I don't see how promoting artificial scarcity is going to become a good idea in a few years. Just because the implementation is shit nowadays doesn't mean we should be happy to see better implementations in the future.
I'm a hobbyist photographer. I have been publishing my photographs to unsplash for the last 4 years. I have over 100 photos on Adobe contributor. The former has delivered me ZERO inbound or monetary value, just over 3 million downloads of my work. The latter has given me returns I could buy coffee with.
NFTs open a new World of opportunity for me. Not only can other humans easily collect, and compensate me for my work, I also have a whole new stream for consuming royalties. Now think further about the ecosystem potential and all the third parties that consume my unsplash content for free today, NFTs can change that.
In what sense do the purchasers of your NFTs have "ownership" of your work - what could they do with it that I could not, and how is this legally enforced? If NFTv2 comes out in a year with 10x the financial rewards, will you commit to not offering the same pieces again?
What led you to make your photos available under a free sharing license, if you were expecting returns?
> Not only can other humans easily collect, and compensate me for my work
They could have done it before, what makes you think this technical change will make people want to fund artists more, beyond a momentary financial mania?
1. The goal with Unsplash has always been marketing exposure and inbound traffic, though unfortunately it just doesn't really exist. So, why are my photos still there? It feels counterproductive to remove something that has ranked so well, for so long, on the platform.
2. Just my opinion - I believe that over time people will increasingly value digital assets, I don't think we're even close to understanding their utility. NFT collectors are a growing segment for artists and things like virtual galleries will represent new places to showcase and share those collections.
Edit - I think people should make an effort to distinguish between visual and "technical or attributable" ownership. Too often these threads on NFTs are, "how do you own something if I can copy it" (the picture). That's missing the point. I don't care if you replicate my NFT and its visual identity, I will always be the owner of the underlying attribute and the evolution of that attribute.
NFT's aren't about artificial scarcity, they give owners rights. Being able to control a digital asset is important. Take the ENS (it's like a domian service). Having exclusive control over a domain is not scarcity, it's what makes it practical.
To get in the right mindset, you should stop thinking of NFT's as pictures. That's not the primary use case. It's a stupid game that became popular. NFT's are just tokens on the open blockchain that you can exclusively control.
NFTs open a new World of opportunity for me. Not only can other humans easily collect, and compensate me for my work, I also have a whole new stream for consuming royalties. Now think further about the ecosystem potential and all the third parties that consume my unsplash content for free today, NFTs can change that.