Reminds me of Moon Shares from like 20 years ago. You could buy property on the moon and the company would verify ownership for you.

Although this is totally different, because it’s blockchain.

NFTs are probably best thought of as a recapitulation of status goods into the digital world, outside video games. The physical good versions has never made sense to me either.

Thorstein Veblen already in the late 1800s had pointed out that an object's utility as a status signal increases in tandem with its uselessness. The object must then also be recognized among peers as difficult to obtain. For the moon shares analogy to work, being objectively worthless or grossly overvalued is insufficient, it had to have also been exclusive and coveted among the "high class".

> NFTs are probably best thought of as a recapitulation of status goods into the digital world

Status cannot be manufactured, it spurs naturally due to having rare things such as a big mansion, grammys, academy awards, winning the Super Bowl , winning the NBA title, winning the World Series etc.

All those things are both rare and cannot be copied.

NFTs instead are easily copied idividually (right click) or even in bulk as this torrent file proves.

Second life did a much better job at representing status goods in the digital world than NFTs.

And I know people in here don't want to hear it, but given its history and its budget Zuck's Meta will improve upon what Second Life did and knock it out of the park like it did with social networks.

Agreed, and NFTs are probably conferring anti-status, rather than status, considering NFT owners can be easily perceived as simpletons who have fallen for an obvious scam.

> NFTs instead are easily copied idividually (right click) or even in bulk as this torrent file proves.

No, you're copying a piece of media that NFT links to. What you're not copying is a verifiable claim of spending unreasonable amount of ETH to have a record in blockchain pointing to that piece of media.

> What you're not copying is a verifiable claim of spending unreasonable amount of ETH to have a record in blockchain pointing to that piece of media.

POF? Proof-of-foolishness?

While I agree such transactions and dynamics make more sense in established widely accessed virtual worlds, status can in fact be manufactured. I can give two examples.

In the art world, wealthy collectors will overbid on works by artists within their collection to hugely inflate their price. There is also a large amount of pressure on appraisers to overvalue work and for Art houses to turn a blind eye to some known forgeries. The wealthy will donate to museums to lend to an air of prestige to their collections (with tax evasion by charity write offs a nice bonus) and, whenever forgeries are found in collections, lawsuits and bribes are used to silence all but those with rare levels of integrity.

A less exclusive but still grossly over priced example is the recent world of fast fashion product drops. There, mass produced, cheaply manufactured, labor exploited goods are sold for many times their production costs by creating an illusion of scarcity and prestige. This is done by manipulative marketing tricks where social media and celebrity worship are key vehicles.

This, sadly, is the nature of humans. NFTs are in the process of attempting to install themselves as status goods. That is the psychology when denouncing "right clickers".

I don't think the comparison holds well enough. The vast majority is in it in the hopes to get richer.

its closer to tulip mania with a 'distributed' MLM pyramid scheme twist.

You're completely correct that over-exuberance, gambles and scams are playing a large role in the amount of money flowing. It is unclear whether the current level of openness compared to the usually highly elitist gate kept artworld will persist.

There is nonetheless a clear mapping to physical art world collections in terms of owning a rare work by a skilled artist and having it connected to some trusted proof representing a unique transaction with that artist.

I don't see that mapping at all. If you own a rare work by a skilled artist, you are in possession of a unique physical item. If you own an NFT, you are not. All you "own" is proof that you paid some money to someone.

> Although this is totally different, because it’s blockchain.

Except the blockchain only keeps the url, so the “content” doesn’t get any of the properties of the blockchain

There's blockchain somewhere in there, so that means that the technology is great and will change the world.

Incorrect, often NFTs contain the hash of the content, where the content itself is pinned to IPFS.

That said, tokens that are not pinned to IPFS are fucking worthless, and it's hard to tell whether an NFT is pinned to IPFS unless you're skilled at navigating Ethereum contacts.

IPFS drops content that's not seeded. Unless you have a backup, you're not going to be able to recover a matching file.

Except the company that sold Moon shares had no authority to offer ownership over any part of the moon. The blockchain does have authority to offer ownership over particular tokens on that blockchain. Those are valuable so long as there are enough people that agree they are valuable and are willing to exchange other goods and services for them. Oh yeah, kind of like fiat money.

What do you mean "except"?

Within the moon share ecosystem, moon shares have the exact same kind of authority.

Value's always worth what someone will pay, sure. But blockchain authority isn't more special than any other database. It has some fancy properties, but they don't affect the authority.

What does it mean to own something? It what sense does a Moon share give you any ownership over any part of the moon? If someone else goes up to the Moon and builds a lunar base on "your" piece of the Moon, does your Moon share give you any way to stop them? Can you sue them in any court? Does it prevent anyone in any way from doing whatever they want with that piece of the Moon? No, it doesn't.

Contrast with a token in your wallet on the blockchain. As long as your private keys are secure, nobody else but you can transfer that token anywhere else. Nobody else can convincingly represent that they are the owner of it. The blockchain proves irrefutably that you own it. The blockchain, as represented by the consensus of thousands of nodes, is the ultimate authority of who owns what on that blockchain.

> It what sense does a Moon share give you any ownership over any part of the moon? If someone else goes up to the Moon and builds a lunar base on "your" piece of the Moon, does your Moon share give you any way to stop them?

In what sense does a Token give you any ownership over any part of the image? If someone does a copy&paste operation and starts selling "your" image on a t-shirt, does your NFT give you any way to stop them?

You don't need to stop them. You don't own an image, you own a token. People can copy the image all they want, that doesn't give them ownership of the token.

I can go to the Louvre and take a picture of the Mona Lisa. That doesn't mean I own the Mona Lisa.

Similarly, if you buy a certificate implausibly claiming that you own a bit of the moon, well, you own a certificate implausibly claiming that you own a bit of the moon.

Heh, that reminds me of these ads I kept seeing some time ago, that claimed to offer some sort of title in Scotland that was based on owning some minuscule plot the company was selling.

In that case, while the title's not real, you may at least _actually_ be buying a very small amount of land (though some of those things are just scams).

Save this comment so you can look back on it in ten years.

And my moon certificate proves that I own that part of the moon. Control over transfer is not the same as control over other uses.

It doesn't prove that you own part of the moon at all. The moon is a physical object. To own it, you need to be able to prevent other people from using it, or have an authority that can do so recognize your ownership and do that on your behalf. The Moon shares don't do that. The NFT on the blockchain does prevent other people from using that NFT without your authorization.

What do you use an NFT for? In another comment, you say it's not the image. So what is it?

It's an entry in the blockchain. A record in a database.

Let's say you go to Sotheby's and you buy Van Gogh's Starry Night at auction. Along with the actual painting, you'd get a certificate of authenticity showing the provenance of the work. Basically, a record showing everyone who owned it before you and certifying that this is, in fact, the real Starry Night that Van Gogh painted. The real value of the painting is not in the painting itself, but in that certificate proving that it's the real original. If you tried to sell the painting without it, you wouldn't get many buyers. There's lots of people who could paint an exact replica of Starry Night, but there's still only one real Starry Night. Likewise, anyone can make a copy of a piece of digital art, but there's only one NFT, and if you don't have the NFT in your crypto wallet, you don't actually own it.

So, think of it as a certificate of authenticity for digital artworks, although it can be used to represent ownership of other things as well, if people agreed to it. It can also do neat things like transfer a portion of the sale price back to the original artist every time it's sold, which isn't currently done with regular artworks.

Except the real value is in the painting. If it were destroyed, then the certificate would be worthless. If the certificate were destroyed, you could have experts inspect the painting to see how old it is and compare minor defects to those found in duplicates to show its authenticity. No one would want to buy the certificate from you but let you keep the painting in your vaults

> Except the real value is in the painting. If it were destroyed, then the certificate would be worthless.

Not true. Banksy sold a painting for $1.4 million and it shredded itself right after the auction ended. Three years later the shredded remains (presumably with the certificate of authenticity) sold for $25.4 million[1]. So, no, the value is not in an intact painting.

Forgers can artificially age paintings. It's amazing the lengths they go to. Maybe something like Starry Night has been analyzed enough that it could be verified, but other works are not. It's not really known how many works of art on the market are forgeries.

> No one would want to buy the certificate from you but let you keep the painting in your vaults

Actually people do this all the time. They pay millions upon millions of dollars for a work of art and it gets loaned to a museum and possibly sent all over the world. They still own it though. There's also freeports[2] around the world with warehouses full of art. You can buy an artwork and it never moves from the warehouse, just the record of who owns it changes.

[1] https://nypost.com/2021/10/14/shredded-banksy-artwork-could-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_economic_zone

Banksy is gimmicky.

The value of art is art. If we disagree then you are admitting that both the art world and crypto are heavily used for money laundering.

Of course art is heavily used for money laundering. Nobody ever claimed otherwise. That is a simple fact and has nothing to do with what we’re talking about. Nothing that you claim about value is going to change the fact that art is used for money laundering.

The blockchain equates to the Moon Shares company. Outside of the company/blockchain, the ownership means nothing.

Outside of the blockchain, a token on the blockchain means nothing. Outside of the Moon company, a piece of the moon is still a real thing that means something. You can only "own" a physical object if you either have sufficient physical force to assert your ownership of it or the government recognizes your ownership and will exert force on your behalf to assert it.

Neither of those are necessary for the blockchain because nobody can assert ownership of the blockchain tokens without the private keys to your wallet.

As a crypto-punk owner myself, I feel that that NFTs are the future. Look at this baby. 250k. https://openpuddle.io/?id=328wfloxyf

Authority on the blockchain is validated by a bunch of different actors, none who trust each other but reaches consensus anyways.

Authority within the moon share ecosystem is validated only by the people who own the company.

That might matter in a niche case where the ownership of my moon share database entry is in dispute. (And each system has positives and negatives, blockchains aren't a strict upgrade.)

But the potential authority over the actual moon is the same under both systems.

Ownership only ever matters when there's a dispute. If you go build a house on a piece of land, and nobody ever comes along and disputes whether you own that land, does it matter whether you do or not? I mean, we even built into our laws that if you do that and nobody disputes it for long enough, then you get to officially own the land.

> Ownership only ever matters when there's a dispute.

Right.

And a blockchain only solves a tiny percentage of ownership issues. It solves those issues with powerful mathematical certainty, and if you could live inside a blockchain your problems would be solved*, but don't confuse that sliver with the full set of real-world ownership issues that exist with or without a blockchain being involved.

* if there are no bugs or hacks

Moon Shares were legal ownership over particular tokens that signified (but not enforce in any legal way) ownership of land on the moon. Just like NFTs are legal ownership over particular tokens that signify (but not enforce in any legal way) ownership of JPEGs.

The JPEG is incidental. What you own is the token. You don't need the legal system to enforce your ownership of it because it is essentially impossible for anyone else to assert ownership of it without your private keys.

But whatever, think whatever you want. Just know that you're the guy in 1995 ranting about how this silly Internet fad is just something nerds waste time with.

Owning the token representing a claim on a JPEG is equivalent to owning the token representing a claim on moon land.

In 1995 most of the uses of the internet were stupid. Eventually, they became useful. Hopefully the same happens with crypto

Is it really equivalent? Are you sure you can't think of any differences between a JPEG and a piece of land?

You may just have opened a Pandora's box.

Well you can almost buy an NFT for a virtual plot of moon land in the moon metaverse.

https://nftmoon.space/en/home/

How anyone thinks all this isn’t a bubble is beyond me…

Are games with virtual assets bubbles? The whole NFT space might be, but it's still value creation analog to games with virtual assets. Last 15 years we've gone from MMOs with lots of game and in some of them you could buy land plots, and of course shiny armor. To less game with casual mobile games and loot boxes, to now no game with social media flexing and NFTs.

> Are games with virtual assets bubbles?

As an investment asset? Almost certainly. Nobody is going to want your CSGO skins in 20 years time when it doesn't have any players anymore, and we don't often hear about $50k second life purchases anymore when they were a weekly news item in the noughties.

If you buy one because you want to play with it? Fine, that's not a bubble. Enjoy!

If you are just buying one just because you think the value will go up, and the asset doesn't generate any returns other than the price people are willing to pay for it, and other people primarily want it because they think the price is going to go up - you are probably in a bubble.

I think that's a good clarification, I agree with your point-of-view. The question is for how long this JPEG-NFT-bubble will go on, as long as Second Life or longer/shorter. The word "bubble" can be a bit loose definition, it might inflate/deflate slow/fast; and depending on that be relevant or irrelevant. Usually people seem to mean fast and blow off top, which might not necessarily be the case.

Ha, of course, a virtual moon, better still!

Also many of the involved are lunatics shouting "to the moon" as a mantra.

> It’s like video game cosmetics

Video game cosmetics derive their appeal from people using them while they actually play the game, not from showing off the database flag that activates it for the account. With NFTs, the whole game part of the game cosmetics analogy is missing.

Games can load them from ipfs and verify ownership or somehing, but to counterfeit all you have to do is change the shade of pixel by one bit and get a new hash.

So then you have to move to a whitelist system where someone centralized (or a DAO) has to manually act as a copyright system, whitelisting hashes, duplicating the work of the existing copyright and legal system.

My even change 1 bit? Just create a new NFT with the same exact image. Nothing is stopping you.

You can create a smart contract where only a set group of people (ie, the devs) can mint NFTs. You cant just mint arbitrary nfts whenever you want, that's why they are unique.

You can create your own smart contract though.

I'm assuming the idea was games only let the person who owns the NFT (oldest entry of the hash on the chain, or transferred from it, plus however the limited number serial works for "limited edition" vs singular NFTs).

Totally.

Who is going to pay a studio to develop the models, artwork and code required to have a ‘NFT skin’ in a game? Money is made by selling a skin multiple times to return effort.

And what if I want that skin in League, rather than GTA? The whole concept is a nonsense.

Influencers + shady finance have collided to *create a climate melting scam.

Edit: spelling and errant word

NFTs are a form of Status or Veblen good. This means being useless or grossly overvalued, exploiting craftspersons, being exclusive, prices defying reason are all good properties to have.

A physical world example is the combination of social media marketing, fast fashion and product drops. Items are sold for many multiples of their production cost due to a manufactured air of exclusivity and scarcity. As the items are mass produced from exploited labor, a bottleneck from time consuming highly skilled craftwork cannot be the cause of high prices.

There are many examples of conspicuous over consumption and status goods, all of them defying common sense to most. Remember the "I AM RICH" app? The NFT version is the same principle, merely on a different type of datastore.

Particularly relevant to NFTs is the art world of artificially inflated prices, donations to manufacture prestige and where fakes are hard to tell to the untrained eye and wealthy buyers bring lawsuits or otherwise buy the silence of those who can prove forgeries.

The artifact or artwork is not the goal, instead the ability to take something useless or mundane but somehow demonstrable as unique, prove provenance and flaunt wealth to some peer group considered high status is the goal. I suspect NFTs are currently in a gold rush stage and comparatively more open. When the loose flow of money is over, I expect it will decay back to gated elitism typical of the existing art world.

Underlying something like an Ethereum linked IPFS hash artifact are interesting consensus algorithms for persistent data-structures on open distributed networks. That they're being used in this manner is not surprising. It's reflective of humans, not something inherent to the utility of the tech.

Typically whta is done is that n upper / lower bits of the tokens ID is ignored which allows you to mint 2^n duplicates of a skin.

>And what if I want that skin in League, rather than GTA?

Too bad. Most games are not going to put in work to support other game's cosmetics.

I think you could argue that Discord/Twitter is the game, which is a much bigger space than Fortnite or CSGO, meaning that the "skins" cost more. Instead of runing around a 3d character, you just type words on a web page/chat client and get points the more people see it.

Except to have some skin in a game, you actually have to have that skin in the game. To put a monkey as your profile picture on Discord or Twitter, you can just do that without owning the monkey. If anything, not owning it is better social proof.

Correct, but to get access to the "exclusive guilds" on Discord you need to verify your NFT for respective guild.

Seems like internet new (maybe last) phase is about "selling everything". sigh

I don't see anything replacing the internet any time soon it is too entrenched currently, it certainly isn't the "metaverse". People will revolt against that. I've already seen facebook overload the past few years along with other social media.

Think of it as breaking out of the games, imagine something like steam profile avatars/pictures etc. tied to your identity that you can use on any page that implements it.

Gravatar has been a thing since 2007.

Yes, and I have been using it since then, this is quite something else tho.

> this is quite something else

In what way, specifically?

From your original comment: "imagine something like steam profile avatars/pictures etc. tied to your identity that you can use on any page that implements it."

That sounds 100% like Gravatar. We already have exactly that, without any of the problematic aspects of being tied to NFTs or blockchain.

I assume you never used steam in the last years? Games drop avatars as items for steam inventory, and you can trade them and put them in special slots, they aren't just random images, its not just avatars its also frames of avatars, slots of stuff to show on profile, animated backgrounds etc.

Except trading of Gravatars, right?

You can build games that verify your NFT and allow you to use the art/resource in game. Well, until Steam deplatforms you I guess.

> You can build games that verify your NFT and allow you to use the art/resource in game.

While true, the only one deciding whether you are granted the ingame usage is still the developer/publisher, so in that scenario you basically just did exactly the same thing as before: a database lookup to check if a player "owns" a particular item. Only this time with a much slower and more inefficient database. Nothing about it being a NFT grants any advantages in that case, the developer can still take it away, ban your account, remove the item from the game etc. because they are still the ones controlling everything. You just decentralized the database entry.

Only this time, the database is global and multiple independent games can all be using a common set of NFT resources that can be unique and transferred from one game to another. COD could release some NFT for a uniform or a gun or something, and an indie developer could incorporate that nft into their game if they wanted.

Sure, but......why? How is that different than just setting 1 instead of 0 on a database for the game somewhere?

Because the nft can be used in any game at any point in the future. It's not just one game with one database. It can be multiple independent games all using the same resources that can be transferred from one game to another.

Like....what? If the games are by the same publisher then that's trivial to do anyway. If they are not from the same publisher....then what kind of "resource" can you transfer? And why would NFT make it any easier?

Idk man, use your imagination. It could literally be anything. NFT just stands for non-fungible-token. It's like a unique ticket sitting on the public blockchain that can be tied to any digital asset sitting on IPFS. Any game or software can verify that you own the NFT without a third centralized party. I don't even play or like video games so this isn't my domain of expertise. Im more interested in seeing NFTs replace ticketing systems and financial systems, where they would represent things like claims to some financial asset.

Well I work in video games, and I can't think of a single thing this could be useful for, that's why I'm asking you for an example.

They can be couterfeited by changing one bit.

no they cant.

What I mean is if an avatar outit hashes to X, change one shade of grey by one LSB and it hashes to Y. You now copied the outgit, and have the earliest hash of your clone on the blockchain. A human has to review if it is the same thing or just had miniscule modifications. Something like neural hashes may eventually solve it somewhat.

But does it verify ownership of anything other than the token itself? What are the typical contract terms, if any, related to NFTs? And are those terms enforceable in any given jurisdiction?

Any physical jurisdiction? Probably not.

Digital “jurisdictions” like Twitter are starting to support displaying “verified” NFTs though: https://cointelegraph.com/news/bragging-rights-twitter-previ...

The next step in the chain is OpenSea, which sounds like they will enforce real world copyrights: https://support.opensea.io/hc/en-us/articles/4404423595667-H...

So basically Twitter is outsourcing copyright enforcement via NFTs. Which actually doesn’t sound totally useless, but could also be done without a blockchain.

Now, when many content displayers (websites, games, multiverses, etc) outsource their copyright enforcement to multiple copyright-enforcers maybe using the blockchain starts making more sense.

Copyright enforcers are centralized by nature though (if everyone can be one, then there is zero enforcement of copyright…)

Blockchain only makes “sense” because it's hype. (And regarding Twitter, it's mostly because @Jack is a total crypto believer).

Sure, if you only trust certain enforcers (which obviously you should) then it’s federated, not fully decentralized.

I think a blockchain can still be useful in federated systems.

> I think a blockchain can still be useful in federated systems.

How so? As soon as you have to trust someone, you've lost the only benefit of blockchains and using one would only give the terrible performance characteristic of those for no benefit.

Each trusted enforcer having its own database is a way better architecture.

That should be possible though shouldn't it?

Tying a copyright license (at least non exclusive) to the NFT transfer sounds not that far fetched. It would be a little bit tricky to make that work globally but you could probably do that as well.

The question is would courts accept it as a valid contacts and how to enforce them. How would NFT prevent infringement (aka mme creating the latest bansky NFT)?

> Tying a copyright license (at least non exclusive) to the NFT transfer sounds not that far fetched.

It's indeed what some artists and some of the NFT marketplaces do.

You guys are approaching this from the wrong direction: you've taken NFTs and decided they are valuable, and set about trying to prove you can do useful things with them.

All of the things you've mentioned already exist, with a lot less effort. Copyright law is well established on digital goods. Contract/IP law is well established.

If NFTs have utility, beyond greater fool theory, then surely it will exist beyond having to go replicate all of these web2/tradfi/whatever concepts. Otherwise, what's the point?

It's funny how merely providing context apparently makes me a supporter when it comes to this topic.

Yes, but NFT “owners” get real mad if you right click > Download Image the art they “own”.

Nobody cares if you download their NFT, it is a joke on crypto twitter

The people getting angry if you tweet at them using their “special” NFT profile picture suggest otherwise.

*the minority of people

Nobody cares.

There is more value in being the owner of the thing everyone has, than the thing no one has.

Keep right clicking, we love it.

https://www.e-flux.com/journal/85/156418/my-collectible-ass/

> There is more value in being the owner of the thing everyone has

Everybody has a Yankees logo on hat or on a cup or a scarf somewhere.

Small detail is that everybody who does has to pay royalties to the Yankees and as a consequene to Yankees' owners : the Steinbrenner family.

What you claim the NFT crowd is enthusiast about is basically what Gucci, Ray-Ban, LVHM and all the other luxury brands have been fighting for ages now.

Chinese copies not paying any royalties selling on the street for 5$ whereas the original sells for 5000$.

Luxury brands fight it with lawsuits and holograms, whereas the NFT crowd aims to fight it with blockchain.

But images are images and outside the lunatics of the NFT community if I right click a cool piece of art and show it to somebody, they'd reply that it's cool and would not ask for proof of ownership. The thing being on my computer or on my wall is all the proof of ownership they need before complimenting me . Very much like people would compliment my 5$ Ray-Ban shades and my GF 25$ LV handbag and nobody is going to check the hologram on either

The “owner” part is the issue though. The NFT owner's is just that: they own the NFT and nothing else. There can be infinitely many NFT pointing to the same art asset.

as in, there's been a few examples on Twitter maybe and people love to pretend that everyone thinks like that because they like to feel superior.

I'm immersed in this world all day and I've never seen this happen. I've never seen them do anything but laugh about it.

> Isn’t the point of NFTs that it verifies ownership

A lot of people think that, but I would consider that more of a requirement than the purpose.

The point of NFTs is to allow the original artist to share some of the financial rewards that the art dealers and collectors get each time they resell a piece of artwork in the future. The goal is to help restore some balance and fairness to the financial side of the art trade, particularly for new artists, who often can't earn a living wage on the original sales alone. And of course, being able to verify "ownership" of the "original" work is necessary to get the artist a piece of the pie whenever that NFT is sold.

Yes, you're right about access to the work... as an observer, anyone can enjoy looking at the art just the same as the person who owns the rights to it. Just like any other image on the internet, making a copy of it doesn't give you the rights to that image. So, I don't understand the point of this archive unless it's truly just to archive the data incase the blockchain goes down.

Ownership implies some kind of exclusive rights. If everybody has the same rights over the content as the supposed owner, it means they're not the owner.

But just because you have the ability to download something from the internet doesn't mean you have the same rights to it as someone who has given some kind of license to it (which is often attached to NFT sales).

A license to download some content that is otherwise publicly accessible? At any rate, copyright licenses cannot be enforced with smart contracts, because smart contracts cannot stop members of the public from making unauthorised copies. Copyright licenses can only be enforced by entities that have coercive power over individuals, e.g. courts of justice, but then the whole NFT becomes redundant because owning the NFT doesn't do anything, because in order to enforce your license you would need to have the proper paperwork and file a suit against the offending party.

There are more types of rights than "the right to download", I didn't say anything about that.

> At any rate, copyright licenses cannot be enforced with smart contracts

Wasn't claimed either. Why do people keep inventing claims to then criticize them? (I'm not even into NFTs, don't own any and don't plan to, but a lot of the reaction is just bizarre. No, they don't magically enforce copyright. No, they also aren't supposed to.)

And how is the licence enforced?

Is it recognized by the law? Can people sue those who fail to comply with it?

You can do all the circular reasoning you want but at the end of the day everything is backed by violence and coercitive power.

That's why nations have army/navy , to make other countries know that what they say carries weight because they can back it up with bullets and bombs, not just words.

... yes, licenses still rely on copyright law, well spotted. Is that supposed to be surprising or a novel insight?

How can you enforce copyright law when I right click an NFT piece of art, then print it and hang it in my home?

You can't.

Besides, NFT enthusiasts have the illusion that the graphic art market is big. It's not.

Just think about how many people you know that have a painting in their home. And no, the IKEA type paintings do not count. I mean a genuine painting.

> How can you enforce copyright law when I right click an NFT piece of art, then print it and hang it in my home?

Yep, same as any other licensed thing. Because copyright law is still just copyright law. NFTs don't magically add universal enforcement, and aren't supposed to.

> NFT enthusiasts have the illusion that the graphic art market is big. It's not.

Yes, there is a lot of crazy hype and over-expectations around, and sadly getting most of the attention.

> How can you enforce copyright law when I right click an NFT piece of art, then print it and hang it in my home?

In the US, anyway, doing that would not be a copyright violation.

I’ve tried but failed to understand NFTs. One thing I don’t understand is —- couldn’t you change one pixel in an image and register your ownership of the slightly different image in the blockchain? Then how would it be adjudicated which is the authentic version?

Ownership is managed through the chain of copyright. Not the blockchain.

"ownership" of a copy of something infinitely reproducable.

Yeah. But both NFT fans and haters seem to not quite get that.