Art is represented and encapsulated by data.
The judge of provenance is society: whatever the buyer deems necessary to prove legitamacy is what sets value. An old rolex with papers is worth more than one without. A rolex that can't be identified as authentic by anyone is worth nothing.
An old Rolex with papers is worth more than without, but the papers without the Rolex are worth nothing. In this case you're just buying the papers.
Yes, you're starting to get it. You're not buying art, you're not buying legal rights. If the data was written directly to the blockchain, then it is permanent. But even if it points to some temporary host, big deal, the file itself wasn't the valuable part. Data can endlessly be replicated and rehosted.
It is the genuine provenance of an artist that was bought and traded. It is proof representing a work, whatever that artist declares it to be. They could simply resell it again for all anyone knows, but that would hurt them and devalue all their future work.
All value is abstract.
The papers without the Rolex can be worth anything anyone wants to pay for it. Following that rule I suppose fake papers can even be worth something, but most likely not.
How much is a museum map from the Louvre with directions from the entrance to the current location of the Mona Lisa, signed the museum attendant worth haha.
They are of course distinguishable. One was actually physically created by the artist.
The images the URLs point at are 100% exactly identical, and you do not have the right to the image in question. You may not even have the right to display it to anyone.
You're just buying the plastic sleeves the baseball cards come in without the card itself.
> NFTs on blockchains solve the problem of provenance and permanence.
[edit] Not really no. After all the provenance is on faith that the person who originally sold the NFT is both the original creator of the work (or authorized to sell it) and that they have the legal right to do so, probably, who even knows.
Trust me, the judge is the judge of that, not the blockchain. Blockchains only actually work for concepts wholly encapsulated by the blockchain. Art is not that.
And as for permanence, no, it's just a URL. The contents may disappear, even in IPFS.