This article makes my brain want to bleed.
I’ll say it louder one last time for the people in the back:
THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH BITS IN ANY TYPE OF NFT TO STORE ART ON THE BLOCKCHAIN. THE BEST YOU CAN DO IS A URL WEBLINK TO THE IMAGE AND AN IMAGE HASH. THAT IS FUNCTIONALLY NOT THE SAME AS STORING THE ACTUAL IMAGE ON THE BLOCKCHAIN. IF THE ORIGINAL IMAGE GETS DELETED, THE URL AND HASH ARE BOTH EFFECTIVELY USELESS.
The art is always a completely separate entity from the NFT itself. Trying to act like this is “regulating art” is just more cryptobro bullshit.
Clearly, the answer is more blockchain. In fact, let’s blockchain the blockchain and then blockchain that blockchain to… Woo, I got carried away. What were we talking about?
Yes, and a deed for land ownership is not the same thing as land itself. Nobody cares. That’s not the point.
And legal regulations around the deeds for land ownership are different laws than the legal regulations for how you can use the land.
But conflating the two as the same thing is the purpose of this lawsuit, even though it’s clear as fucking day that they are regulating the deal-making-instrument (the NFT) and not the art itself, which, once again, is a separate entity from the NFT.
Let’s assume you’re arguing in good faith here so we can understand why land deeds and URLs are completely different.
Deeds are managed by a central authority. There is an agreed-upon way(s) to view and search those deeds. There is a single authority to update or remove deeds. The items the deed refers to also are controlled by a single authority and changing them has a single process.
URLs are registered (loosely) with a central authority but the similarities end there. I can impersonate a URL on a network (even up to large chunks of the internet if I’m able to confuse DNS in a large enough attack). So just because you’ve bought the domain referenced in the blockchain and set up some name servers doesn’t mean any consumer of the blockchain or even the internet is guaranteed to hit your instance of the domain. All a URL is is a reference to something so let’s assume for a minute we can have a global reference. What’s behind it? Again, completely uncontrolled. For now it could be your NFT; what happens if I am your hosting provider and destroy your instance? Move your hardware? What’s to prevent you, the owner of the assumed global reference, to change what that uniform resource locator is actually locating?
Land deeds and URLs are not analogous. Land and the content served at a URL are not analogous. Let’s look at NFTs quickly to see if we can actually do something about this!
Since we have a single-write, read-only database, why not store the full thing in the DB? Well, first you have to agree on a representation. It has to be unchanging so we can’t use a URL. It can’t ever duplicate so realistically hashing is out (unless our hash provides a bijection which is just a fancy way of saying use the fucking object itself). Assuming we’re only talking about digital artifacts (attempting to digitize a physical asset is a form of hashing meaning we get collisions so you can’t prove ownership), we’re now in an arms race for you to register all of your assets and their serialization methods before I brute force everything. Oh and this needs to live everywhere so it can be public so you need peta-many petabyte drives. But wait! Now we’re burning the sun in power just to show you have ownership of 10 and I have ownership of 01. Fuck me that’s dumb.
I think that is why IPFS is a popular option for NFTs. With its content addresses.
Honestly ledgers, deeds, etc. Its crazy how much energy and human effort is put into them.
Like deeds aren’t just paper, they are bueracracies, buildings, computer systems, and people with guns and batons cracking skulls.
the NFT is not the art itself, it is at best a proof of ownership.
It’s not even that.
There is a huge lack of insight into who owns the copyright of an NFT. This confusion likely stems from the fact that an NFT comprises two things: (i) the identifiable, non-fungible, non-replicable, and transferrable cryptographic asset recorded on the blockchain, and (ii) the creative content. The creative content is separate and distinct from the actual asset recorded on the blockchain. As such, the person or entity that created the creative content owns the copyright. The content creator continues to own the copyright, even if the NFT is sold to someone else. It’s analogous to Jeff Koons selling artwork he created—Koons can sell the art to one person to hang on their wall, but since Jeff also owns the copyright, he can sell that same artwork as an image on t-shirts.
https://bpp.msu.edu/magazine/nfts-what-you-need-to-know-to-protect-copyrights-june2022/
NFTs are literally just URLs, pointlessly stored on “the blockchain”. URLs that point to servers which can be switched off at any moment.
wait, what are you even buying then?!
I thought (i) at least served as a proof of ownership for (ii)…
No, the “non-fungibility” simply means that anyone who creates an NFT with the same link will be distinct from your link to the image, even if the actual URL is the same. Both NFTs can also be traced back to when they were created/minted because they’re on a blockchain, a property called provenance. If the authentic tokens came from a well known minting, you can establish that your token is “authentic” and the copy token is a recreation, even if the actual link (or other content) is completely identical.
Nothing about having the “authentic” token would give you actual legal rights though.
At best you’re buying into a collective agreement of ownership among those also participating in the NFT ecosystem. You own a thing because a large enough group of people agree you own it and respect the authority of that token.
At worst you’ve been scammed and are trying to convince yourself the above is true and that said “large enough group” includes anyone at all capable of enforcing said ownership. Spoilers: it does not.
NFTs are great for replacing things like deeds or vehicle titles, where we need paperwork to verify ownership. But the problem arises when it’s cryptographically hard (meaning exceedingly unlikely on reasonable timescales) to reverse fraudulent transfers of those documents. Cutting out a centralized authority at the price of making the system more vulnerable for gullible people is almost always not worth it.
Regulating a money scam that uses art as a token isn’t regulating art, it’s regulating money scams.
If pieces of art metadata are being traded like securities, then yes, the SEC should regulate their trade.
It should have absolutely nothing to do with the “art” associated with that metadata, it should just be regulated for what it is.
it should just be regulated for what it is.
Ok soooo how should metadata be “regulated”?
Given that the world of high art is basically entirely used by rich people as a way to launder money and dodge taxes?
Yes. It absolutely should. It should have been like 30 years ago.
