It is weird, but so is the concept of owning physical art. A Van Gogh painting is not copyrighted but is worth millions, while a poster of the Van Gogh is worth $25 at the museum gift shop, but you can buy it for $10 elsewhere because the museum doesn’t actually own the copyright, just the physical medium. I can even commission someone to paint a reproduction which might well be indistinguishable from the original without specialized equipment yet the value would be minimal. And then there are prints and photographs where even the originals are reproductions, yet can still be valuable while reproductions are not. People are assigning value based on the creative and cultural importance of the idea, but then vesting that value in a specific physical object.
This seems to be trying to capitalize on the same idea in a digital world – that people want to own and value “the real thing”, regardless of whether that makes any logical sense.
Or not. My understanding is that there’s no royalty systems built in to any NFTs. Currently royalties are all reliant on being collected by particular marketplaces on which the NFTs get sold. Different marketplace? No royalty.
But reading it, it looks like the exchanges/marketplaces will still have a lot of power. Of course, as with cryptocurrency exchanges they’re all run by upstanding and ethical managers, so no worries, right… /s
Also, why is this connected to cryptocurrency. I should be able to pay whatever the seller and I agree on. Maybe we want to just swap NFTs or we agree to pay in badgers.
So the people who bought said “art” don’t actually fully own it if there is a set percentage of any future increase in value whose ownership is retained by the artist.
So do we rail against the fact that DMCA allows companies to essentially retain ownership of something we have “purchased” or do we celebrate NFT for allowing artists greater control over the value of their art? Hmm…?
Copyright can be a double-edged sword. As an artist I still depend on it, because I have to protect my “brand”, and not let some goober take a painting I painted and make millions for his product using my art as an advertising/promotional tool. I would most certainly want a cut if some speculator determined my work would increase in value and they were using my painting as a way to get rich/duck taxes.
This is why some artists go with gallery representation. It gives the artist protections that some artists don’t have the time, patience, or business/legal acumen to figure out on their own. And this is only if anyone thinks they should represent you.
Still, as @Andrew_Glasgow pointed out above, blockchain is hella costly on the environment, so I definitely don’t like that idea, no matter how much financial protection it affords me. In a broken planet, I can’t breathe money or protect myself against a constant barrage of ultraviolet rays, so the energy expenditure would be futile.
