Louvre makes its entire collection available online

The downloading and re-use of medium-format photographs published on the collections website representing works that are not protected by copyright (hereinafter called the “Photographs”) are permitted, free of charge, for any non-collective use within a strictly private context and for the following exhaustively-listed museographic, scientific and educational purposes: - projection and distribution for the purpose of museographic, pedagogic and scientific activities, such as their reproduction on labels and exhibition signs, the presentation of guided tours, the running of educational workshops, the delivery of teaching and training sessions and the holding of symposia and seminars; - publication of exhibition and permanent collection catalogues, scientific papers and Ph.D. theses for publishers whose registered office is in the European Union, within a limit of one thousand five hundred (1500) copies, republication included: - digital scientific and educational publications.

It is more permisive than I expected it would be, frankly.

It's fairly easy to verify the origins of statements here, especially since Jack is on Twitter announcing his NFT on his timeline. What more than that do you need?

Same as you verify any celebrities selling movie props on ebay or whatever, if they haven't announced the sale via some other channel where they are already verified, don't trust that it's the real deal in the marketplace.

> Which is why the Beeple NFT sale didn't happen somewhere in the nether of the internet, but through Christie's, a 300 year old seller of art, after buyer and seller had communicated personally.

This is a feature, not a drawback. You can make the sale however you want, via bank transfer, cash in hand or actually transfer Eth to a wallet. What matters in the end is who stands as the owner in the blockchain, but how it gets there, is irrelevant.

> Also as a sidenote, you have actually no idea whether this particular blockchain will still be around in the future. In fact given the volatility of tech that's not really that likely to be honest.

This is a separate issue from NFTs and applies to the whole cryptocurrency space. For now, the $1.5 trillion market is disagreeing with you that it can disappear in the future, as otherwise people wouldn't put so much money into the ecosystem.

Let's say I want to send you money for something illegal. You, however, don't want the government getting suspicious about how you're spending $large_amount on $small_salary.

I could gift you the money, but if we don't have an existing relationship or reason to do so that looks mighty suspicious, and additionally gift tax can end up being more than income tax.

The next option is for me to "buy" something from you. This needs to be something you can obtain for a low price but sell for a high price. You could sell me a loaf of bread for $1million, but that's going to look equally (if not more) suspicious than the gift.

Enter art: Art can be produced for extremely low cost, but sold at massive markups (and often is so). The value of art is almost entirely subjective (i.e. "what is someone willing to pay for this"), so unlike with a piece of bread it's not obvious that I'm paying for something I consider near worthless. Each piece of original artwork is unique, so there's no market to prove that nobody else would be willing to pay such a sum for your art.

Therefore, with art you can receive the money, pay taxes on it, and claim to the government it's totally legit. NFTs have similar properties to art: they're unique, can be minted at very low cost, people are willing to pay large sums for them, and nobody really has any way of determining their "true" value.