The same type of person who champion NFTs is the same type of person who thinks Jackson Pollock was a great artist.
So far, I have seen nothing but stolen artwork, and algorithmically generated garbage on NFT markets, and the people promoting them don’t seem to want to commission artists to make pieces of art: they want to be able to “own” a piece of art that they can then re-sell.
It’s clear that the NFTbros have no understanding of intellectual property law, and are viewing NFTs as a form of “investment”, expecting that they both own the copyright to the piece, and the rights to re-sell it to another party (to make money).
Obviously, unless copyright is transferred via a contractual agreement between the two parties, the holder of an NFT will not own the copyright to the artwork, and that leaves us with the connundrum that a commissioned piece of art serves all these same purposes.
It’s just another Ponzi scheme for money-laundering, and I vote we keep that stuff out of communities like this, because it will undoubtedly end up victimizing people, as it already has (see: other thread re: stolen artwork from this forum sold on OpenSea).
It does not matter what a participant in an NFT scheme “thinks” about the intellectual property rights of the thing that he’s buying or selling. Either he “has clear title” or he doesn’t. And, if he doesn’t, things can become very, very costly for him in Federal court.
I think that a simple “smell test” should tell you all that you really need to know about “this NFT thing.”
My only problem with NFTs is the fact that you don’t really own anything after you buy it. The content itself is not stored in the blockchain and can be removed at any time. It’s similar to buying a key to a house, but you don’t own the house or the land it’s on.
