John

It’s toots.matapacos.dog

Yeah, people could donate directly, but some people decided to buy NFTs instead, and they wouldn’t have spent the money otherwise.

These arguments always make me smirk. Yes, of course I could use the slow, expensive, and exploitative financial rails that currently exist. But it’s fucking fun to buy NFTs. And easy. It’s as simple as that. I enjoy collecting these art pieces. I don’t give a flying fuck of a shit if it’s not actually “owning” it by some armchair lawyer’s abstract definition of “owning”. I support cool creators, the image appears in my wallet, I get perks associated with the token sometimes, and I have some prints of the art on my wall. I don’t care, like, not even a little bit, if I actually “own” it or not from a legal contract point of view, which is just a social layer anyways. I verifiably possess it, and that’s enough me.

Seriously, what is your endgame here?

They just really really really hate NFTs/crypto for some reason. I can’t imagine ever getting so worked up about a technology like people do today about crypto. I want to support an artist so apparently I need to have a PhD in contract and IP law in order to do so.

I think we need to define “ownership” here if you’re going to argue semantics and then try to pretzel-logic your way into disproving NFTs (or whatever your goal is)

ownership = rights (human law, rulings/opinions, enforced top down. i.e. titles)

possession = control (physics laws, math, enforced bottom up i.e. car keys)

One is disputable (who owns this dollar bill lying on the street?) but the other is not (indisuptable who has it in his pocket). One is reversible by ruling of a governing body, the other is not (lost cash has to be willingly given back, or taken by force). Sounds familiar…

You usually posses what you own and that’s why these words are often interchanged. But sometimes this is mutually exclusive (You own a car but do not possess it - ex: impounded, keys withheld…)

crypto IMHO was never about the former. “Ownership” will always live in the layer of social agreement. What crypto gives is “possession”: control above the TOS and paper rights that web 2 gave us. The first time the user can possess the keys to his stuff on a database that’s shared with other people (and not just the illusion of). This distinction is the reason why eventhough you do “own” your digital song/videos/game loot on amazon or PS5 via their TOS, you cannot trade it, swap it with a friend, resell it… The key never left your digital landlord, they just let you in to play. You had the papers for your car, but not the key. You never possessed what you owned.

I think what most people call “ownership” when they buy an NFT is actually possession, not the legalese of “owning” something dictated by contracts and social aggreements.

Why does this matter? There’s clearly advantages to ‘possessing’ something via an NFT:

• easy access to markets to buy and sell

• access to liquidity (have you ever tried selling a piece of art in meatspace?)

• real time list of all ‘possessors’ by the artist; Sabet can see in real time everybody who has bought or traded his art work, and give unique benefits (discord access, ticket drops, additional arty drops, etc) to those holders). this is not possible with traditional art. I cannot see the provenance of my photography pieces, for example

• democratizes art buying. I no longer need to go to an art show or bid at an auction. I just need to go to OpenSea

• uniquely provable possession (concert tickets, passes, etc)

So your chief complaint is mainly a semantical one related to the terms outlined, and not the underlying platform. Got it. Thanks for the responses. ☺️

It’s having a legal contract that passes the intellectual property to your name and a Legal System backing that contract with the power and willingness to enable the use of Force to confiscate the property of contract breakers, that give you de facto ownership rights.

Here’s an excerpt of the “Holder Rights” explicitly outlined from a very very very large and well known music artist who released music NFTs:

“[Redacted] token holders have full commercial rights to their unique version. They can remix and release it, play it publicly, or use it in other content like videos.”

“[Redacted] includes the ability to render full quality audio files and to render individual tracks as Stems to make edits and remixes easy.”

“Holders do not have exclusive rights, meaning they cannot remove their version from [redacted] or stop it from showing up in NFT marketplaces like OpenSea.”

“If you do use a version commercially, you should not sell the token. If you do, you will transfer the rights and may need to obtain permission from the new owner to coninue your use.”

“Every buyer will be responsible for their own copyright claims.”

Do you think this would hold up in a court of law?

There is undoubtedly a huge number of rugpulls, vaporware, empty promises, and outright scams with NFTs. But this is true of any nascent technology, any sort of project like this. The reason so many people know about it and are aware about it is because of the permissionless and open nature of crypto which allows people to see these projects in realtime.

IMO it’s neither good nor bad. It’s just nascent tech. For an artist like Sabet, it’s obviously good! It gets people exposed to his art, with a low entry barrier, and allows people to support him. For people like Trump, it’s pretty clearly bad, and it just allows him to scam/rugpull people easier and faster.

So if somebody buys my digital photos off Deviant art, they didn’t “purchase my photos”? Geez, I better go call that TV studio that used some of my work and let them know they got scammed.

When I hired a wedding photographer 15 years ago and got the digitals, did I get scammed?

Are you against people buying anything digital or just the underlying technological platform?

I quite enjoyed supporting artists like Ame72 and Sabat by purchasing their digital artwork. 🤷‍♀️

I don’t see how it’s much different than Patreon. You pay creators that you enjoy, you get a digital collectable, and access to discord of you care about that sort of thing. NFTs allowed many people to do art full-time.