I don't own or plan to own any NFT stuff, I agree it seems a bit nuts.
Food for thought: what is the NFT platform that Beeple used here? The NYT article (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/arts/design/christies-bee...) says his NFTs consist of "an image or video file, sometimes with a physical object attached, verified with a digital signature on a blockchain", but which blockchain, and whose conventions dictate that this specific signature on this specific blockchain is the NFT? The article says that minting an NFT "makes digital artworks unique", but how exactly does this happen - if Beeple decided he wanted to CTRL+C, CTRL+V, make another NFT, what obstacles would stand in his way? I searched around, and none of the articles I've found seem to know these answers or even acknowledge why these are important questions.
Essentially, people are gaming human psychology to trigger the desire to "own" something and creating an artificially limited supply of that something using crypto (which may as well be a cut and paste replacement for magic as far as most people are concerned).
Limited supply + desire = high prices for acquiring whatever is desired.
High prices plus near zero production cost for the "item" means lots of profit for little effort, hence all the interest in this right now.
These tokens are like burning down a forest so you can press the ashes into a cute little trophy.
Stock photos cost $5 to $100 and come with distribution rights.
Somebody paid a lot of money for bragging rights.
The difference is that this is a digital artefact rather than a physical one, not all that different than buying a conceptual artwork (eg Sol LeWitt, which might be just typed instructions on an otherwise empty page).
People assume that the NFT is the rights to the actual work. But its just a hash. So selling something as an NFT of "x" is perfectly legal.
But we all know it’s buyer beware. My point is more about the people who outright commit fraud (say for example by selling an NFT as a certificate of ownership for something they don’t have the rights to)
You own the art in the same way that you "own" part of a company by holding shares in it.
There are only the faintest wisps of connection between the NFT and the art. It's like an autograph on the cover of a book, but without the book inside the cover. And it's not even that tangible, because the autograph is digital, and there are no limitations on infinitely and perfectly reproducing the book.
That's the benefit of owning shares, it doesn't mean you own part of the company in any meaningful way. The relationship is the same as owning an NFT instead of owning the art itself. Shares can be useful of themselves just as owning an NFT can come with some benefits like, say, a secret URL that only the owner can access.
When you buy art at auction, unless specified, or a print, you own the rights to all of it.
Its the same with a company, if you own all the shares, you can asset strip, pull apart, and generally do anything within the law to it.
unless explicitly specified in the contract of sale, the artist will retain the rights to the original work. Nothing in the NFT explicitly states that you own the original thing that you've generated the token for.
You don't get the copyright for this artwork, you own the token, not the art it's self.
its sheer lunacy.