's.

21 minutes ago, tikker said:

I can find something about an on-going case and some bits and bobs here or there, but nothing that points me to NFTs being impermissible evidence.

I'd love to see anything at all showing they are permissible evidence of copyright ownership on their own.

23 minutes ago, tikker said:

Of course you have to trust the person that minted the NFT, but again that's the same that me trusting you that the GPU you're selling me works and that you won't ghost me if it doesn't.

Would you just give me cash in a back alley if I promised you I'd bring you a 3080 in exchange tomorrow? Do you think this is the same thing as walking into a store and buying a 3080 with a VISA?

26 minutes ago, tikker said:

Digital things can contain viruses? Who knew. That seems to be fixed though

And how long do you think it will take for a new exploit to be found? You have no legal recourse against this, remember. Once the transaction is done it can't be reverted (at least, not by you) and nobody will refund your money. If money is stolen from a bank it's not just gone without recourse; in most cases, if you get scammed into a bank transaction the bank will be able to roll it back or just refund you depending on the situation. You can sue the thieves. Not so with NFTs.

29 minutes ago, tikker said:

Yeah, but how do we know that? Because we went looking for and trying out other things to generate light.

I'm sorry but this is just a completely inapplicable comparison, we didn't need to push LED and LED investment for over a decade just to see if there were any improvements. The improvement was obvious and measurable, just like NFTs are obviously and measurably a terrible idea.

30 minutes ago, tikker said:

Yes for the big expensive ones like BTC and ETH I agree that I think it has indeed hampered them substantially having them turned into speculative assets instead of other things.

They're not tied to anything in the real world so any token that becomes popular is doomed to the same fate. This isn't a flaw in the code, it's a flaw in the idea.

[LAwLz]

3 hours ago, Sauron said:

It doesn't even mean the person who sold it to you owned the original work; I could sell you a proverbial bridge through NFTs and I wouldn't be doing anything you could sue me for.

Depends on what you mean by "proverbial bridge", but you would be breaking copyright law if you for example tried to sell an NFT of the Mona Lisa. You could be sued for that, since you are breaking copyright law. You are not authorized to use that artwork in such a manner.

Likewise, I am not allowed to sell some homemade movie using Marvel characters, even if I am not technically selling them something Marvel made. I feel like you are trying to come up with loopholes for laws that just doesn't work.

 

 

3 hours ago, Sauron said:

You seem to get what I mean here so I'm not sure where the disconnect is - having an NFT transferred to your wallet doesn't mean you own the image.

Yes, that's true. I don't see why that matters though. People buying NFTs don't think (or at least I hope they don't think) that they are buying the rights to the image.

They are buying the hash that is tied to the artwork as proof of them having "bought the artwork", in the same way someone buying a genuine movie prop will get a certificate of authenticity.

Let's say I were to buy the prop Mjölnir hammer that was used in Avengers . If I bought that, I would get a certificate of authenticity which validates that I bought the real hammer.

Now, let's say we had a perfect replication machine. It could make 1000 exact copies of the Mjölnir hammer used in Avengers, and everyone could just get one for 0 dollars. Everyone basically had a Mjölnir hammer at home that cared about Thor. In such a scenario, what do you think is the most valuable piece when buying the authentic hammer.

A) The physical hammer itself.

B) The certificate of authenticity and what it represents

 

The answer is B, if everyone had an exact copy of Mjölnir at home then the certificate of authenticity would be what people put value on. A true collector don't care about having a perfect replica. They care about having the certificate of authenticity that proves that they have the real one. They don't actually put any value in the hammer. What they value is the certificate of authenticity.

 

Same thing with NFTs.

People spending 10,000 dollars on some ape picture aren't paying that price because they think it's a cool picture. They are spending that money because they want the "glory" of "owning" that picture, just like a collector feels pride from knowing they own the real Mjölnir that was used on set.

 

Also, I have alluded to it a couple of times already but I feel like the anti-NFT crowd misses it. I think that a lot of people see NFTs as a way to support their favourite artists. NFTs are just a fun way to give something back to someone donating, and once you have donated you might be able to sell it to get some money back. It's essentially donation by proxy.

When I donated to LTT (see my badges) I didn't do it because I thought I would own a piece of their studio or whatever they were taking donations for. I paid because I wanted to support Linus and Co, and it was nice of them to give me a badge as a token of appreciation. If someone on the forum offered me let's say 1000 dollars for the badge because they really wanted it, I would sell it to them. I can't do that since the badge isn't an NFT but you get the point.

[mr moose]

21 hours ago, Sauron said:

 

Except it's not actually decentralized because the consensus on which fork is "correct" is reliant on the most resourceful miners, AKA those that can afford the most and the best hardware. Or if you give weight to ownership of more tokens it will be those who have more that will be able to get more and consolidate their power. No matter what you move your verification mechanism to, there will always be a bias in favor of those who have more resources - they'll always decide the rules of the trade.

 

So pretty much exactly the same as it is with everything else. those with money and power decide not only what laws exist but who they apply to as well.

[tikker]

15 hours ago, Sauron said:

Absolutely not. Scams are rampant in the NFT market, people sell artwork they didn't make all the time and there is literally nothing that prevents them from minting NFTs for the same artwork thousands of times if they want - none of it is illegal. Pinky promises aren't enough.

Which is why I used the term artist and not seller. I agree that it's a problem when it's difficult to verify that the seller is indeed the artist (or has permission).

15 hours ago, Sauron said:

You literally cannot copy a Van Gogh perfectly. You can perfectly copy a digital image infinitely. There can't be an "original" version, the concept is meaningless when dealing with digital media.

 

And can we please stop pretending computer generated ape images are in any way comparable to a Van Gogh painting? Nobody investing in NFTs cares in the slightest what the image portrays; they are used exclusively as speculation tokens. Talented artists are not making nearly as much money off of this as people socially engineering MLM-like schemes to sell bad picrew avatars.

I know you can't and I'm not saying you can. What I mean was that if van Gogh painted a million similar versions of The Night Watch that all survived then it wouldn't be worth a lot, because there would be a million of them. If he painted 10 of them and his assistant the other 9 million in a quality just as good or rivalling van Gogh himself, his assistant's would still be worth less, because it wasn't made by the man himself. I agree with your second bit. I'm merely argueing what they intend to do, not that it's a working situation. I think Lalwz perhaps words it better than I do:

13 hours ago, LAwLz said:

A true collector don't care about having a perfect replica. They care about having the certificate of authenticity that proves that they have the real one. They don't actually put any value in the hammer. What they value is the certificate of authenticity.

 

15 hours ago, Sauron said:

Again, unrecognized currency transactions don't have legal worth. No legal contract was ever signed. It's your word against the official copyright holder's.

We enter a contract the moment we agree to exchange X amount of good A for Y amount of good B:
 

Spoiler

It might not be "money" or legal tender, in which case it may be classified as bartering, but that can be a perfectly legal contract:

Quote

https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/bartering-laws.html
Most of the time a barter deal meets all the legal requirements of a binding contract, including offer and acceptance, consideration, etc. This is especially true if the agreement creates obligations or legal duties for both parties. In order to create a contract, usually each party is required to render something of value in exchange for another item of value.

The invoice or whatever can then represent the contract of sale:

Quote

https://www.upcounsel.com/what-is-contract-of-sale

In some instances, an invoice, purchase order, or an order acknowledgement can be declared a formal sales contract.

·      Purchase orders are written by a buyer and sent to a seller. They will state the amount and type of goods that are being purchased, the cost, and other information pertinent to the sale.

·      An invoice is written by the seller and sent to the buyer in response to the purchase order or other forms of transaction.

·      An order acknowledgement helps establish the position of the seller in the event of a dispute. It is created by a seller in response to getting a purchase order. It will clarify additional details of the sale, including scheduling the delivery if necessary. If an order acknowledgement is also signed by a buyer, it then becomes a sales contract.

The benefit of legal tender is that it has to be recognised in an attempt to settle a debt should it escalate to a dispute. Other than that, you are free to charge in whatever currency you want, be it crypto or oak leaves. You're not even forced to only accept "recognised currencies":

Quote

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/knowledgebank/what-is-legal-tender
A shop owner can choose what payment they accept. If you want to pay for a pack of gum with a £50 note, it’s perfectly legal to turn you down. Likewise for all other banknotes, it’s a matter of discretion. If your local corner shop decided to only accept payments in Pokémon cards that would be within their right too. But they’d probably lose customers. 

This (for now) even extends to SMART contracts:

Quote

https://artlawandmore.com/2021/07/08/what-are-the-legal-issues-concerning-non-fungible-tokens-nfts/
NFTs are unique cryptographic tokens stored on a decentralized blockchain that are capable of representing ownership of goods (most commonly digital artworks, on which this article will focus). As blockchains are digital ledgers that permanently record and timestamp transactions, an NFT is an undisputable record of authenticity and ownership of the token. Each NFT is unique and cannot be deleted or counterfeited (notwithstanding another NFT could be created by copying and re-minting the same underlying artwork).  
<snip>
However, on the face of it, there is no reason why a SMART contract should not be legally binding so long as the terms of the contract are sufficiently clear, both parties intend to be legally bound and both parties have given consideration.

 

 

15 hours ago, Sauron said:

I'd love to see anything at all showing they are permissible evidence of copyright ownership on their own.

If that NFT contains/constitutes the statement of transfer of copyright to the buyer then the NFT is proof of that happening. As you said it's your word against the copyright holder, but if it gets determined that the transaction is legtimate and voluntarily done by the previous copyright holder, I don't see why a court wouldn't uphold that it constituted willful transfer of copyright.

Quote

https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/what-are-copyright-implications-nfts-2021-10-29/
Creation of an NFT can be categorized as a copy or even a derivative of the original work ("a work based upon one or more preexisting works" such as an "art reproduction … or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted.").17 USC § 101. In other words, under U.S. copyright law the copyright holder (absent a license) is and should be the only one with the authority to transform the original work into an NFT.

 

15 hours ago, Sauron said:

Would you just give me cash in a back alley if I promised you I'd bring you a 3080 in exchange tomorrow? Do you think this is the same thing as walking into a store and buying a 3080 with a VISA?

Depends on how much I trust you. I can't walk into a store and buy your card with VISA, but that's probably why things like eBay were created.

15 hours ago, Sauron said:

And how long do you think it will take for a new exploit to be found? You have no legal recourse against this, remember.

How long will it take before antoher CPU exploit is found? How long before another Windows vulnerability is brought to light? How long before another log4Shell-level exploit appears? Exploits apply to everything in the digital world. Will we know exile Apache because "who knows what will be next"? It's a valid risk and you have as much legal recourse as getting scammed on a random flea market where you'll never find that person again.

15 hours ago, Sauron said:

Once the transaction is done it can't be reverted (at least, not by you) and nobody will refund your money. If money is stolen from a bank it's not just gone without recourse; in most cases, if you get scammed into a bank transaction the bank will be able to roll it back or just refund you depending on the situation. You can sue the thieves. Not so with NFTs.

I'm not argueing that. Like I have said in the past, that this is one of the reasons why I don't see crypto as making it to the masses in its current form, because indeed people need those abilities to roll back transactions in case of fraud, for example.

15 hours ago, Sauron said:

I'm sorry but this is just a completely inapplicable comparison, we didn't need to push LED and LED investment for over a decade just to see if there were any improvements. The improvement was obvious and measurable, just like NFTs are obviously and measurably a terrible idea.

The LED was accidentally discovered and we still had to work for over a decade on it to make them emit usable colours, higher brightness, more efficient, and affordable both to buy and produce for commercial use and still not that long ago to make them produce warmer light akin to incandescent bulbs. Perhaps their advantages became clearer quickly, but they weren't an obvious invention. I agree NFTs aren't working at the moment, but they might spur something. Or not, as it seems now, I'm fine with either path.

15 hours ago, Sauron said:

They're not tied to anything in the real world so any token that becomes popular is doomed to the same fate. This isn't a flaw in the code, it's a flaw in the idea.

Neither is fiat money, which would suffer the same fate if not regulated. In our modern economy, such a fluctuating asset wouldn't work, so I agree that a "usable" currency and no regulation are more or less opposites.

[Sauron]

15 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Depends on what you mean by "proverbial bridge", but you would be breaking copyright law if you for example tried to sell an NFT of the Mona Lisa. You could be sued for that, since you are breaking copyright law. You are not authorized to use that artwork in such a manner.

Likewise, I am not allowed to sell some homemade movie using Marvel characters, even if I am not technically selling them something Marvel made. I feel like you are trying to come up with loopholes for laws that just doesn't work.

Aside from copyright on the Mona Lisa not being applicable in general because the author died centuries ago, are you sure this is the case? I'm pretty sure that so long as you're not selling a copy of the work or using it as part of another work you're technically not breaking copyright. Can I be sued by Marvel for selling you a piece of paper with a hash of an image of Spider-Man?

 

I think the difference between an NFT and a fan movie is meaningful; there is no real tie between the NFT and the image and I'm not reproducing the image to sell it to you. I could be wrong though, I'm not a lawyer after all.

15 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Yes, that's true. I don't see why that matters though. People buying NFTs don't think (or at least I hope they don't think) that they are buying the rights to the image.

They are buying the hash that is tied to the artwork as proof of them having "bought the artwork", in the same way someone buying a genuine movie prop will get a certificate of authenticity.

Would you buy a certificate of authenticity for a painting you don't own? Plus, certificates of authenticity can be issued more than once - holding a specific one doesn't really mean anything without owning the painting. Obviously you can buy whatever you want... so long as we recognize it has nothing to do with the artwork and all that is being traded are tokens with no more intrinsic value than a unique grain of sand.

 

If we want to get into what NFT buyers believe, I think it's pretty obvious they're only in it for the speculation - but they'll insist it's actually about paying artists for their work. You can see this in this very thread. At best this is misleading and at worst it's dishonest advertisement for a pump and dump scheme. It's not genuine artists making bank off NFTs, it's people pumping out autogenerated astroturfed garbage.