Originally published at: NFT auction for Keith Haring's never-before-seen digital drawings he made on a computer Timothy Leary gave him in the mid-1980s | Boing Boing
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NFT? Are people still falling for that grift? Still, these are some cool images.
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I think by now people should be capable of understanding that if they like these images, they should try to own them rather than own an address that points to their whereabouts.
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You wouldn’t right click a boing boing post would you?!
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What does “owning the image” mean in the context of digital art though? You mean people should try to purchase the copyright for these images, or buy the original floppy disks they were saved on, or just print them out and hang them on a wall?
It’s a pity Haring didn’t live long enough to get to play with Flash animation, I think he would have had a lot of fun with that and the software was very well-suited for his drawing style.
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This is the closest thing I’ve seen where NFTs could make sense. However only super slightly and in the end it’s still a scam.
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NFT refresher -
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… but it’s Keith Haring and Timothy Leary
This one must be a sensible investment 
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“The idea is not to live forever; it is to create something that will… on the blockchain in the form of a non-fungible token” - Andy Warhol
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Now this is a use case where NFT remotely makes sense
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What does “owning the image” mean in the context of digital art though? You mean people should try to purchase the copyright for these images, or buy the original floppy disks they were saved on, or just print them out and hang them on a wall?
I’d have to say that if you want to own the images, you should have the option of physical possession of the media, plus copyright. If you own an NFT, you own the images as much as I do, which is to say not at all. You own the address string.
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No, you own a receipt to the address string. You can make multiple with the same URL.
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I’ll take it! I’m even willing to overpay for it.
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Except it doesn’t. NFTs don’t prove anything about who created the art, or how scarce it is, or any of the other wild claims crypto-enthusiasts love to make about them. This art is cool and so is the story behind it, but associating this art with a random token on a blockchain is about as useful as writing “I own this now” on a post it note and slapping it on a painting in the louvre.
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Grifts go back to early Humankind:
Yug-Yug: “Hey! I found a rock that’s shaped like your mate! She’d love it!”
Bog-Bog: “Yeah. I suppose she would. Cool.”
Yug-Yug: “Wanna trade? This great rock for your two beaver pelts?”
Bog-Bog: “Okay!”
[Later, not far from their communal cave, Bob-Bog finds a huge pile of rocks that are shaped like his mate]
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Well, let’s not overhype it. It’s as useful as writing “I own Monet pntg #12” on a post-it and filing that post-it in a box of similar post-its, on a shelf in a moderately fireproof warehouse whose lease is paid up for 6 months, and not telling anyone about it.
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I agree NFTs are worse than useless. I don’t much get the appeal of owning the copyright for an image (digital or otherwise) unless you plan on using or licensing it commercially.
If you just want to look at a digital image there’s no point in owning it at all. It’s not like owning a painting instead of buying a print because in the case of digital art the “original” and the duplicates are literally identical right down to the last pixel.
None of the old norms for private art collections really make sense when it comes to digital work.
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