Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by boffinAudio 1437 days ago
Where do you stash your receipts? Somewhere you'll find them in two years time when challenged to prove you paid for something? Think that solution scales through the entirety of society?

Sony could make a blockchain/NFT solution to their problem and everyone would be happy - it'd be future-proof, licenses would be in-perpetuity, and nobody would have to pay much for the effort. Heck, it'd even give pirates a way to become legitimate service providers.

Sony et al., are not doing this, because of antiquated business ideas that serve more as dark patterns than anything else.

1 comments

> Think that solution scales through the entirety of society?

It does when I need to get a repair for something I bought that is still under warranty.

EDIT:

Also: does keeping a cryptographic key safe scale through the entirety of society?

>It does when I need to get a repair for something I bought that is still under warranty.

This simply doesn't scale through the entirety of society, because its only relevant to you and your relationship with the content provider.

If I'm being challenged on the ownership of movies on my personal laptop - having a publicly accessible register of my purchase of those movies is entirely more useful to me - and society at large - than the "private receipts stashed in a drawer" model you propose is superior to NFT's.

>Also: does keeping a cryptographic key safe scale through the entirety of society?

Yes. I can depend on it if I need to defend myself against claims of piracy and theft of intellectual property, no matter where I am in the world.. Having a globally-accessible register of my licenses is quite a bit more useful than if those receipts are stashed in a paper file somewhere remote.

> the "private receipts stashed in a drawer" model you propose is superior to NFT's.

I've never said it's "superior". I simply mean it's good enough. I should probably have been more clear on that.

Also:

> This [physical/digital receipt] simply doesn't scale through the entirety of society, because its only relevant to you and your relationship with the content provider.

But then

> I can depend on it [NFT/public ledger] if I need to defend myself against claims of piracy and theft of intellectual property, no matter where I am in the world

Sorry but I find this contradictory. Can you please explain why the receipt is only relevant me and the content provider but a public ledger isn't? You mean "relevant" as in "there are more actors that can give a 'truth value' to the transaction"?

The paper receipt is in your drawer somewhere, you cannot provide it when you're crossing a border and need to convince the security thug that you do in fact own all those movies.

An NFT, on the other hand, can be looked up by anyone, anywhere.

I don't know what is so difficult to understand about this. The NFT receipt solves a lot of problems that a paper receipt simply makes worse.

There's nothing hard to understand. I'm simply wondering whether these use cases ("crossing a border and need to convince the security thug that you do in fact own all those movies") are really so pressing AND don't depend on other problems being solved first.