[dvh1990]

Here we go again. NFTs is a technology that goes hand in hand with a social contract to abide by the ledger. People disregard that social contract as if it wasn't here, but it IS there. Just like patents are written to some database but are enforced by a social contract, NFTs are written to some database but are enforced by a social contract.

[natechols]

Patents are enforced by governments that have massive amounts of guns and can shut down any company that violates them. I promise you nobody in the tech industry respects patents because of any "social contract".

[lexapro]

Governments only have that power precisely because there is a social contract. Read the definition.

[ViViDboarder]

No. They also have guns. Only a very small minority of people must abide by that social contract to enforce it, and those people are likely all part of the enforcement.

[lexapro]

In a police state maybe, but I wasn't talking about that. And even in a police state you need acceptance of the people.

[antonvs]

Patents are enforced by law. There doesn't seem to be any equivalent for NFTs. Many of the criticisms are valid because of that.

[woofcat]

This is perhaps my confusion around the whole NFT thing. How is it in /any/ way different than a boiler plate contract around "ownership".

I.e. when my photographer took photos at my wedding I signed a contract that I "own" those photos and all those rights. I can move then, alter them, back them up, sell them to getty, or whatever.

If I draw a piece of art, even digitally I own the copyright. I sell it to someone and now they own it and inherit all those rights...

Is NFT just simply creating a "Block Chain" for this? and if so... is it even needed? What value do I gain from using a NFT over you know a signed PDF that would actually be backed up in court if it came to it?

Is the vision that there is some hot market place for art and other assets that are traded so frequently that we need a live 24/7 market and exchange for them?

[grumbel]

A signed PDF can be copied, but an NFT can not. That's what makes them useful. They allow you to sell digital things with the same freedom, securities and limitations you would get with physical items (i.e. First-sale doctrine). The NFT represents a digitized form of "ownership".

Where things get a bit complicated is that the NFT just grants you ownership of the NFT itself and nothing else. The interpretation of what the NFT represents happens completely outside of the system.

The NFT is thus not a replacement for a contract, but a way to move that contract into a digital marketplace.

For a practical example, take the difference between DVDs and buying a streaming movie on Amazon. If Amazon would sell digital movies in the form of NFTs, people could buy them. If they want to watch the movie, they show Amazon that they have ownership of the NFT and Amazon lets them stream it. When they are bored with it, they can sell the NFT to somebody else and then the new owner can show that NFT to Amazon to proof ownership and watch a stream of it.

Now in reality, this isn't how NFTs are used (yet?). The way NFTs are used right now is really more like trading-cards. Little novelty things that people might see value in, pay for to support the creator or just do money laundering with or whatever. Most NFTs do not give you access to anything, as whatever they are associated with is already in the public anyway.

The NFT does not represent copyright or ownership of the item it points to, but it has the technical capabilities to do so when the right legal paper work is attached to the NFT.

[phainopepla]

Why would Amazon (or any producer/distributor of digital content) want to facilitate second-hand sales of a product they otherwise control the sale and distribution of? How does this benefit Amazon more than controlling access to the content?

[grumbel]

First Sale doctrine or similar laws exist in many countries, so they are required to allow used sales (e.g. https://www.hallgrimgames.com/blog/2019/9/22/eu-steam-resale). NFTs provide a means to make that practical beyond the boundaries of a single store front. So far these laws have never been enforced in the digital world however, partly because it has never been practical.

Another reason would be that game developers and movie studies start to sell media on their own. So the store would just be a service to download your games from, not the only source of your games. If all the stores stop carrying the media and the studio went out of business, archive.org or similar could take over, as the NFT proofs ownership and you don't have to wait 90 years until copyright expires. Right now we have the situation that some games are already impossible to get legally, as no store caries them and used sales of digital goods are impossible.

Finally, it wouldn't be Amazon starting this, they already have their market dominance and no need to improve the service, it would be the newly arriving competition that would start doing this. Amazon would then have to follow suit to not fall behind. Somebody like Epic might be big enough to get this going and they don't seem to be fundamentally opposed to NFTs.

This is of course all just wishful thinking, but we really need a better way deal with copyright in the digital world. Having media just get lost for 90 years due to there being no way to buy used really isn't acceptable.

[woofcat]

I'm guessing the logic would be that the Movie Producer would sell the NFT's that you could "redeem/use" at specific cloud vendors and the vendor charges the studio for bandwidth etc.

I still don't really understand the logic of all of that, but I understand how it on paper would work. It'd kinda be like when you get a coupon for a free object from the store. Store fulfills the order and sends cost up to manufacture.

[stjohnswarts]

Yeah because no one has established that "having and NFT" really gives you anything. Have there been any cases yet about ownership? Keeping the URI alive? What happens when the originator of the NFT who provides access dies/dissipates as a corporation? Sure you can make any contract but is it enforceable or will the judge laugh at you for buying a poop icon and "dismissed"

[miracle2k]

> Is the vision that there is some hot market place for art and other assets that are traded so frequently that we need a live 24/7 market and exchange for them?

Sort of. You can and people have sold digital art (note this is not the same as owning the copyright) with contracts before, but NFTs make it accessible in a way that inspired a much larger group of people to participate (and yes, speculate).

[analog31]

It's been my understanding that the blockchain is precisely an experiment in what can be accomplished without laws and enforcement, albeit on top of a mountain of conventional infrastructure. Arbitraging energy prices, and laundering money, are only two possible uses. NFT's are another. A decentralized patent system without enforcement was previously something we could only imagine, but now we can try it out.

[UncleMeat]

Isn't the whole point of a patent system the enforcement part? If you don't care about enforcement, you can just publish ideas to your personal blog or arxiv or whatever.

[analog31]

That would have been my guess too, but it doesn't preclude the experiment. I personally think there's more to it than pure enforcement. Coherent standards for what counts as an invention, and a well defined expiry term, are two things that attracted adherence to the patent system. Without them, patents would be too much of a mess to enforce. Those things have evolved over time within the existing patent system, and depend on not only statute but also case law. I don't see how anything like that can build up independent of having a robust government operating over the long term.

On the other hand we already have "copyright without enforcement" for recorded music, via file sharing.

Disclosure: I have 20 patents.

[JJMcJ]

Don Lancaster, who doesn't think much of patents, recommended when you have an idea, publish it immediately. That puts it in the "prior art" and makes it harder to enforce a patent covering the concepts.

[analog31]

Indeed, "defensive publication" can be a viable IP strategy when you're working in a quickly evolving space. Another is a provisional patent application which is much cheaper than a full blown application.

It's still worth at least chatting with a patent lawyer (which I'm not) to make sure what you think is sufficient as a defensive publication, actually is.

[antonvs]

> It's been my understanding that the blockchain is precisely an experiment in what can be accomplished without laws and enforcement

Some people seem to think that, perhaps misled by words like "trustless" that are applied very narrowly to blockchain technology.

But the reality is there's almost nothing about blockchain that helps with these trust issues. If I order a physical product and pay in advance with crypto, I have no recourse except a legal one if the seller doesn't deliver. You can set up escrow systems but then you need to trust the escrow provider, and you still need to somehow deal with hard to verify claims like "I didn't receive my package."

That's just one example. In almost every area in which blockchain is "an experiment in what can be accomplished without laws and enforcement," you'll find the actual situation is that it's a learning exercise for those who don't understand why laws and enforcement are needed - or, a way to avoid laws and enforcement for those engaging in illegal activities.

> A decentralized patent system without enforcement was previously something we could only imagine, but now we can try it out.

How? Put your invention on a blockchain and anyone can copy it without consequence. The primary purpose of patents is lost without enforcement.

[dvh1990]

Something must first be invented, then used, then abused, before laws are enacted.

[ceejayoz]

We banned insurance companies from making decisions on genetic information long before any actually tried it. No one had to make a personal nuclear weapon for us to make it illegal. Plenty of examples of how this isn't true in society.

A significant potential and likely harm is enough to consider preemptively regulating.

[it_does_follow]

You're thinking of regulations. In basically every manifestation the primary function of the state is the enforcement of basic property law. If you don't have that you have warlords/oligarchs fighting with each other constantly over who owns what (since they each individually must act as enforcer).

As far as enforcement of property right, the "distributed" model is well understood and typically leads to a much worse situations than the centralized version.

[antonvs]

That only works for things that don't depend on a legal framework to be useful.

Some of these blockchain applications are essentially proofs of concept waiting for a legal framework to support them. But until that framework exists, it doesn't make much sense to use the applications for anything that involves real value.

[it_does_follow]

> enforced by a social contract

At the end of the day every thing that is truly "enforced" is ultimately enforced by violence.

I can promise that if patents where enforced only by social contract they would be meaningless. Larger corporations do not care about their social relations, but do care if you can have the legal authority to punish them for infringement.

You can write your contract on a napkin and if someone is willing to hurt someone else (materially, physically or otherwise) for violating that, that contract will be enforced.

This is just one of the many cases where the block chain, while interesting technology, has very few uses because there are very few cases were we have a problem with the media the contract is written in rather than the overall enforcement of the contract.

[thinkingemote]

This makes me think of organised crime, drugs etc, the black market, money laundering which loves crypto too.

Perhaps they seek to hype it up to become the operators of the monopoly of violence in this frontier?

[VHRanger]

If your argument is full "code is law!" then you need to take the flipside:

When someone inevitably hacks the shitty solidity code and steals your stuff you don't get to cry to twitter or the police

[OscarCunningham]

If you've got the social contract, why do you need an NFT, rather than just a centralised record?

[kgin]

Or just put it in the file’s metadata. If we’re counting on social contract, I’m sure everyone will respect the metadata and never modify it.

[meheleventyone]

They are enormously different strengths of social contract though both in terms of number of participants and consequences for breaching it.

Five of my friends agreeing to share a dirt bike is a social contract after all.

[dvh1990]

Yes, but the point of blockchain tech is to enable such social contracts to be formed, and over time, strengthened. Isn't that the point of decentralized anything? You can decentralized tech all you want, but without a social contract to use it...

[meheleventyone]

You don't need decentralized tech to do that though as the dirt bike sharing example amply demonstrates...

We can also see that many blockchain projects actually rely on more mundane social contracts like our legal system and governments with actual terms and conditions, registered companies and the like.

If you think NFTs are going to radically alter social contracts around ownership on a wider scale I've got a lovely plot on the moon to sell you.

[tw04]

That kind of highlights the stupidity of it all. A "social contract" without a government to enforce it is worthless. "On your honor" in business is never going to work; way too many folks without a moral compass in society.

[thinkingemote]

I believe the idea is that any community can form a social contract amongst itself regardless of the size.

In reality, at the moment a government had authority over those under it.

So perhaps this idea of social contracts reveal both the aim (destroying of society, hype and illusion to create communities) and the weakness (government, monopoly of violence, status quo)

[Semaphor]

Patents are enforced by the government. NFTs are like patents without the government. Which brings us back to OP.

[krisoft]

> People disregard that social contract as if it wasn't here, but it IS there.

I thought the social contract is what people do. :) Is it there if it's disregarded?

Or rather what is the social contract supposed to be around NFTs?

[karrot-kake]

I agree with you. I think NFTs are being used in a trash way now, but ultimately they will be matured and we will find them useful in some way.

[gameswithgo]

You are delusional