> What's the point of paying so much money for the right to kind of own a piece of art that anyone can legally copy and use?
I don't fully understand the "collector" mindset. But let's assume there are people, similar to whales in free-to-play games, that are willing to pay ridiculous large sums for what the majority would not be willing to pay anything for.
Now, think of those collectors as being willing to pay for ownership over original artwork.
The Mona Lisa itself has many replicas, you can buy prints of it, and you could probably easily find paintings of it for much cheaper. Those are all copies as well, but their monetary value is much lower, because people know they are not the original.
Now, think of photography, there are people collecting prints, sometimes of digital photography. Similarly, the 1st print is worth a lot more. Think of Vinyl records, or CD/cassette tapes for music, the worth of the 1st pressed record is a lot more, and collectors are willing to pay a lot for them.
Now think of complete digital art, that which is not even printed. Which is the "original"? Unless you were to own the HDD or the RAM stick where it was first recorded, all instances are perfect copies of the same bits. So instead, the "original" is the first person the artist publicly acknowledged as the owner of the "original". It is like the artist signing the print. This is recorded in a public ledger, that people trust and believe to be very hard to manipulate or fake. That is what an NFT is.
You might find it absurd, but is it anymore absurd than paying lots of money for the 1st print of a photo? Or the first pressed vinyl? Or the first book as signed by the artist?
The value is in people's head and emotional attachment. Someone was given by the artist themselves recognition of the piece signed in a public ledger. That's now the "original" and people assign it value.
You can think of it a bit how a lot of collectors offer public showing of their collection, the fact others can "see" the artwork for themselves isn't what make it valuable, it's the emotional knowledge around it, that of having it handed directly by the artist itself.
This is what I've understood of it at least.
Edit: Now the article still makes good point, that as it stands, some NFTs are ambiguous as to what artwork they even relate too or if they were truly created by the "artist".