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With a NFT of a GIF, you don't need to pay to see the content. People are not buying these tokens to see the content, because it is free for everybody to see.

What Pearson is suggesting is a different model: that you have to buy the NFT to see the content. This will lead to piracy, as most people will not be buying the textbooks for the token, but for the file it points to.

> Why would people want to pay royalties to an artist, and not to an author? I would actually agree with you, but I think people don't want to pay royalties full stop.

People usually are happy to pay and see royalties going to content creators, and if Pearson set up the smart contract to split royalties across the dozens of editors and designers that had a hand in making the book it would be a fantastic use of the blockchain. But this article suggests that Pearson as the distributor will be reaping the most rewards, not the authors of the textbooks.