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Charlie Bit My Finger video to be taken off YouTube after selling for £500k

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Re: Charlie Bit My Finger video to be taken off YouTube after selling for £500k

#72
post #54

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 N…

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.

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?

Re: Charlie Bit My Finger video to be taken off YouTube after selling for £500k

#73
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would happen if you sold to someone the deed to a house you do not own?

This is not the equivalent situation. It's more like I decide to sell an NFT to your comment.

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”?

Re: Charlie Bit My Finger video to be taken off YouTube after selling for £500k

#74

What would happen if I put up a NFT for sale of something I had no part in making?

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.

Re: Charlie Bit My Finger video to be taken off YouTube after selling for £500k

#75

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 frustrati…

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

Re: Charlie Bit My Finger video to be taken off YouTube after selling for £500k

#76

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 frustrati…

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.

Re: Charlie Bit My Finger video to be taken off YouTube after selling for £500k

#77
post #63
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

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.

Re: Charlie Bit My Finger video to be taken off YouTube after selling for £500k

#79
post #35
post #9

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…

> 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?

I imagine a lot of artists have benefited from this over the centuries.

Re: Charlie Bit My Finger video to be taken off YouTube after selling for £500k

#80

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…

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.

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