[Joeboy]

I'm not sure if I'm understanding you or not.

I can see that if there's an NFT minted in eg 2020 and no record of the associated work existing prior to that, that provides a bit of evidence in favour of the (earliest) NFT holder being the legitimate IP owner. Is that what you're saying, or something more than that?

[berberous]

That’s basically it.

For a well known and successful project, like BAYC or Cryptopunks, the authentic and original mint contracts are well known. If in 100 years someone offers to sell me one, which has traded hands 3500 times, it is extremely easy to ignore the noise of the 3500 intermediate transactions, pull up the source contract, and confirm it’s the authentic original.

This of course works best for “well known” NFTs, but it is a legitimate improvement over how Sotheby’s would have to authenticate a newly discovered alleged Monet, as in that case, the secondary transactions are relevant and need to be investigated as it’s impossible to just jump to the source and know with certainty that this is a legitimate Monet.

For projects that are not well known, you do not have the benefit of having a “well known” source contract, but yes, with everything on chain, you could at least do as you suggest and say, well, this appears to be the earliest example on chain anyone has been able to find.

So while there is of course still some uncertainties or some need to refer to external knowledge or sources off chain, being able to totally track a clear decentralized chain of title is very helpful, and solves a lot of problems, even though it does not solve all problems.

[Joeboy]

Thank you! My initial idea of what NFTs were was that they were like a free copyright registry, and as far as that goes, I don't really see a problem (although it seems like a rather over-engineered solution).