1. Lets say you own an NFT of a picture named "Foobar".
2. I go to the original artist, and buy the original picture / Foobar's copyright from them for $1 million bucks.
3. Now I sue you for illegally distributing my work.
Who wins? Frankly speaking, I'm betting on the court system / classical copyright law in winning. I hypothetically win as far as I can tell.
This isn't even a hypothetical. Copyright allows me to buy the works off of artists. The most common is MPAA / RIAA and other record companies who gain ownership of music. Or Disney Corporation owns the drawings / pictures of Mickey Mouse and not the artists who make the 3d models or pictures.
I'm no expert on this, but from what I've seen, most NFTs are as simple as an incremented ID field mapped to your wallet address and stored in a smart contract. You (usually) don't buy any rights to the image in the first place, and what the ID represents is not guaranteed to persist by any part of the agreement. So, if the author kept the copyright to the images I suppose they could sell it and then prevent the NFT owner from displaying the image itself. Seems like a fast way to burn your reputation as an artist or developer.
I would guess that most popular projects license their images under creative commons, and encourage people to copy and share them, so that the original authors can't just overwrite them, since there would be lots of backups and a social consensus as to what each ID represents.
I win because I am not distributing your work. You want to sue the off-chain 3rd party who is actually distributing your work. They would then be required to stop infringing, at which point my NFT becomes worthless, as it now points to a 404.
1.) Increasingly, most savvy NFT projects provide, and savvy buyers demand, explicit IP rights. For example, here are the IP terms for Bored Ape Yacht Club (one of the top NFT projects in the space): https://boredapeyachtclub.com/#/terms
Note that BAYC grants the NFT holder not only a license to use and re-sell the NFT, but the right to commercially exploit and create derivatives of the image.
I would not buy any NFT that did not come with an explicit license. Note that most NFT marketplaces do provide a default license [0].
2.) To the extent that an artist created and sold an NFT of their original work, and then re-sold the copyright to a third party (you), I suspect the copyright system has a concept of an implicit license, i.e. the NFT holder cannot create derivative works or exploit the NFT commercially, but his ownership and re-sale of the NFT is likely non-infringing, so I'm betting you lose. You hopefully asked the artist for a representation that no rights had previously been granted, so you perhaps have a claim against the artist for breaching that representation, if made.
I suppose this depends on whatever license the buyer and original IP owner agreed to during the original sale. Assuming the purchase included a license to distribute the NFT (share the image, resell the NFT, etc), you'd likely have to continue honoring that after purchasing the IP.
Not sure what type of licensing NFT sites like OpenSea/etc. use.
Buying a copyright duet let you retroactively own all previous distributions.
In your case the original nft was distributed before you bought the copyright. That distribution was it there and legal, your law suit would have no basis.
A lot of NFTs are pixel art because it's very easy to integrate with the typical NFT model: make a handful of swappable components (hair, eyes, mouths, noses, accessories), a handful of skin tones, and a handful of backgrounds, then spit out every possible combination of those as "unique" NFTs.
I can imagine the sub's moderators got fed up dealing with people posting endless nearly-identical looking images from the same set (either by the original company trying to make a quick buck, or the buyer desperately trying to flip their investment) and decided to just burn the whole thing.
I should be ashamed for paying a reasonable price to purchase an NFT to support a unique artist whose work I enjoy?
Sure, the NFT current scene is extremely overvalued and filled with fraudsters and low effort cash grabs, but once that implodes, I think it's great if artists will have a means to sell digital art to a wide audience.
Tech dudes with tech salaries hating on an avenue for artists to make a living should be ashamed of themselves.
I bought an NFT last night, I thought it looked cool. I have no regrets on giving an artist some money. It's also pretty cool that if I sell it, the artist gets some more money, and if that person sells it, the artist gets some more money again. It's also cool that I did it on a PoS chain, so it's not even an environmental problem.
I could have just right clicked, and saved it, and used it as a profile pic on twitter. But that seemed weird, what if the person who DID pay for it used it too. That would make me kind of a dick.
I mean, they are, and I agree, one is a sucker if they buy them. But I could say that same about any luxury goods. 'Patek Philippe Watches are terrible and anyone that buys one should be ashamed of themselves'.
Now, wanting a world where nobody can buy 'Patek Philippe' watches is not a world I want to live in. If you feel that your life is more complete with a $25k watch, that is your business. This doesnt stop me from wanting to make fun of someone wasting a year of after-tax earnings of the average person for some jewelry that tells the time no better than my phone.
I have always followed a lot of generative artists on Twitter. Never have I see so many creatives I follow prospering at once, mostly thanks to the Tezos ecosystem.
The buyers seem happy to support the artists. The artists seem happy to receive this support. For all the cries of it being a scam/ponzi, I'm not quite sure who the victim is meant to be here - at least within this rather specific niche.
I think most of the ire towards NFTs and the greater cryptocurrency space in general is misattributed to the technology instead of the human behavior (specifically the audacious and immoral) that influences some of how it has been used. When people think about the cryptocurrency space, nobody actually cares about developers, they care about the scams and the insufferable cryptobros and their memes which dominate every headline and every large social space related cryptocurrencies.
The real headline most of these criticisms related to is probably closer to how deplorable people will act when they are capable of separating themselves from the costs and responsibilities of their actions.
I have always followed a lot of tulip growers. Never have I see so many gardeners I follow prospering at once, mostly thanks to the tulip ecosystem.
The buyers seem happy to support the growers. The growers seem happy to receive this support. For all the cries of it being a bubble, I'm not quite sure who the victim is meant to be here - at least within this rather specific niche.
just doesn't make sense to me. There are far, far more energy intensive operations that we do daily. Think about how much energy is 'wasted' playing video games, yet nobody balks at that.
The fact that other activities waste energy doesn't mean NFTs aren't wasteful. It means that there are two wasteful activities.
You cannot argue that the relative merits of two bad things makes one of them good, or even "not bad". That's not how anything works. Objectively bad things are always going to be bad no matter what else happens.
Money laundering, speculation, pyramid schemes and pushing terrible ideas about ownership can be achieved without crunching a bunch of numbers to find low hashes or whatever.
The kind of video gaming that has you burning 300W with your GPU is hard to achieve in a different way.
It is a weak argument though and I think it's frustrating how prominently people make it rather than the much more important "it's bad to propagate scarcity based ownership structures to a domain where scarcity need not exist".
The environment argument is technically incorrect, and typically used by ignorant people as it is a good emotional argument.
There could be 1 or 10000000 NFTs, it makes no difference to the energy usage of the Ethereum network. The energy usage is in the production of Proof of Work blocks. These blocks could be empty or full, and this makes no difference to the amount of energy used to produce them. NFTs are dumb, a grift, etc etc.. but they themselves use no energy beyond that required to create, sign and broadcast the transaction.
It is dishonest to say "NFTs use a lot of energy". They dont. You can blame ethereum, you can blame PoW, you can blame the miners -- but the existence of the NFT contract and transactions makes no difference.
Are you saying that people playing video games are more energy intensive than literal warehouses full of GPU's running 24/7 mining ethereum? Nobody talks about that because it's a horrible comparison.
It is one thing to say a car creates pollution while moving passengers for x km and another thing to say, we wasted time, money and lot of computing power that are required by lot of computers competing to update a boolean flag in a database.
According to this article a single Ethereum transaction takes 30 kwh of electricity. It’s disingenuous to say that is nothing compared to playing video games or other ordinary activities, which consume far less as they aren’t dictated by game theoretical escalatory mechanics. We make a big fuss about changing 60w light bulbs to 5w led equivalents when the amount of energy that saves in a month is spent on the minting of another artless NFT. And sure, maybe that power is coming from renewable sources, but that doesn’t make it free, rather as an opportunity cost that may have been spent on something almost certainly more productive.
[+] [-] dragontamer|4 years ago|reply
2. I go to the original artist, and buy the original picture / Foobar's copyright from them for $1 million bucks.
3. Now I sue you for illegally distributing my work.
Who wins? Frankly speaking, I'm betting on the court system / classical copyright law in winning. I hypothetically win as far as I can tell.
This isn't even a hypothetical. Copyright allows me to buy the works off of artists. The most common is MPAA / RIAA and other record companies who gain ownership of music. Or Disney Corporation owns the drawings / pictures of Mickey Mouse and not the artists who make the 3d models or pictures.
[+] [-] jamesgreenleaf|4 years ago|reply
I would guess that most popular projects license their images under creative commons, and encourage people to copy and share them, so that the original authors can't just overwrite them, since there would be lots of backups and a social consensus as to what each ID represents.
[+] [-] gizmo686|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] berberous|4 years ago|reply
1.) Increasingly, most savvy NFT projects provide, and savvy buyers demand, explicit IP rights. For example, here are the IP terms for Bored Ape Yacht Club (one of the top NFT projects in the space): https://boredapeyachtclub.com/#/terms
Note that BAYC grants the NFT holder not only a license to use and re-sell the NFT, but the right to commercially exploit and create derivatives of the image.
I would not buy any NFT that did not come with an explicit license. Note that most NFT marketplaces do provide a default license [0].
2.) To the extent that an artist created and sold an NFT of their original work, and then re-sold the copyright to a third party (you), I suspect the copyright system has a concept of an implicit license, i.e. the NFT holder cannot create derivative works or exploit the NFT commercially, but his ownership and re-sale of the NFT is likely non-infringing, so I'm betting you lose. You hopefully asked the artist for a representation that no rights had previously been granted, so you perhaps have a claim against the artist for breaching that representation, if made.
[0] https://www.natlawreview.com/article/nft-license-breakdown-e...
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] profmonocle|4 years ago|reply
Not sure what type of licensing NFT sites like OpenSea/etc. use.
[+] [-] chrismcb|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jondwillis|4 years ago|reply
nfts are still largely a grift
[+] [-] profmonocle|4 years ago|reply
I can imagine the sub's moderators got fed up dealing with people posting endless nearly-identical looking images from the same set (either by the original company trying to make a quick buck, or the buyer desperately trying to flip their investment) and decided to just burn the whole thing.
[+] [-] Shadonototra|4 years ago|reply
NFTs are about maximizing profits out of nothing
scammers won't trade with real art pieces
[+] [-] warning26|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] berberous|4 years ago|reply
Sure, the NFT current scene is extremely overvalued and filled with fraudsters and low effort cash grabs, but once that implodes, I think it's great if artists will have a means to sell digital art to a wide audience.
Tech dudes with tech salaries hating on an avenue for artists to make a living should be ashamed of themselves.
[+] [-] swalsh|4 years ago|reply
I could have just right clicked, and saved it, and used it as a profile pic on twitter. But that seemed weird, what if the person who DID pay for it used it too. That would make me kind of a dick.
[+] [-] rfd4sgmk8u|4 years ago|reply
Now, wanting a world where nobody can buy 'Patek Philippe' watches is not a world I want to live in. If you feel that your life is more complete with a $25k watch, that is your business. This doesnt stop me from wanting to make fun of someone wasting a year of after-tax earnings of the average person for some jewelry that tells the time no better than my phone.
[+] [-] yesbut|4 years ago|reply
/s
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] at_|4 years ago|reply
The buyers seem happy to support the artists. The artists seem happy to receive this support. For all the cries of it being a scam/ponzi, I'm not quite sure who the victim is meant to be here - at least within this rather specific niche.
[+] [-] ayngg|4 years ago|reply
The real headline most of these criticisms related to is probably closer to how deplorable people will act when they are capable of separating themselves from the costs and responsibilities of their actions.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] meheleventyone|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mdoms|4 years ago|reply
The buyers seem happy to support the growers. The growers seem happy to receive this support. For all the cries of it being a bubble, I'm not quite sure who the victim is meant to be here - at least within this rather specific niche.
[+] [-] nathias|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iamstupidsimple|4 years ago|reply
> it's bad for the environment
just doesn't make sense to me. There are far, far more energy intensive operations that we do daily. Think about how much energy is 'wasted' playing video games, yet nobody balks at that.
[+] [-] onion2k|4 years ago|reply
You cannot argue that the relative merits of two bad things makes one of them good, or even "not bad". That's not how anything works. Objectively bad things are always going to be bad no matter what else happens.
[+] [-] thot_experiment|4 years ago|reply
The kind of video gaming that has you burning 300W with your GPU is hard to achieve in a different way.
It is a weak argument though and I think it's frustrating how prominently people make it rather than the much more important "it's bad to propagate scarcity based ownership structures to a domain where scarcity need not exist".
[+] [-] rfd4sgmk8u|4 years ago|reply
There could be 1 or 10000000 NFTs, it makes no difference to the energy usage of the Ethereum network. The energy usage is in the production of Proof of Work blocks. These blocks could be empty or full, and this makes no difference to the amount of energy used to produce them. NFTs are dumb, a grift, etc etc.. but they themselves use no energy beyond that required to create, sign and broadcast the transaction.
It is dishonest to say "NFTs use a lot of energy". They dont. You can blame ethereum, you can blame PoW, you can blame the miners -- but the existence of the NFT contract and transactions makes no difference.
[+] [-] mumphster|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lwansbrough|4 years ago|reply
Virtually all of the things you could mention have some net benefit to society.
[+] [-] anaganisk|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rileyphone|4 years ago|reply
According to this article a single Ethereum transaction takes 30 kwh of electricity. It’s disingenuous to say that is nothing compared to playing video games or other ordinary activities, which consume far less as they aren’t dictated by game theoretical escalatory mechanics. We make a big fuss about changing 60w light bulbs to 5w led equivalents when the amount of energy that saves in a month is spent on the minting of another artless NFT. And sure, maybe that power is coming from renewable sources, but that doesn’t make it free, rather as an opportunity cost that may have been spent on something almost certainly more productive.
[+] [-] angio|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jbirer|4 years ago|reply