I've been mulling perhaps the most common first question people ask about NFTs. What rights do you get? The copyright for any artwork associated with the NFT, whether it is a mutable URL or an immutable IPFS object, remain with the original maker. So the NFT grants nothing.
Conversation
The scam side potential of this is obvious. Now you *could* assign rights along with the minting, in which case what you're really doing is putting a regular copyright assignment contract on the blockchain, but this seems somehow underwhelming. Just... use a paper contract?
2
10
I also don't like analogies like collectibles, autographs, maing-a-star etc. I think that's selling the concept short. I think what an NFT is, is a "right to future rights."
3
1
31
Viewed as a verifiable n/m pointer to an object, you now have a way to reference and work with everything derived from the thing being pointed to. Say I create a set of characters and sell as NFTs. Later, I create a game where those characters are live action playables...
2
13
In regular work-for-hire copyright, if derivative works are of value, the maker will, for the agreed compensation, blanket assign *all* rights to the buyer/commissioner, including reproduction, new media, derivatives, blah blah blah. It's a nuclear option.
1
1
8
But NFTs create a mechanism for fine-grained rights *optionality.* If I make a game with my characters for example, then perhaps the holder of the NFT is suddenly granted airdropped the right to pick game characteristics of the character. You don't have to know ahead of time.
2
19
This is kinda like how land rights evolved. Until there were airplanes, airspace rights above land were meaningless. Buying land doesn't give you limitless rights to pump groundwater, but might grant you *some* rights. Mineral deposit rights may or may not go with the land
1
1
16
The ability to define and sell pointers to future rights I think is a powerful programming mechanism for rights management. Right now, this is based on trust of the creator, but I think norms will emerge.
2
1
20
I think answers like "it's an autograph" or my own first metaphor "it's like the scam companies that allow you to name a star but it isn't recognized by astronomers" are... kinda wrong. They don't really exploit the fact that the NFT is a uniquely identifiable pointer to a thing
2
1
16
Replying to
"uniquely verifiable pointer to a thing." In both cases the association from the NFT to the data itself relies upon an external mechanism, unless I'm misunderstanding. The NFT can only verify that it referred to the data when the association is preserved.
1
Replying to
yep... that's why the standard now is an IPFS hash rather than a URL, but that's still fragile if nobody maintains an IPFS node holding it. But otoh, you can download and copy and forever prove that the hash refers to it.
Replying to
Don't get me wrong, a trustable ledger is an extremely useful thing to have, and DHTs and magnet URIs are a natural application. But the natural creative context is "imagine if we could have a ledger," not "imagine if this was a sink for speculative value."

