[casi18]

> "Information doesn't want to be free anymore"

“Information Wants To Be Free. Information also wants to be expensive....That tension will not go away” - Stuart Brand

Think about the whole quote and NFTs will make more sense to you.

NFT != DRM

go wild, right click and torrent. i'll send you my nft images myself if you want them. the signatures and the economic security of that signature taking place is valuable. there is no scarcity of information in NFTs.

these takes are getting so bad, misunderstanding the point so much im not sure how we get people aligned in the discussion at this point. but in the words of satoshi “If you don’t believe it or don’t get it, I don’t have the time to try to convince you, sorry.”

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

> the signatures and the economic security of that signature taking place is valuable

Except, it isn't. What is the point in having a certificate of ownership of a resource so un-scare that it is practically free?

We have achieved post-scarcity of information, and people are desperately trying to cram scarcity-based economics back into it because that's all our society knows how to deal with. We should instead be working to remake society around the new reality, in my opinion.

> but in the words of satoshi “If you don’t believe it or don’t get it, I don’t have the time to try to convince you, sorry.”

Yeah, that's what scam artists say. Tell everybody you have a miracle, instill some FOMO, and when people poke at the holes tell them you don't have time to explain it to them or it is too complicated, but trust me it's great.

[casi18]

People need to be paid to do the work, so they can eat and pay rent. We dont actually live in a post scarcity star trek world. So we find a way that people can be paid yet the information and content can remain free to everyone. It seems like lots of people like this. For some reason some people really really hate that other people are willing to pay to make content freely available to them. The people buying NFTs are footing the bill for you to have that free information. Sure thats a social/cultural status game with a side of speculation, but in turn we have art that is permeating culture rapidly.

As he is quoting a distortion of Stuart Brand, maybe we should see what he would think? well here he is at the ethereum devcon in 2018 talking about this stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLGZdLpHl1w

Open minded, interested, exploring, doing what he has done for decades and has been admired by people for, being a hacker!

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

> People need to be paid to do the work, so they can eat and pay rent.

Yes, this is the part about reshaping society I was talking about. Artists do contribute value to the world and need a way to be supported, but the way we support them should not be to burn the gift of post-scarcity.

> We dont actually live in a post scarcity star trek world.

When it comes to information we really, really do. I have every single game ever made for every console generation from 1978 through 2002. This cost me next to nothing, because we live in the information age.

> So we find a way that people can be paid yet the information and content can remain free to everyone

We already have several mechanisms for that. I don't see how NFTs bring anything new to the table other than providing speculation-based scams to flourish, which doesn't really benefit the artists in any way.

> Sure thats a social/cultural status game with a side of speculation, but in turn we have art that is permeating culture rapidly.

I wasn't aware that there was a problem with this. Indeed, the non-scarcity of information has allowed art and culture to proliferate at ludicrous speed. We've seen someone's fanfiction become a big budget film series (with some IP changes), someone's basement-developed game became so big a company bought him out for billions of dollars, and a korean TV series become a smash hit in the west.

I'm open to having my opinion changed, but I don't see any problems things like NFTs actually solve better than any existing system other than being great for scams.

[casi18]

> I have every single game ever made for every console generation from 1978 through 2002. This cost me next to nothing

I think you are confusing the cost of production of these things, and the cost to you personally. There is a cost (material) and scarcity(human time) involved in making things. I think we have got away as a society with not paying artists and musicians and demanding their content be free and "post-scarcity". That really isnt helpful to people trying to live in this world. See Gillian Welch sadly singing "Everything is free now... They figured it out, I'm gonna do it anyway even if it doesn't pay".

> which doesn't really benefit the artists in any way.

the default on most marketplaces is a 10% resale royalty paid to the artist. compare this to existing aucition houses where we get 0. or second hand record shops where we get 0%. or spotify or youtube where the ceos are billionaires and we get fractions of pennies for streams AND have our work surrounded by adverts.

when i look at https://foundation.app/collection/clsfd I see an artist i really admire finally getting paid some money for her years of work and experimentation. and retaining control in that system. The work isnt tied and locked in to this particular website like posting on instagram, the provenance is clear and royalties fair (decided by the artist).

I think people need a reminder of Sturgeon's Law. 90% of everything is shit. Don't get blinded by the noise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

> I think you are confusing the cost of production of these things, and the cost to you personally.

No, I'm not. The fact that artists need to be paid for their work so they can continue to exist within world of scarcity economics is orthogonal to the fact that information can be copied and disseminated for an effective zero-cost.

Let me put it this way: if, instead of minting and purchasing an NFT, the potential buyer just gave the artist money, what has changed? Everyone can still copy the art for free, the owner can still say they paid for it and prove it in any number of existing methods. Absolutely nothing about adding a cryptographically secure certificate of ownership to that is valuable as far as I can see.

[Tossrock]

So why didn't people do that? There has been the option to give artists money forever, and yet as a society, we generally haven't. NFTs are demonstrably transferring massive amounts of wealth from crypto bros with too much money to artists who need it. It's revolutionary because _it's actually happening_. Even though it was theoretically possible in the past, _people didn't actually do it_. The traditional art market doesn't care about an artist until they're dead. The value of NFTs is that a massive new market for art, from living artists, has been created ex nihilo.

[lostcolony]

'people buying NFTs are footing the bill for you to have that free information'

Where? All I see is people paying for works after the fact, that no one would pay for -except- buying into the idea of an NFT.

Where are the NFTs being sold for desirable creative works -prior- to their creation and distribution? Show me a movie being shot, by names good enough that they could otherwise sell tickets, that will release freely to everyone that was funded by selling an NFT to it, say.

[casi18]

Retroactive sales have long been the way most art (and most stuff in general) is funded. Art is made and then sold, then the artist can keep making things. Someone makes them then sells them then they can keep making more. There is also the smaller market of commissioned work, which is popular in illustration and graphic design, but not so much in fine arts as it strips agency from the artist (you are asking them to make a particular thing). Alongside that there is funding applications via arts councils and crowdfunding, the closest for that would be projects on https://mirror.xyz/

Here is a crowdfund for a musician who is releasing records on catalog: https://haleek.mirror.xyz/crowdfunds/0x8B38a9cbabC067ddEA968...

Also as he was mentioned before, here is the crowdfund for the documentary about Stuart Brand too that played with these ideas of free/expensive/public/private https://weareasgods.mirror.xyz/crowdfunds/0x69DdE2e4d81720AE...

[lostcolony]

Not really answering the question there, which was specifically in reference to "People need to be paid to do the work". Clearly, they don't. They do the work first. Maybe if they were not paid they'd not do -further- work (though "starving artist" being a thing tends to imply people create because of a desire to create, not because of how lucrative it is), but with NFTs...no one is actually paying them to do the work. There could be an NFT with no artwork attached (in fact, there is no artwork attached; there's just a link, pointing somewhere on the internet, that can be changed out at any time by the creator).

[casi18]

> "People need to be paid to do the work". Clearly, they don't.

im really not sure what you are arguing for here? It seems you just really dont want a person to give someone else money and that have exchange/relationship be tokenized?

because regardless of how you feel about it, clearly lots of other people do want this. many artists and musicians do want this, particularly with royalties on resales.

I make something, I put up a signed version for auction, it gets sold. That person has the version i signed, they like having that, maybe in the future they sell it again and i also get royalties from the future sales. This is a positive improvement for me selling my artwork/music, and i much prefer it to begging on patreon. Even just making/advertising a patreon account is seen negatively from my experience, people would much rather pay me for something than send me $5 a month. I guess the follow up is why crypto not paypal, and beyond the obvious dependancy/fees/region locks, well its just more fun :)

We know that people feel different when they buy things. We know that ownership brings with it a sense of care. We know the exchange of one token for another (be it crypto of pieces of paper or stones) builds relationships, builds community. And a record of those exchanges builds legitimacy. That legitimacy extends to the system, as more people use it the more accepted it becomes.

>that can be changed out at any time by the creator

that would be one quick way to destroy your legitimacy, future sales, and upset your audience, sure. not sure why you'd do that?

[gowld]

NFTs aren't funding art in any substantial. They are funding some people playing the NFT/status game. People making art are supported by Patreon, commissions, etc.

[lostcolony]

To be fair, some artists have started selling NFTs of their work, and seen their income explode.

That said, -they were already creating art-. They're now getting better funded, which is great, but they also have geared their art toward that funding (see Bitcoin Angel as an example), which is, I would contend, a form of selling out (but is probably not much worse than patronage), and the source of that funding is horrific for the environment and requires a collective speculative delusion, but I've yet to see any art come about because of NFTs. To be fair there, though, I don't think art for the purpose of making money is a thing; artists create because of a desire to create, and hopefully it gets suitably appreciated to make money.

[casi18]

As I mentioned to others, remember the saying "90% of everything is shit" and make some time for the 10% maybe being legitimate, maybe having something worthwhile that is attracting all the attention.

Most people I know making art are funded by Arts Councils and government programs. Then there is the private markets, which look similar to the NFT speculation games (go watch a sotherbys auction some time, its eye opening) but with no royalties going to the artists. NFTs at a minimum have that 1 up on auction houses.

Then there is larger grants from foundations and charities, which would fund a project without expectation of ownership on any items. Philanthropists.

Then there is the smaller graphic/illustration commission artists who use paypal and patreon, interestingly they also seem to be the ones kicking up the most fuss about nfts, im not sure why though.

And it is just plainly wrong that artists arent using NFTs, and that it is just people playing status games. Its been quite widely accepted and adopted, particularly amongst those who already deal with selling their works so dont have that hesitation and fear of asking to be paid. Sure there is abuse and scams, those are the 90% of shit. most pop music is produced by organisations making bland acceptable rhythms with a pretty teen face dancing around to make a company a bunch of money, kinda sounds scammy too. But that doesnt mean theres also good stuff going on. Its up to you if you want to engage with it, but flat out denying it is happening wont make you an expert either.

[NoGravitas]

> We dont actually live in a post scarcity star trek world.

We don't have matter replicators, or fusion reactors, but we've had sufficient technology to reliably give every living human a comfortable and safe existence since the early 1960s at the latest (see Murray Bookchin's "Post-Scarcity Anarchism" (1968)). Tellingly, we (collectively) choose not to. Instead, we're getting Gibson's Jackpot.

[splistud]

Are you saying this is the monetization of virtue signaling?

[AlexandrB]

> but in the words of satoshi “If you don’t believe it or don’t get it, I don’t have the time to try to convince you, sorry.”

This quote is funny, because the technology and cryptography is pretty understandable and doesn't require faith. What I have a qualm with is the economics. And the problem with the economics is that it's not value neutral. Sure, we could have a system where signed hyperlinks to jpegs have value, but do we want that? Who does such a system benefit? Are the incentives of such a system aligned with continued human prosperity?

Edit: > there is no scarcity of information in NFTs.

This is contradicted by the hype around NFT gaming and "pay to earn". Every NFT gaming proposal I've seen seems geared around using NFTs to enforce artificial scarcity of digital items.

[lostcolony]

If NFTs get the economics right, then there is literally no need for any sort of IP law when it comes to digital assets. After all, the profitable thing is proof of ownership, not the good.

And yet, no one is paying (to grab a software company out of a hat) Oracle for the Oracle "name". They're paying for the software. The closest we have is paying for "proof of authenticity", because that belied a level of quality, but if we can trivially make a perfect copy, even that loses all merit.

[Jtsummers]

What can you do with the proof of ownership of a digital asset if everyone else can copy it and ignore that proof of ownership? It's like starting with DRM and saying, "Oh yeah, we don't encrypt it, we just trust you not to violate our terms. Now pay up."

[nlarew]

What would Taylor Swift do right now? I can rip all of her audio off of Spotify and use it in my movie without her permission even though she owns the music.

She would try to stop me - maybe send a cease and desist, sue, or otherwise seek remuneration for unauthorized use of her work.

Her proof of ownership is a signed contract with her recording company and any US copyright filings.

Your proof of ownership is an unambiguous cryptographic scheme (NFT), which you could use to secure a US copyright.

[phillipcarter]

> I don’t have the time to try to convince you, sorry.

I'm willing to bet you do :)

[casi18]

lol maybe today on a friday afternoon i do haha :)

but in general the conversations are getting exhausting and distracting. I feel like it is at a point where we will just keep building the things we find useful for ourselves and our communities, maybe others will join in.

hopefully he people with such extreme anti-crypto views recognise that we are human; we'll try and we'll fail and maybe we'll make some cool stuff too. maybe they dont share the same values and maybe theyre scared of what might happen, but the continual insults and accusations of everyone being scammers/scammed because we linked some metadata with some signatures is absurd and weird.

if theyre so worried about culture and society maybe they should take a moment to think of what energy they are putting out into the world and if its at all healthy.