You did not make the case that NFTs add value over a standard non-exclusive commercial licensing contract with your example and instead showed us an NFTs which even when actually backed by a contract does not provide “ownership”, thus confirming my point and that of previous posters that NFTs by themselves don’t given ownership.
Beyond that, if you think legally defined intellectual contract language elements like “ownership” and “licensing” are just semantics, you’re going to be sorelly dissapointed when trying to assert your ownership of those assets.
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
First, apologies for the wall of text. I did try to make it short, but it’s a multi-step complex subject.
What you wrote about possession and ownership makes sense in the physical world, were there can be only be one person who has possession of something - I give you the seashell I have in my possession and it’s now in your possession and not in my possession anymore.
In the digital world, on the other hand, there can be infinite people in possession of exactly the same works because it can be copied at no cost.
This is why we end up with the headfuck which is Copyright Legislation and terms like “ownership” and “licensing” having very specifical legal meanings: whilst possession in the physical domain is unique and stupidly simple to determine (though, as you correctly pointed out, less so “ownership”), in the non-physical domain if you want to preserve that unique possession (or at least limit the number of people having possession) you end up with the anti-natura construct which is Intelectual Property Legislation.
Now, NFTs are a two step mechanism for asserting possession - they’re not the asset itself but rather a token which itself is possessed and whose possession gives rights over an underlying asset.
The problem of unique possession of the NFT itself is techically solved by NFTs. However NFTs have no mechanism whatsoever to enforce any rights on the underlying asset - that part is delegated to other, non-technical mechanisms, which for underlying assets which are non-physical goods, invariably means Copyright Legislation and Contract Law as those are the only ways to control rights over infinitelly-copiable things (well, there’s DRM, but NFTs don’t do that).
As you pointed out NFTs, as a standardized token representing possession, deliver various practical benefits, which I would say are similar to those that Stocks deliver as tokens representing part-ownership of a business.
However:
For Stocks there are a lot of legally mandated business ownership rights linked to Companies Limited By Shares (or whatever is the local legal name were you live for those companies were ownership is determined by owning shares of the company) which define most of the rights that possession of Stocks give (with even tighter rules for market traded companies)
For NFTs there are no guaranteed legal rights on the underlying asset associated with having them: the rights on the underlying asset of an owner of an NFT start and stop with what’s in the Contract and those contracts aren’t even standardized.
The problem is that all together the NFT architecture is not standardized because that second link of the chain - the Contract linking the NFT to the underlying non-physical asset - is non-standardized hence you don’t really know what you get if you buy a random NFT without reading the Contract for that specific NFT.
None of this is a problem if all you want is a cheap license to use a copyrighted work and in the process help the artist by paying them directly without paying middlemen (which seems to be your use case).
This is a problem for those who think they can just buy an NFT as a reselable investment asset, since the real value of an NFT is down to the nitty gritty details of the Contract associated with that NFT and whether one can actually enforce that Contract. It’s this part that anchors all the scams around NFTs.
That said, the idea of using NFTs as a technological base for markets to make it simple and easy for consumers to buy works such as music directly from artists in a world were there is Copyright Legislation has merit, it’s just as an investment that NFTs are problematic.
You did not make the case that NFTs add value over a standard non-exclusive commercial licensing contract with your example and instead showed us an NFTs which even when actually backed by a contract does not provide “ownership”, thus confirming my point and that of previous posters that NFTs by themselves don’t given ownership.
Beyond that, if you think legally defined intellectual contract language elements like “ownership” and “licensing” are just semantics, you’re going to be sorelly dissapointed when trying to assert your ownership of those assets.
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)
First, apologies for the wall of text. I did try to make it short, but it’s a multi-step complex subject.
What you wrote about possession and ownership makes sense in the physical world, were there can be only be one person who has possession of something - I give you the seashell I have in my possession and it’s now in your possession and not in my possession anymore.
In the digital world, on the other hand, there can be infinite people in possession of exactly the same works because it can be copied at no cost.
This is why we end up with the headfuck which is Copyright Legislation and terms like “ownership” and “licensing” having very specifical legal meanings: whilst possession in the physical domain is unique and stupidly simple to determine (though, as you correctly pointed out, less so “ownership”), in the non-physical domain if you want to preserve that unique possession (or at least limit the number of people having possession) you end up with the anti-natura construct which is Intelectual Property Legislation.
Now, NFTs are a two step mechanism for asserting possession - they’re not the asset itself but rather a token which itself is possessed and whose possession gives rights over an underlying asset.
The problem of unique possession of the NFT itself is techically solved by NFTs. However NFTs have no mechanism whatsoever to enforce any rights on the underlying asset - that part is delegated to other, non-technical mechanisms, which for underlying assets which are non-physical goods, invariably means Copyright Legislation and Contract Law as those are the only ways to control rights over infinitelly-copiable things (well, there’s DRM, but NFTs don’t do that).
As you pointed out NFTs, as a standardized token representing possession, deliver various practical benefits, which I would say are similar to those that Stocks deliver as tokens representing part-ownership of a business.
However:
The problem is that all together the NFT architecture is not standardized because that second link of the chain - the Contract linking the NFT to the underlying non-physical asset - is non-standardized hence you don’t really know what you get if you buy a random NFT without reading the Contract for that specific NFT.
None of this is a problem if all you want is a cheap license to use a copyrighted work and in the process help the artist by paying them directly without paying middlemen (which seems to be your use case).
This is a problem for those who think they can just buy an NFT as a reselable investment asset, since the real value of an NFT is down to the nitty gritty details of the Contract associated with that NFT and whether one can actually enforce that Contract. It’s this part that anchors all the scams around NFTs.
That said, the idea of using NFTs as a technological base for markets to make it simple and easy for consumers to buy works such as music directly from artists in a world were there is Copyright Legislation has merit, it’s just as an investment that NFTs are problematic.