[HN Gopher] Charlie Bit My Finger video to be taken off YouTube ...
___________________________________________________________________
Charlie Bit My Finger video to be taken off YouTube after selling
for PS500k
Author : miles
Score : 72 points
Date : 2021-05-25 18:12 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| When someone bought this NFT (or in general), did someone sign a
| contract with you saying they transferred ownership in the
| intellectual property the NFT "represented"? (Ie, was at the
| other end of the URL, I guess?)
|
| Cause the NFT itself means nothing to courts or laws, does it?
|
| If someone owns the copyright in that video, they can send
| YouTube takedown notices. But what, if anything, makes NFT proof
| of ownership of copyright? How do you even know the person that
| sold it to you had the copyright to transfer, and did they
| transfer it?
|
| One of the things that seems irraitional about this NFT market.
| mdoms wrote:
| This is covered in the article.
| phreeza wrote:
| I don't think it means nothing to a court,even if it isn't a
| formal contract. Verbal agreements also carry some weight in
| court in most jurisdictions, they just aren't as bulletproof. I
| would guess an nft is somewhere on that level?
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| > Cause the NFT itself means nothing to courts or laws, does
| it?
|
| We won't know till it's tried in court, but given that
| handshake agreements can carry weight in court if they can be
| proven, I'd suspect an NFT could be binding.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Is there a handshake agreement that copyright was
| transferred? Do the NFT auction sites say anything about
| this?
|
| What if the seller says "Oh, you thought I was selling you
| the copyright in the thing the NFT represents? I don't know
| how you got that idea, I never said that! I just sold you the
| NFT, that's it." Do people buying NFT's actually get some
| kind of agreement that the seller owned the copyright in the
| thing represneted and sold it with the NFT purchase?
|
| Real questions, I don't use these things!
| AlexandrB wrote:
| NFTs generally aren't a transfer of copyright.
|
| > An NFT is a bit like a collectible certificate of
| authenticity, but its owner does not actually buy the copyright
| itself - meaning the artwork the NFT represents can still be
| shown wherever the original artist or creator chooses.
|
| So the whole question is moot. All you own is the NFT and the
| NFT is _associated_ with some cultural artifact but doesn 't
| represent any legal _rights_. Like other cryptocurrencies it 's
| a speculative asset whose value is based on the fact that
| people want to buy them and little else.
| monkeynotes wrote:
| This was kind of my question too. I am still yet to properly
| understand what the point in owning an NFT tied to a piece of
| digital art is.
|
| Traditionally owning art is meaningful because you get to
| display it in your home/office etc. The artwork is
| intrinsically valuable as a unique material object. Digital
| art, on the other hand, can be duplicated easily so there is
| nothing you can point to and say "this is the original".
|
| I don't see how that is synonymous with owning traditional art,
| you don't have anything unique since everyone can "own" Charlie
| bit my finger as much as the NFT owner owns it. We can watch
| the video whenever we want, even if it's taken down off of the
| official YT channel, there are thousands of copies everywhere.
| So unless you own the rights to the video and royalties or
| whatever then all you have is an NFT token that symbolizes
| something important to whoever thinks it's important (much like
| currency).
|
| Seems to me that an NFT itself is more like a vanity plate on a
| car than anything else, basically bragging rights that you can
| sell on if anyone else sees value in bragging. I suppose the
| gamble is that NFTs will continue to mean something to someone
| but it does seem to me to be a long bet that people with piles
| of cash are hedging or simply don't mind paying $$$s for a
| fashion statement.
| smnrchrds wrote:
| Are there laws to prevent owners of culturally significant
| artworks, e.g. van Gogh and da Vinci paitnings, from being
| destroyed, and from being shipped to countries that do not have
| regulations against them being destroyed? It seems the free
| market is moving in the direction of valuing destruction of art
| more than the art itself. In the absence of regulations, it would
| be a matter of time until some investor buys up a bunch of
| masterpieces, turn them into NFTs, destroys them, and ends up
| doubling their money in the process.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| You can't turn a real Van Gogh into a NFT. If anything the
| actual painting _is_ the real life NFT to the image that is
| public domain on the internet. By destroying an original you
| own you are just burning money.
|
| And by doing that, you will also piss off pretty much everyone
| on the planet, and no one will want that (digital) NFT. In
| fact, I wouldn't want to take that shameful NFT even if you
| paid me for it.
| smnrchrds wrote:
| I would rather not leave it to chance. If there aren't
| regulations yet, they should pass some ASAP. It didn't matter
| how many millions of people cared about Cecil the lion; it
| still took just one rich asshole for him to lose his life.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Cecil_the_lion
| Bronze_Colossus wrote:
| I feel what your talking about is a non issue. Now, I think
| NFT is all a scam but I do believe that people think they
| can make money out of it.
|
| NFTs are for digital artworks, it is an artificial way to
| create scarcity. A physical painting is already scarce.
| Burning an actual Van Gogh would be like burning down a
| house and saying it's okay because the deeds to the house
| are fine.
| miracle2k wrote:
| Someone burned a Banksy print and converted it into an NFT.
| It's certainly possible. In the US, there are moral rights
| of an artist that would probably make the destruction of
| work illegal, but that might only apply to living artists.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I would describe myself, usually, as not a jealous man. I don't
| recollect the last time I've felt jealousy. But, something about
| NFTs provokes anger within me. Maybe that anger is jealously.
|
| It feels like NFTs are a mockery of the "market" for lack of a
| better word. When I think of what I would need to sell (items or
| time doing labor) to get these amounts and how incredibly useless
| NFTs actually are... It's frustrating.
|
| I don't feel this way about inherited wealth, or people who got
| money through the lottery, or for being famous reality show
| people, but something about NFTs really rubs me the wrong way.
| bloak wrote:
| I remember some of the people who worked hard designing the
| hardware and software that went into feature phones being
| outraged, perhaps in a similar way, by the stupid amounts of
| money people were spending on ringtones at that time (about 20
| years ago).
| iamben wrote:
| And yet now I don't know _anyone_ with a 'novelty' ringtone.
| Even though it's ludicrously simple to choose a song or
| whatever else - literally everyone I know, or strangers whose
| phone rings - it's a vibrate or a ring.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| For most of us there is a disconnect between what we perceive
| as valuable to society and what is valuable in monetary terms.
| And yes, if someone can gain enormous sums of money by a stroke
| of dumb luck (in this case having made a video that went viral
| because it was just at the right time) than that tends to rub
| people who strife for fairness in life the wrong way.
|
| About inherited wealth: once you grok the ideological arguments
| for heavily taxing inheritances, and then also realize that
| above a certain threshold people can just spend a minute
| fraction of that wealth to ensure that those rules don't apply
| to them and their offspring, you might feel the same way
| depending on your idealogical outlook. The idea that taxation
| is unfair or even theft is very pervasive in society though,
| and it is such a sucesful memetic device that people who stand
| to lose the most by it are often staunch supporters of tax
| evasion. The idea being that just as with the lottery, one day
| they too might hit it big time, and then they too would
| benefit! Statistically, this is unlikely to the point of being
| negligible, but it is easier on the mind than understanding the
| situation for what it really is.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Technology like NFTs being promoted in the way that they have
| been impacts the rest of the market. Not only do they
| manipulate relative values of legitimate applications of
| technology, they make people distrust the entire tech sector
| once the hype cycle dies down.
|
| Look at blockchain today versus 4-5 years ago. There might
| actually be some legitimate uses for the technology, but that
| market has been soiled by the scammers and their ICOs.
|
| At least that's where my frustration comes from.
| beforeolives wrote:
| Right - seeing so much money thrown around with so little
| backing/reason/substance doesn't really motivate you to go back
| to your life and put in a full workweek in exchange for
| whatever your salary is.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| There seem to be 2 economies: There's the 1% (0.1%?) economy
| where there is a lack of productive places to "put" money
| that might generate a return so people are buying up any
| shiny, new thing that comes along. Then there's the 99%
| economy where people need to buy food/clothing/shelter and
| money is getting increasingly tight.
|
| It's _almost_ as if transferring some of the (marginally
| useless) money from the 1% to the 99% might actually be a
| better investment in the future than some of these dubious
| "assets". But there's no NFT for that.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| I am more bewildered as I try to figure out where the value is
| coming from. An NFT as far as I can tell is just saying 'yes I
| own this thing'. But the original creator still owns everything
| really relevant about that thing anyway. What are they buying?
| Are there any relevant resources out there that lay out where
| the value is derived?
| kbelder wrote:
| As near as I figure, it's not even 'yes I own this thing'.
| It's 'I own the NFT that refers to that thing', which only
| happens to connote ownership by convention.
|
| IE... somebody could sell the object and keep the NFT, or
| vice versa. There's no legal concept tying the NFT to
| ownership of the object, except perhaps indirectly via
| contract.
| DennisP wrote:
| William Shatner is working with a startup that actually has
| a legal framework around NFTs, where the NFT denotes
| ownership of a collectible in a vault. You can trade the
| NFT around but the current owner can redeem it and take
| delivery of the physical item.
|
| It's similar to what's been done in the high-end art world
| for years. People who buy a $50M painting don't usually
| hang it on their walls, they just leave it in a vault and
| get their name recorded on a public art registry saying
| they own it.
|
| Seems like a similar legal framework granting NFT owners
| either copyright ownership or a usage license could be
| interesting.
| daniellarusso wrote:
| Look at sneakers on stockx.com.
|
| https://stockx.com/nike-dunk-sb-low-paris
|
| That is an $80k shoe currently.
|
| If you can get somebody to buy it, that is what it is worth.
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| NFTs are like the modern day equivalent of Tracy Emin's unmade
| bed [0]
|
| It's funny to think back at how many people were horrified
| about that being considered "art" at the time.
|
| Compared to {what I see as} the complete lack of *actual value*
| in some of these high profile NFTs, I'd say that bed now looks
| like the highest of high art.
|
| I appreciate I might be missing something, but I do not
| understand one bit of the psychology behind NFT sales like
| this. I don't understand where even the perceived value is.
|
| Unless it was bought by that guy that refused to sit in the
| front of his Tesla, perhaps to watch on his headrest display
| while streaming the cops chasing him...
|
| [0] https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/emin-my-bed-l03662
| 1cvmask wrote:
| And how about Duchamp's Fountain and Piero Manzoni's Artist's
| Shit:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist%27s_Shit
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| Truly, it goes back quite some way:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Fleece
|
| And that's what we have on record today.
|
| I can imagine some hominid tribe prized the perfectly
| straight banana, or whatever, beyond belief.
| OJFord wrote:
| The dumbest thing about them in my haven't-been-bothered-to-so-
| much-as-search-for-them understanding (first and only really
| heard about them from Matt Levine's Money Stuff column) is
| that.. I can represent a painting or whatever as md5sum,
| sha256sum, anything else sum; take the photo again or compress
| it first?
|
| Unless I really should read up on it because I'll be blown
| away, just seems like any uniqueness necessarily hinges
| entirely on hoe you choose to encode a thing, which js
| arbitrary, meaningless, and pointless?
|
| But then, I haven't made any money from it, people have, what
| do I know.
| benlivengood wrote:
| It's righteous anger at a waste of resources and critical lack
| of understanding.
|
| NFTs aren't commodities or assets, they're just conspicuous
| consumption. Dramatically showing off how much money a person
| can waste on an illusion is cringe-worthy. It makes me annoyed
| in the same way pay-to-play games annoy me.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Yup. Especially since a lot of people have made gazillions in
| crypto for doing no labor so spending this sort of "funny
| money" as a lark is a frustratingly common occurrence.
| merpnderp wrote:
| Why must they do labor to earn money? If I mow lawns for a
| summer, then invest in a lawn mower which I then lease out
| to someone else to mow lawns, am I not entitled to the
| lease money because I'm not doing the labor?
|
| Investing the fruits of one's labor is widely considered a
| human right, and is even explicitly listed in the
| Declaration of Human Rights. And hedging ones investments
| with gold, silver, bonds or crypto is not an unreasonable
| thing to do.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Striking it rich on doge or whatever is still
| meaningfully different than investing in rentals.
| idoh wrote:
| Agreed, and it's a very weird type of conspicuous
| consumption. You can't really hang the NFT on your wall, or
| drive up to a fancy dinner in an NFT. I guess you can brag
| about it?
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| Don't they have a trophy wall in Instafachatwiktok?
|
| They should.
| donatj wrote:
| > they're just conspicuous consumption
|
| I mean aren't they arguably also wealth redistribution from
| the stupid-enough-to-buy-an-nft to the insanely-lucky?
|
| This is going to put Charlie through college no doubt.
| jonas21 wrote:
| I mean, sure, it make a mockery of the art market. But the art
| market seems to have had no trouble making a mockery of itself
| before NFTs came along.
|
| Like, why is this worth $58 million? It's a 10-foot tall ballon
| animal.
|
| https://www.doublestonesteel.com/blog/art-and-sculpture/koon...
|
| Or why is this worth $200 million? It looks like something any
| 5-year-old could create:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_17A
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Yeah, we're all living in some kind of clown world. Even in the
| irrational cryptocurrency market we have utterly insane stuff
| like DOGE being valued at almost one dollar because Elon Musk
| made memetic tweets. There's no point in arguing with it,
| better to profit off of it.
| bigdollopenergy wrote:
| I recently heard someone say "I'm not stupid enough to make
| money in this market", and I think it rings very true.
|
| With the short squeeze speculation on stocks, the crypto
| run+crash and NFT's. The market is a very confusing place
| nowadays. You'd have to be bonkers to invest in these things on
| paper, but yet, lot's of people are making bank from it every
| day (and vice versa).
|
| NFT is probably the most confusing of the bunch. I understand
| the technology and what it actually is, but I see little to no
| value in it. I strongly suspect that the vast majority of these
| NFT sales are just people buying from themselves to inflate
| perceived value or just money laundering. That said, it
| actually looks like this false hype has turned into real hype
| somehow and people are actually making money from this. NFT's
| are probably the closest thing we'll see to Tulip mania for
| long time, at least cryptocurrency has some (largely
| unrealized) utility and potential to become something widely
| used in the future.
|
| In order to make lot's of money nowadays, you shouldn't ask
| yourself "What is actually going to make a profit and/or
| provide utility in the future?" but rather "What are all the
| stupid people going to pile in on next so i can get in and out
| before it crashes?".
| echelon wrote:
| It gets even crazier.
|
| https://nft.gamestop.com
|
| GME as an NFT?
| daniellarusso wrote:
| So, I have been working on a very stupid idea for some time
| now, that actually started as a social fart sharing app,
| record your farts, etc.
|
| Then, I needed a way to make sure people were actually
| sharing farts, and not other noises (like burps or dog
| barks).
|
| So, ML to the rescue. Train on a corpus of real fart audio
| and other sounds.
|
| But then, I needed to make sure the farts were not copies or
| derivative works.
|
| So, audio fingerprinting.
|
| Then, I figured why not throw in blockchain (does not need to
| be distributed to be able to use the buzzword), to ensure the
| verified, original farts could not be tampered with.
|
| Now, I believe I have a way for anybody to create unique
| content that can be 'converted' into an NFT.
|
| Investors?
|
| Possibly you!
| paradygm wrote:
| Someone already beat you to it
| https://nypost.com/2021/03/18/nyc-man-sells-fart-
| for-85-cash...
| daniellarusso wrote:
| That proved the market exists. The US alone could create
| trillions of dollars of NFT value in hours.
| ajcp wrote:
| ...do you take personal checks?
| daniellarusso wrote:
| Sure!
| Philip-J-Fry wrote:
| From what I saw most of these really big NFT sales are going
| to the same few people.
|
| I think some people have just gotten very very crypto rich
| over the past year or two and this is just something they are
| spending their money on.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Is NFT an eternal copyright now? An NFT is basically a deed of
| ownership, like buying up property.
|
| Such products will never see the public domain, as they are owned
| forever. I wonder if the major publishing companies are eyeing
| these up
| AlexandrB wrote:
| But they're not the copyright:
|
| > An NFT is a bit like a collectible certificate of
| authenticity, but its owner does not actually buy the copyright
| itself - meaning the artwork the NFT represents can still be
| shown wherever the original artist or creator chooses.
|
| What you "own" when you buy an NFT is bragging rights about
| owning the NFT.
|
| Edit: It's like if you bought the gold masters for Abbey Road.
| You don't own the copyrights, just a one-of-a-kind
| representation of that album that you can tell your golf
| buddies about.
| itisit wrote:
| And you also own the right to sell the NFT to the next fool.
| kbelder wrote:
| An NFT has nothing to do with ownership of the property. But...
| if the property is ALSO sold along with the NFT, it will lose
| copyright protection at life + 70 years just like any other
| created art. The NFT will then refer to a public domain object,
| but it gives no power over it.
|
| As the laws currently stand, at least.
|
| I wonder if the NFT token itself loses copyright and becomes
| public domain at some point?
| yalogin wrote:
| What is preventing people from uploading the video back to
| YouTube? after all there are tons of shows already on there that
| are owned by media companies. I am sure this Charlie video has a
| lot of copies floating around.
| EEor wrote:
| There's nothing preventing it. It wouldn't be the original
| however, and in this scenario that's all that matters.
| monkeynotes wrote:
| How do we define "original" when talking about digital works?
| As soon as you upload it you are making a copy. Then that
| copy gets bounced around and duplicated across edge servers
| all over the world.
|
| You'd have to own the SD card to own the 'original'. But who
| really cares? I don't understand NFTs, I just don't
| understand the value.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I'm not going to pretend I have an intimate knowledge of how
| NFT's work (I need to basically re-research the idea
| everytime it comes up), but I never understood the financial
| incentive to buy one, especially for these very old viral
| videos. I doubt any amount of merch made would make back
| hundreds of thousands, and I imagine most/all of the B2B
| potential is gone since these kinds of videos have long since
| left their 15 minutes of fame.
|
| And As seen here, even the "rich trolling" potential is
| practically impossible to enforce since we run into the idea
| of "piracy" (in the loosest form of quotes you can imagine).
| A problem even billion dollar media empires can't fully
| enforce. Is there something here I'm missing?
|
| ----
|
| on a side note: while memes like nyan cat make sense, I find
| it very ethically dubious to "own" what's essentially a
| personal memory of a real family. But I guess if it's the
| family themselves that sold it, the consentual factors are
| already in place.
| [deleted]
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| I think the purpose of NFTs doesn't make sense today but maybe
| the future of the internet are browser implementations by Google
| and Apple that check ownership of assets embedded in HTML and
| fail to display them until you pay a royalty fee?
|
| I guess Firefox and Chromium wouldn't need to go along unless
| someone lobbied Congress to change the laws.
|
| I don't know how similar this would be to DRM, which seems to
| have failed to stop piracy.
| jordanpg wrote:
| This tells me more about the psychology of rich people than
| anything else.
|
| How pathetically desperate for validation you must be to pay this
| much for a unique thing, and to deprive others of access to it.
| grouphugs wrote:
| this isn't news, this is just worthless spam
| legitster wrote:
| So, most NFTs are on the Ethereum network, correct? What's
| stopping people from just... making a new crypto NFT network?
|
| What if Doge NFTs take off - could everything be sold a second
| time?
| pionar wrote:
| Unless there's some other legal agreement, there's nothing
| stopping you from selling an NFT on the same network multiple
| times.
| andrewnicolalde wrote:
| Nothing, yes.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Everything can already be sold a second time. It is just "print
| #2" in a run.
| a0-prw wrote:
| I mistakenly, in a drunken moment, clicked on some bbc clickbait.
| Charlie and his brother were still amusing Everything else was
| bullshit.
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| My main basic questions remain after reading about these NFT
| sales.
|
| Why can't someone just buy all rights to this video the same way
| a company can buy the rights to a film? What does the blockchain
| do that a couple lawyers and some paperwork couldn't?
|
| Why a blockchain-based digital "certificate" instead of just a
| certificate? Does my birth certificate or marriage certificate or
| college diploma need an upgrade to an NFT, too?
| jayd16 wrote:
| Its better to think of NFTs as limited edition merch instead of
| ownership of the work.
| floren wrote:
| Key point: buying the NFT does not transfer rights to you.
| You're just buying the NFT. The original creator retains the
| rights to the video.
| sgron wrote:
| Also, from the terms <https://www.charliebitme.com/#/auction-
| terms>, the buyer doesn't own the media itself, just the NFT...
|
| > "DCF" means the Davies-Carr Family.
|
| > You acknowledge and agree that the DCF (or, as applicable,
| its licensors) retains ownership of all legal right, title and
| interest in and to the Media and all intellectual property
| rights therein. The rights that you have in and to the NFT are
| as described in this License. The DCF reserves all rights in
| and to the Media not expressly granted to you in this License.
| delecti wrote:
| An NFT is essentially a trading card for the thing that it's
| attached to. Just like you don't "own" Babe Ruth in any
| meaningful sense by owning a Babe Ruth trading card, you don't
| "own" the artwork associated with an NFT by owning the NFT
| itself. The exception is if there's some arrangement external
| to the NFT that links ownership of the NFT to ownership of the
| thing.
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| Could I sell an NFT for my birth certificate to raise some
| cash, while my original birth certificate remains at the
| state's Vital Records Department under ownership of the
| state?
|
| If so, what exactly would the buyer be buying? Just a virtual
| trading card and a promise that I won't sell my "birth-
| certificate NFT" trading card to anyone else?
| delecti wrote:
| > Could I sell an NFT for my birth certificate to raise
| some cash, while my original birth certificate remains at
| the state's Vital Records Department under ownership of the
| state?
|
| Yes, and it's basically equivalent to writing the words "My
| Birth Certificate" on a piece of paper and selling that
| piece of paper. It holds no weight whatsoever.
|
| > If so, what exactly would the buyer be buying?
|
| Nothing.
|
| > Just a promise that I won't sell my "birth-certificate
| NFT" to anyone else?
|
| Not even that, unless you _also_ did that. You can make
| multiple NFTs from the same thing. Just like nothing would
| prevent you from writing "My Birth Certificate" on a
| second piece of paper and selling that too, unless there
| was some external agreement that you wouldn't.
| pionar wrote:
| A) yes B) -\\_(tsu)_/-
| willchis wrote:
| And the horrifying thing is that they are selling NFTs for
| NBA trading cards (GIFs). So people now own a trading card of
| a trading card of a real person dunking :(
| [deleted]
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| The only explanation for NFTs that made sense to me is that
| people with an interest in the network (e.g. early investors) are
| bidding up some choice NFTs to make news and drive interest in
| their network. There is no actual market for NFTs at these
| prices, but that doesn't stop groups with deep pockets from
| pretending like there is by purchasing well known memes for eye
| popping amounts. If internet "celebrities" are able to cash in on
| this nonsense, I see no harm in it. It's sort of like living off
| of VC subsidized products.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Could be money laundering related too. Buy NFTs for small sums
| with clean crypto, sell it to your dirty wallet for inflated
| sums. In order for something like that to work there needs to
| be plausible deniability so they also buy NFTs with clean
| wallets which would explain the volume. Plus the legitimate
| crypto speculators see these crazy numbers and jump aboard too.
| VRay wrote:
| I think most of these NFT contracts will give 5% of every
| resale back to the original creator of the contract, too.
| Pretty ludicrous IMO
| basch wrote:
| The real market would be owning early works by an unknown, who
| later becomes known.
|
| That will evolve into the patron system again, where the owner
| of early works becomes a hype machine to drum up their artists
| clout, and then offloads their early work.
| dorkwood wrote:
| > If internet "celebrities" are able to cash in on this
| nonsense, I see no harm in it. It's sort of like living off of
| VC subsidized products.
|
| If you only look at it from the perspective of the influencer,
| it doesn't seem like there's any harm. They managed to extract
| some wealth from crypto whales. -- where's the harm in that?
| But at the end of the day, they're selling a lie. The NFT-
| proponents want people to believe that NFTs are inherently
| valuable so that they can extract all of their money back, and
| then some. It's propaganda, and I can't get behind it, even if
| it means some artists are cashing out.
| hilbertseries wrote:
| The beeple NFT that sold for 60m, was obviously an attempt to
| make NFTs look valuable.
| rtkwe wrote:
| The introduction of NFTs certainly spiked the price of ETH for
| a while but it seems the shine has worn off and the dump is in
| full force.
| gregsadetsky wrote:
| The "post Internet" artist Brad Troemel has really interesting
| takes on the art world, and posts them to his Patreon and
| Instagram accounts. He recently released a 42 minute "NFT
| report":
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXBxVFsHBJQ
|
| It touches upon "what is an NFT", but also the reasons why
| artists are interested in them, and where the (crypto) money is
| coming from.
|
| His take (I don't mean to TLDW, the video is really worth
| watching) is that NFTs are loved by people from the crypto world
| because it "finally" gives a clear utility to crypto/the
| blockchain (aside from speculation/trading/gambling), and it's
| simultaneously beneficial to artists who can bypass the
| traditional art market with all of its gatekeepers, _and_ be on
| the receiving end of huge sums spent by crypto whales (who can 't
| "do" much with their crypto savings anyway)
|
| Worth the watch!
| ajarmst wrote:
| More evidence that, no matter what horror finally consumes us, we
| will thoroughly deserve it.
| leephillips wrote:
| This is the _Casablanca_ of YT, because, just as HB never says,
| "Play it again, Sam", the kid here never says, "Charlie bit my
| finger."
| smnrchrds wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beam_me_up,_Scotty
| StavrosK wrote:
| I should sell an NFT of the f7u12 subreddit, since apparently
| this is what's in these days.
| whack wrote:
| > _Sunday 's spending spree means the mysterious anonymous bidder
| will become the owner of the Charlie Bit My Finger clip._
|
| > _its owner does not actually buy the copyright itself - meaning
| the artwork the NFT represents can still be shown wherever the
| original artist or creator chooses._
|
| Genuinely curious. What does it mean to own a widely shared
| digital content, if you don't have the copyright to it? What's
| stopping the copyright-owner from continuing to license the
| copyright to others, or even enforcing their copyright against
| you in future? From a legal perspective, how would the NFT owner
| even enforce their ownership against anyone else?
| floren wrote:
| > What does it mean to own a widely shared digital content, if
| you don't have the copyright to it?
|
| Nothing.
|
| > What's stopping the copyright-owner from continuing to
| license the copyright to others, or even enforcing their
| copyright against you in future?
|
| Nothing.
|
| > From a legal perspective, how would the NFT owner even
| enforce their ownership against anyone else?
|
| They can't.
| Opt_Out_Fed_IRS wrote:
| But the important thing is that clueless buyers didn't put
| together the above reasoning
|
| Or think somehow blockchain and AI can be used the amazing
| technoutopian future(tm) to combat piracy (including piracy
| of the image or video of the NFT they bought it)
| ping_pong wrote:
| > What does it mean to own a widely shared digital content, if
| you don't have the copyright to it?
|
| Therein lies the question. It's basically selling a digital
| derivative of something that gives you no rights besides owning
| that derivative itself.
|
| Is there anything saying that the copyright owner can't sell
| another NFT to a competing NFT blockchain? What if people start
| using different NFTs for the same digital good?
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| It sounds like the emperor's clothes, he's wearing the most
| exquisite garment as long as everyone agrees he is...
| flowerlad wrote:
| NFTs may be a way for open source developers to make some money
| off of their work. Linus Torvalds could make a few hundred
| millions by selling an NFT for Linux, considering a JPG file sold
| for $69 million [1].
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/11/arts/design/nft-
| auction-c...
| recursive wrote:
| What is an "NFT for linux"?
|
| Maybe selling a banana taped to a wall could be a way for
| people to make money, considering one of those sold for
| ${OUTRAGE}.
|
| Is Linus running out of money or something?
| flowerlad wrote:
| > _What is an "NFT for linux"?_
|
| What is an NFT for a JPG file? I don't know, but we know it
| got sold for $69 million.
|
| > _Is Linus running out of money or something?_
|
| I have no idea, but since when does someone have to run out
| of money in order to want to make more?
| rakoo wrote:
| _Past performance is no guarantee of future results_
| dr-smooth wrote:
| what is an "NFT for anything" other than an arbitrary
| association between a number and some sort of artifact,
| presumably declared by the creator of said artifact. It's so
| bizarre to me that people will pay so much for these things.
| coderintherye wrote:
| The beeple NFT shouldn't be used as a basis for comparison to
| future expected values given that it was artificially inflated
| by self-dealing, you can read more here about it:
| https://amycastor.com/2021/03/14/metakovan-the-mystery-beepl...
| miracle2k wrote:
| Amy is wrong, as she often is. Metakovan gifting the artist
| some tokens as a thank you is not self-sealing. It's just a
| guy overpaying for an artwork, and possible having an
| interest in promoting an artist he already owns work from.
| paxys wrote:
| Sure, Linus can sell an NFT containing the word "Linux" the
| same way he can sell a picture of his feet or just about
| anything else. It is all meaningless since (1) the NFT does not
| grant any ownership rights or licenses and (2) Linux code is
| anyways available under GPLv2.
| flowerlad wrote:
| > _Linux code is anyways available under GPLv2_
|
| Yes, it doesn't stop anyone from using Linux. So win-win for
| all.
| paxys wrote:
| Soo..what is this NFT then exactly? Why would someone buy a
| Linux NFT?
| duskwuff wrote:
| Absolutely nothing, I guess. Like most other NFTs,
| really.
| flowerlad wrote:
| Why would someone pay $69 million for a JPG file?
|
| Bragging rights. That's it.
| wearywanderer wrote:
| Sex work is less tarnishing to one's personal reputation than
| NFT scams. There is more honor in sucking dick for crack rocks.
| ping_pong wrote:
| I've never seen this video before, and I've been on the Internet
| since the mid-90s.
|
| It doesn't make sense to take down the video though, because it's
| the views that make it more valuable.
| Theodores wrote:
| Me too. Yet now I am supposed to know. It is the same with the
| collage by Beeple. Never. Heard. Of. Him.
|
| I suspect there is more to come, art that you have never heard
| of by an artist you are supposed to have heard of, now with NFT
| shiny and journalists that think they know the story.
|
| This would not happen if linear broadcasters from yesteryear
| and their dead tree brethren didn't suck up the press releases
| to give them the oxygen of publicity.
| lostgame wrote:
| >> I've never seen this video before, and I've been on the
| Internet since the mid-90s.
|
| I dunno, so have I; and just - it was big, but there were so
| many of these kinda nonsense YouTube videos at the time this
| was trending it was kind of hard to catch them all.
| [deleted]
| intricatedetail wrote:
| Is there any book about this phenomenon, that people spend
| fortune on memes?
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Not that I know of directly, but there is a phenomenon where
| the ultra-rich "purchase" (but rarely take possession of) items
| in an exclusive catalog and the item's ownership/heritage is
| seen as a status symbol. The first thing that comes to mind is
| the Codex Leicester, which is now owned by Bill Gates and
| people were expecting him to rename it "Codex Gates" but he
| didn't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Leicester
| throwaway803453 wrote:
| But then the hustle would stop working. My take on the hustle
| is you post some garbage art as an NFT and have a rich buddy
| buy it for $100,000(?). Then your other garbage arts
| instantaneously become worth thousands because the media will
| pick up this story in proportion to the price*garbage factor.
| You then start dumping said garbage, eventually return the
| initial payment to your rich buddy and split the take.
|
| Unfortunately we are likely past peak stupid in the crypto-
| world but you'll have another chance ~3 years from now since
| that's the crypto dumb-money time-constant. But if you still
| think there's time, visit https://mintable.app/ follow the
| advice above and report back.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| It is interesting in this day and age how digital rights can be
| transferred, but I can't say that this represents some great loss
| of access to a landmark cinematic achievement for mankind, or
| anything like that.
| arthurofbabylon wrote:
| Would ads on YouTube be more profitable for a video like this?
| dlevine wrote:
| This is potentially the beginning of a very interesting trend,
| and something I have spent some time thinking about. My sense is
| that owning an NFT should allow you to control access to that
| content (even if your choice is just to make it publicly
| accessible). NFT doesn't have an ACL layer built in, so this
| would need to be added (has anyone already done this?)
|
| One open question is whether it actually makes sense to have an
| ACL for an electronic asset, because once someone has access to
| it, they can easily make a perfect copy of the bits and give it
| to anyone they want. But I guess you could make the same argument
| about selling access to digital content that is available on a
| torrent somewhere.
| [deleted]
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > owning an NFT should allow you to control access to that
| content
|
| are you aware that anyone may sell NFT for anything?
|
| I could produce and sell NFT pointing to say Walmart website.
|
| Or HN. Or Wikipedia.
| dlevine wrote:
| Yes, and I believe that's one of the reasons why there is so
| much hate for NFTs on this thread. People are selling tokens
| for huge amounts of money that confer no rights other than
| being able to say that you own the NFT.
|
| Obviously you would need to actually own the asset to be able
| to hand over access control as part of the NFT sale. NFTs
| potentially have real use cases, but the technology and
| infrastructure isn't mature enough to support those use
| cases.
| duskwuff wrote:
| Right. The question that people keep coming back to is what
| ownership rights are actually conveyed with an NFT. The
| most common answer I'm seeing is "none", which makes it
| feel dishonest to equate the sale of the NFT as a sale of
| the thing it (supposedly) represents.
| recursive wrote:
| I mean, it's definitely still there. Several times.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=charlie+bit+my+...
| beforeolives wrote:
| I seriously doubt that the high-end NFT economy is sustainable in
| the long term. The people who are buying these are just burning
| money.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I'm curious what will happen when an NFT for the same piece of
| art gets sold on multiple blockchains. Now you can "own" a
| "Charlie Bit My Finger" NFT on Ethereum _and_ someone else owns
| it on the FooBar blockchain. Which one is "authentic"?
| Blockchain doesn't help you here - you're going to have to go
| to court to prove you own the "authentic" one or sue the artist
| for selling 2 copies instead of one.
| miracle2k wrote:
| The artist can mint two copies on the same blockchain, no
| problem. It's a digital print.
| whalesalad wrote:
| I don't get it. I just don't understand. One, why did anyone want
| to buy this meaningless video? Two, why did it need to be done
| via NFT, and finally why for such a large sum of money?
|
| Is this a form of money laundering? I am so confused, no part of
| this makes any sense to me at all.
| hnnnnnnng wrote:
| Imagine you got into Bitcoin in 2010 and bought a few hundred
| dollars worth. Now that is worth more money than you could even
| dream about. The real question is why not buy an nft for the
| lulz?
| librish wrote:
| I don't have any problems with people buying or selling art for
| large sums of money, nor do I have a problem with people
| classifying art as pretty much whatever they want.
|
| The only thing I mind are the people pretending a real problem
| has been solved with NFTs. In any current (or conceived as far as
| I know) implementation of NFTs you have to trust so many people,
| technologies, and companies that the blockchain being technically
| "trustless" is not solving a real problem at all.
|
| Overall I don't understand the point of a blockchain if you have
| to interact with anything off-chain at all. If I have to trust an
| oracle or similar why even bother with a blockchain in the first
| place?
| 248ff wrote:
| > The only thing I mind are the people pretending a real
| problem has been solved with NFTs.
|
| It's not a pretend problem at all.
|
| The author could have used any existing auction platform too
| sell the rights to that video without involving NFT or crypto-
| currency. But they would never have gotten that much money for
| it. NFT solves that.
|
| NFT is to auctions what adding "Blockchain" to your publicly-
| listed company-name was a few years ago, it increases valuation
| to ridiculous levels.
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-27/what-s-in...
|
| It's stupid, but it works.
| miracle2k wrote:
| People keep measuring this stuff by things it doesn't want to
| be. It's a digital equivalent of a signed print. You have to
| trust the author not to print 100 copies more in the same way
| you trust an author selling physical prints. No one is claiming
| it is any more trust less than that.
| [deleted]
| mattigames wrote:
| Signed prints are usually worth little, so it doesn't seem
| that like its digital equivalent.
| ddalex wrote:
| > If I have to trust an oracle or similar why even bother with
| a blockchain in the first place?
|
| Well how else do you generate hype with an aura of breaking
| edge tech to impress the clueless and give credibility to your
| scam?
| rajin444 wrote:
| I imagine a lot of artists have benefited from this over the
| centuries.
| octocop wrote:
| Think of it like perfect ownership instead of it being
| trustless. Providing proof of ownership is what makes the
| blockchain tick, in my opinion.
| basch wrote:
| At the end of the day doesnt the trust still fall back to the
| author? If you are getting 1/1 of a digital autograph or
| something, you are trusting the author to later not make more
| autographs.
|
| Even if the institutions that authenticate the autographs go
| away, their record of the work they did so far is printed into
| the permanent record, no?
| rsj_hn wrote:
| Or really trusting anyone who downloaded it and reposted it,
| etc. This is not about scarcity but about a certificate of
| authenticity that you can show around. The actual good is
| worthless, the certificate is what is hard to forge.
| basch wrote:
| Correct, downloading and reposting the photo isnt the same
| thing, and not really a part of the conversation. Youre
| buying the print number, not the work.
| mattigames wrote:
| You are buying the print number in a specific blockchain,
| tomorrow anyone can create a few thousand blockchains
| from scratch where this print number doesn't exist; just
| like one has to believe a currency has value to assume
| any value on one of its coins/tokens.
| dntrkv wrote:
| If you are someone that believes in blockchain being something
| as revolutionary as the internet, you might see oracles as a
| temporary solution. Currently, we need a bridge between the
| blockchain and the rest of the world since there is no other
| way to link information between the two.
|
| But if you believe in this potential blockchain-everything
| future, all of this information will be on the blockchain as
| the single source of truth. At that point, oracles will not be
| needed and the information will be stored directly on the
| chain.
| AMerePotato wrote:
| There are some very interesting technical challenges that NFTs
| are being used for. Stuff like baskets of assets, appraising
| and taking out loans on assets, and certain distributed games
| like aavegotchi. At the end of the day, representing non-
| fungible assets is something useful. It's just that most
| people's exposure to it is seeing someone riding the hype to
| sell something that would probably have sold for a lot of money
| without being on the blockchain. Nothing wrong with that either
| if both sides are happy with the deal.
|
| There are a lot of interesting technologies being worked on in
| moving real world data on chain as well. I'd highly suggest you
| look into chainlink. They cover all sides of the
| vulnerabilities associated with getting accurate data when you
| could be trusting a potentially malicious data provider.
|
| I wish hn would cover some of these more often
| librish wrote:
| Why do you need the blockchain for any of the stuff you
| mentioned?
| raspyberr wrote:
| I wonder if NFTs are a societal reaction to the increasing lack
| of ownership of digital products. Surely people must understand
| that they're aren't the sole owners of whatever the NFT points to
| though?. It's just not possible with digital objects.
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| What would happen if I put up a NFT for sale of something I had
| no part in making?
| nerfhammer wrote:
| there's nothing stopping you from doing that
| recursive wrote:
| Someone might buy it but probably not.
| vaer-k wrote:
| What would happen if you sold to someone the deed to a house
| you do not own?
| endisneigh wrote:
| This is not the equivalent situation. It's more like I decide
| to sell an NFT to your comment.
| thih9 wrote:
| I know nothing about NFTs.
|
| I'd guess it wouldn't be a sale of rights to the comment
| (because you don't own them).
|
| If you advertised it as the sale of rights to the comment,
| then it would be a fraud? Or you could advertise it as "a
| collectible item representing one of endisneigh's parent
| comments as issued by endisneigh, collect them all"?
| vaer-k wrote:
| It totally disagree. I think it is quite equivalent. The
| difference is that we don't have a centralized authority to
| recognize valid NFTs, as we do for deeds. But if we did
| have a central authority, like perhaps the artist
| responsible for the work protected by the NFT, and if the
| artist made it clear and public that only the NFTs she
| recognizes could be considered valid proof of ownership of
| her works, then indeed an NFT would function like a deed.
| endisneigh wrote:
| A common misunderstanding of NFTs is that they give you
| some level of legal rights. NFTs do not inherently give
| you rights. That's why a comparison with a deed is
| fundamentally flawed. A deed is a legal construct -
| inherently it gives you ownership. So even if it were
| sold, without the institutions notarizing the transaction
| it would not be a valid sale and could be easily reversed
| by the original owner.
|
| I could sell an NFT to your comment trivially because it
| doesn't mean anything. You can think of it as the digital
| equivalent of me taking a screenshot of your comment and
| selling _that_ - sure it doesn 't give the purchaser
| rights to your comment, but that isn't what was for sale
| anyway.
| kbelder wrote:
| I can sell an NFT to your house just as easily as I can
| to your comment, and it confers exactly the same amount
| of legal rights.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Yes, exactly. You get equal rights, that is to say,
| nothing. Are you agreeing or disagreeing? It's unclear.
| vaer-k wrote:
| I have no misunderstanding about this whatsoever, in
| fact. I understand that NFTs confer no rights, which is
| why I posited the idea of a necessary authority who can
| declare which NFTs are valid representations of ownership
| of their works. It is the _pairing_ of NFT and authority
| which grant the possibility of ownership.
|
| Many people immediately jump on the idea that NFTs cannot
| confer ownership, and thus are worthless as a concept,
| but they fail to recognize that it is only one half of
| ownership, just as a deed to a house is just a piece of
| paper (that anyone can photocopy) without an authority to
| recognize it.
| endisneigh wrote:
| again a _deed_ is referring to a specific thing. a
| photocopied deed is not a deed anymore than a photocopied
| dollar bill is legit money. in other words a deed is
| already authorized by definition.
|
| if you have an authority to confer rights then the NFT
| itself was unnecessary to begin with.
|
| anyway, the original point I was trying to make is that
| situation you described (selling a deed to a house you
| don't own) doesn't make sense since by definition the own
| who does not own the deed can not sell it. if, somehow
| the sale did go through, the original owner could easily
| get it back. this situation is not possible with NFTs
| without a central authority, but with a central authority
| NFTs would not be necessary to begin with.
| vaer-k wrote:
| A deed does _not_ refer to a specific thing. It only does
| so in daily life as a matter of convention. It is the
| authority of the banks or the government or whatever that
| gives your particular deed any weight at all. A deed,
| like a dollar bill, is a piece of paper with no value.
| Indeed, a photocopied dollar bill has no value
| whatsoever. It is only our collective agreement to pair
| value with officially recognized papers that grants those
| papers value.
|
| The situation I described _does_ make sense, because it
| 's exactly what we are circling around here. Anyone _can_
| sell anything; it is merely a question of whether the
| sale will be recognized by the parties that matter. An
| NFT is necessary because it distributes the transfer and
| sale of things without a central intermediary. There is
| and always will be a required authority to recognize the
| value of a given NFT, however.
|
| Note that these two ideas of central authority are _not_
| equivalent. In one hand, you have a centralized authority
| over trade; in the other, an authority over value. Note
| also that in the case of NFTs, there is no "one central
| authority who governs all value", but instead many
| authorities, i.e. the creators! The artist or creator of
| a given work is free to recognize the NFTs that grant
| ownership of their creations. It is they who have the
| power of authority.
| endisneigh wrote:
| > A deed does not refer to a specific thing. It only does
| so in daily life as a matter of convention. It is the
| authority of the banks or the government or whatever that
| gives your particular deed any weight at all. A deed,
| like a dollar bill, is a piece of paper with no value.
| Indeed, a photocopied dollar bill has no value
| whatsoever. It is only our collective agreement to pair
| value with officially recognized papers that grants those
| papers value.
|
| What? A deed, per common law, is a legal instrument which
| affirms ownership of something. I'm not going to talk
| about value as that is independent of the purpose of a
| deed (you could have a deed to something that everyone
| agrees is worthless, but regardless you are the owner
| according to the government(s) in question)
|
| Again, if you have a central authority an NFT is
| unnecessary and pointless to begin with. Nothing you've
| said really refutes that. All of the functionality of an
| NFT can be trivially replicated by a central authority,
| and indeed it already is.
|
| > Anyone can sell anything
|
| No, they can't. By your own logic, anyone can _do_
| anything. Surely you already see that is not true. We
| live in reality, and in reality others must recognize
| actions in order for them to be recognized as legitimate.
| pontifier wrote:
| You can sell a "quit claim deed" for any property. All it
| means is that you assign all your interest in the property to
| another party. If you have no interest in the property then
| you have transfered nothing, but the document itself is
| valid.
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| That would be fraudulent, but that's not what I'm suggesting.
|
| I suppose I could sell a token for Hacker News, I just
| couldn't claim that the holder of the token gets any kind of
| special privilege here.
| vaer-k wrote:
| In that case sure, you could do it, just as you could sell
| someone a deed to a rock you picked up off the street.
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| It's even less than that. A deed contains some language
| to the effect of "the holder of this deed owns the house
| at such-and-such address", whereas most of these NFTs
| seem to stop at "the house at such-and-such address".
|
| Is there a way to see the actual language of these NFTs
| that receive press attention? Do any of them actually
| claim anything one way or the other?
| Hamuko wrote:
| > _I just couldn 't claim that the holder of the token gets
| any kind of special privilege here. _
|
| Sounds like an NFT alright.
| basch wrote:
| What would happen if you tried to sell imitation autographs,
| labeled as such? Im guessing there would be no market, unless
| you yourself were famous.
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| The difference is that a facsimile autograph would inevitably
| be of worse quality. The phony NFT on the other hand would be
| indistinguishable from "the real thing". Beyond the payload
| it's just pseudo-random bits generated by an arbitrary CPU,
| isn't it?
| basch wrote:
| > indistinguishable
|
| I am not sure what you mean by this. Are you referring to
| art being duplicated, or a digital signature? You can
| verify that its a forgery, or from a different account than
| the first author. The digital signature isnt something you
| can replicate. You can print another one, but you cant
| duplicate the property of "first" itself.
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| I can't replicate the exact numbers, but I don't see how
| one random string looks more authentic than the other.
| Whereas a handmade autograph with all its human
| inconsistencies looks more authentic than one made with a
| mechanical device.
|
| I'm just as good as the most accomplished artist at
| reading numbers from /dev/random, that's why I don't see
| why one random-looking string would be more valuable than
| the other.
| basch wrote:
| Because it's timestamped earlier, or its proven to have
| been generated by a person who exclusively had a certain
| private key.
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| > Because it's timestamped earlier
|
| That depends on who thought of making the NFT first.
| Which isn't necessarily the artist.
|
| > or its proven to have been generated by a person who
| exclusively had a certain private key
|
| That has the same problem, it's generated by arbitrary
| pseudo-random numbers, rather than a real, living human
| hand. Look, I'm not disputing the underlying
| cryptographic principles. I'm happy they exist, because
| they are immensely useful for many purposes, like
| securing communication and financial transactions. I just
| struggle to see the artistic merit in someone having
| pulled some numbers out of /dev/random and having done
| some math on them.
| reyalejandro wrote:
| people will know and they will value it accordingly but no one
| will stop you for doing it, at least for now.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > people will know
|
| How will they know?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| This is already happening[1] to smaller creators, and people
| still buy them because NFTs don't offer any guarantees of
| authenticity beyond what you'd see on eBay.
|
| [1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/20/22334527/nft-scams-
| artist...
| matkoniecz wrote:
| I seriously considered doing this (while clearly mentioning
| it!).
|
| Not sure whether NFT situation got dumb enough for this to
| work.
| kbelder wrote:
| You could do it to public domain art. Maybe set yourself up a
| shell business, 'NFT Certification Enterprise', and offer
| your official NFT for each object, with a guarantee you be
| generating only one NFT for each object. Deceptive, but not
| fraudulent.
|
| It's not very different than selling overpriced and numbered
| collectibles.
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