Could you elaborate on this a bit? If you aren’t talking about IP then what does “ownership” of a digital artwork mean? Is it that you own the computer code for the artwork? But that would seem to be IP.
If one doesn’t own the computer code for a digital artwork, what else is there to own?
I’m totally confused.
Sure.
When you buy a piece of art (or a book or a DVD of a movie or whatever), you are buying single instantiation of the piece of art. You typically are not buying the legal rights to duplicate the work of art, or to create derivative works based on that art. So if you buy an e-book of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, you’re buying just that copy - you’re not buying the rights to publish additional copies of that e-book, or to make a movie out of that e-book, or license the characters for merchandise. You just bought one single copy of the book itself. Those other rights are what we will colloquially refer to as the IP rights in the work, which are (usually) separate and distinct from buying a copy of the work.
One difference between IRL physical artwork (like oil on canvas) and digital artwork is the absence of an “original” of any given artwork. That has made it difficult (though not impossible) for digital artwork to be something to collect as an investment. A duplicate or reprint of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers is worth very little, but the original is worth many many millions of dollars - a difference in value which exists because the original painting is distinguishable from a reprint or poster or coffee mug or whatever. That distinction in the original of a artwork (or being one of a limited set), rather than a duplicate, is hard to create in the digital world, where a right-clicked copy is literally identical to the the original. The hope was that NFT’s would solve that problem - but it’s a problem that has nothing to do with IP or copyright.
Got that. But if I buy an actual hard copy, I can sell it to a used book store or donate it to a library. I can do whatever I want with that specific copy, an indication of true ownership.
Is the same true with digital art? If I buy digital art, can I post it on my public Facebook page knowing that people will likely copy it and therefore reduce the value of whoever owns the IP? Can I email a free copy to share with friends or perhaps just direct them to my Facebook page where they can copy it themselves?
If I display the digital artwork I bought on Facebook I have made a new copy that is now loaded on the site and which can be copied by anyone. Certainly seems like a violation of copyright in spirit. Is it in practice?
No - but you couldn’t do that with the physical book you bought, either. You can’t scan the copy and post it on your Facebook page. You can’t photocopy it and distribute the duplicates to people. You only own one, single instance of the work.
If you buy a piece of digital art, you can do the same things. You can sell it at a used art store (gallery), or donate to an art library (museum).
Where things get sticky is if all you own is the NFT - not a copy of the digital art.
It probably depends. I am not an IP lawyer. But what you’re describing might be fair use.
There’s a broad category of uses of copyrighted works that are exempt from copyright as fair use, and one could argue that using a digital artwork as a background on your phone or as a thumbnail or as your FB wallpaper falls within that category. If you’re “displaying” the artwork on FB (rather than, say, posting a link for people to download it), that might qualify. It would be akin to an office building buying a piece of artwork and putting it on display in the lobby - even though that means that someone can come up and take a photograph of the artwork, which act would probably be infringing. But depending on the circumstances, it might be an infringement. And even the office lobby display might be more of an implied license, rather than an exemption from copyright - again, it’s not my field.
Thanks for the info.
The complication here is that one could easily keep a copy of the digital art that was just sold to an art store. Or make a copy for one’s girlfriend, who then gives a copy to her mom, who sells it on ebay, etc. All technically violations, but virtually unenforceable.
I’m reaching the conclusion that investing in digital art is a fool’s errand. The ease of making exact duplicates creates too many complications for trying to estimate value. Or maintain value. I certainly don’t see any particular advantage for owning something tagged with an NFT. I may be overly cynical but when the valuation of something depends on the honor system, I have my doubts.
Digital art needs a new business model.
Numbered copies would help. No duplicate numbers allowed. How to do it? No idea, but that is not my problem.
Certainly true. Although theoretically also possible for that book you sell at the used book store or donate to the library. More likely with records and CD’s (back in the day) - people used to make tapes of albums for friends and family all the time, and no doubt a lot of albums that made it to a used record shop had been copied more than once.
Maybe. When digital art has a well-documented provenance (like when it is sold through a major auction house), it’s very possible to establish that the artworks in question are the originals. Sometimes when you buy certain artworks, that’s all you’re buying - the established and documented provenance and the right to have/create an instance of it, like the duct-taped banana:
The allure of NFT’s was that they might expand the realm of artworks that could have their provenance “confirmed” through the simplicity of blockchain, opening up a wider array of art to investment than just those under the hammer at Christies or Art Basel. But NFT’s can’t really do that.
Interesting useful discussion that echos my own long time sense of the queasy quasi-futility of the attempt to use NFT’s to add value to otherwise indistinguishable copes of digital art. Leap1, I wish your endeavor well and am eager to hear more, but I have serious doubts.
Old fashioned physically crafted “analog” art, whether Van Gogh Sunflowers, Rothko Color Fields, or ancient Greek Kouroi, are objects that can only be seen by actually physically going on “pilgrimage” to visit and so see their original and ONLY instantiation. All other copies are serious degradations rather than identical instantiations.
I am fascinated by the pricing and market for high quality limited editions of original art work, such as this woodcut.
Each of the sixty copies of this set is minutely different from the others, all unique imprints from Beckmann’s carved woodblock. I own a different copy of this set, one I happily found and bought 22 years ago at an Amsterdam flea market for about $600, vs. the current asking price of $22000. I had long found it bizarre that many great works of art, because appearing in limited editions rather than as one offs, were utterly affordable while equivalent solitary works – from one off pencil drawings to oil paintings – were orders of magnitude more expensive. This has changed over the last two decades as limited editions values have increased faster than the one offs.
The change I have noted in limited edition prices strikes me as helping feed the interest in NFTs.
david fb
But again, when the copy is identical to the original I have difficulty understanding why the original should have added value. Perhaps it is my biology background. A cell undergoing mitosis produces two identical daughter cells. Which is the original? Who knows. If a=b, then making distinctions between a and b is just arbitrary and ultimately meaningless.
Digital art is ultimately computer code. I can maybe see how the code written on a napkin by a famous artist would have one-of-a-kind value, or maybe even the hard drive the code was first installed on. But the original computer file?
Maybe what digital artists need is an itunes-like site (iArt?) where digital art can be listed and downloaded. Or perhaps an audiobook model where subscribers can borrow art for certain time periods.
“Value” isn’t determined just by the physical properties of an object. At least, not market value.
On September 27, 1998 Mark McGwire hit his 70th home run. That ball is physically identical (in any material respect) to any of the foul balls that were hit into the stands that night. If at the end of the evening you had mixed it in with a bucket of other foul balls from the night, you’d never be able to tell which was which. But the McGwire 70th ball is worth millions because that ball - and not any of the foul balls - was the one that was actually hit for his 70th HR.
The historical provenance of an object is something that has enormous value for some people - especially collector-type people. They don’t necessarily care whether there are a million identical copies of a thing - if this is the copy that was sold from Meeple to a bidder, then that’s the one that has value.
…if sufficiently verified, and hence the tradition of signing and dating the “unique” ball distinquished by the signficant event.
Two things needed – uniqueness and verification.
david fb
This may very well be the salient point of an NFT in that case. Perhaps the very fact that YOU (the collector) have the NFT associated with the item (a digital picture, or a baseball) in question on the blockchain in YOUR wallet IS the uniqueness and verification of said item. Even if 1000 identical items (baseballs or right click saved versions of the digital picture) exist somewhere out there. The one who owns the associated NFT is “known” to have the original and unique item.
Yes, that makes real sense. We will see how the social psychology evolves.
david fb
The NFT is like a authentication certificate?
Yes! Both an authentication certificate AND proof of ownership.
That’s what advocates of the technology were hoping for - that NFT’s would end up being a useful means of authenticating things like ownership of certain assets.
Unfortunately, the technology can’t do that today, and may not ever be able to do that. At least not for anything “off-chain.” NFT’s are wonderful tools for authenticating themselves - you can determine with some degree of certainty that an NFT is unique and what wallet it is in. But there’s no on-chain way to establish that the original and unique item is, in fact, associated with the NFT. The NFT might say that it is - but it can’t confirm it.
The authentication certificate for a Van Gogh says it is authentic, but it can’t confirm that the Van Gogh hanging on your wall is indeed the authentic one. In fact, some collectors actually have professionally good quality copies made of some of their high-priced artworks so the original can be stored in a temperature and humidity controlled vault instead of on their regular wall. The regular wall gets the good quality copy.
Absolutely. Proving the authenticity of an artwork is not a simple task.
The hope was that NFT’s might use technology to solve that problem - and similar ones involving chains of ownership and records. Unfortunately, they aren’t up to the job. Tracing and tracking the token is pretty locked up - but there’s no sufficient way to link the token to the asset it’s supposed to represent. That doesn’t matter much when we’re dealing with something where there’s no real dispute about that link - it’s pretty well “known” that the linkage between the NFT representing Beeple’s First 5000 Days and the artwork itself. But the NFT itself is no use in solving that problem - it’s the collective awareness of the artwork and who bought it and how (and the Christie’s auction team documenting it) that solves the problem.
Actually that is not true. The metadata is stored on the IPFS very often. It is not the only option. The storage is structured differently than your hard drive. You can edit your hard drive. You can not edit the IPFS.
@albaby1 you have said the art is not owned but that is totally false. No matter how many times and how much authority you invest you never looked into where the metadata is and how it is stored.
The problem with this is most of the investors are extremely savvy tech people. They know more about this than you ever have. I am talking the wealthier investors. There are hundreds of thousands of unmonied people getting Starbucks NFTs or whatever. That is not really investing in art.
