You can copy the digital piece and distribute it as much as you want. An NFT is just a record on a blockchain saying that [wallet address] is the current owner of [URL]. It has absolutely nothing to do with ownership.

The creator of an NFT can legally create a contract saying "whoever the blockchain says owns [URL] is the owner of [piece of art]," but that is a minority of cases and it also depends on the legal system. Ownership relying on a legal system is not new and it doesn't require NFTs.

> saying clonability invalidates something as art would also invalidate music, video, and any other fork of digital content

I didn't say clonability invalidates something as art. I said clonability invalidates NFTs as a meaningful form of ownership in and of themselves.

> You can’t “copy the list of owners” either, not sure where you got that from.

You can sell an NFT of the Mona Lisa. I can also sell it. That means there are two NFT ownership records for Mona Lisa.

In fact, there can be infinite ownership records. The only way to tell that a certain ownership chain is the original is by checking timestamps, but that doesn't tell you anything about whether the original seller of the NFT is also the owner of the work of art.

That’s literally a _record of ownership_.

> You can sell an NFT of the Mona Lisa. I can also sell it. That means there are two NFT ownership records for Mona Lisa.

You don’t seem to grasp the concept of digital content. The Mona Lisa you sell as part of contract A is not the same you sell as part of contract B. Even if you’re selling two exactly identical jpegs, they’re different _digital objects_.

Very simple example: there’s many clones of the Bored Apes across many blockchains, including Ethereum itself. Only ONE of these contracts grants you access to their bar in Miami. That person is also the only one who can sell their Bored Ape for hundreds of thousands of dollars - nobody will pay that for the copies in other contracts, because _they’re not the original_. How is that not a proof of ownership?

The creator of the artwork could legally assign rights to the tokenholder. But that would be a special case, and that is extra.

Anyone is free to give privileges to tokenholders of specific contract that they recognize as authentic, but that is not the same as ownership of the artwork.

Smart Contract maximalists may argue it should all be code - and maybe we’ll see more and more becoming code, including TOS, DRM, etc. Maybe one day there’ll be a way to fully model and enforce ownership of a digital object, but I’m not holding my breath for that.

If you opened a bar in Tampa and called it the same as someone else named theirs, and stole their branding, you’d be exposed to the same copyright laws one would in Florida, with or without NFTs involved. That’s a completely orthogonal issue, NFTs aren’t a mechanism for copyright enforcement, they’re just a ledger that’s easier to verify because it’s public and distributed.

> You can just check the artist website at this point, it can be more trustworthy than a timestamp in a ledger and just as open.

How do you know the artist's website you're visiting is the actual artist? How do you decide which of the many sites is The Real One? By asking the artist? How do you know if they're the right owners? What if I open a site and claim I'm the artist, and sell a copy of their content?

In the art world NFTs are now ubiquitous.

By the way, care to support with any links at all? So far these are empty words. Googling Venice NFT does not point to some reputable gallery adopting tokens, just a post from some cryptocurrency promoting media outlet about some token promoters who set up their own gallery on a beach.

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2021/11/09/tezos-brings-arti...

My bad for thinking NFTs were in Venice officially.

Here’s a good overview of what’s happening even though it’s an article critizing Frieze London - https://www.google.com/amp/s/decrypt.co/84466/london-nft-sce...

There was of course the huge gathering in NYC a short time ago. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2021/11/05/tech...

Christie’s, Sotheby’s are selling NFTs. The art fairs are adopting. Visa has purchased a major NFT for their art collection (Cryptopunk). Multiple major brands and celebrities are minting and joining NFT platforms ie Pharell in Music. As far as artists go I’m finding that most have heard of NFTs and many are adopting.

But partially I hope that some people here see the problems not as "this is never going to work" and more as "hey this seems like an interesting challenge to solve". The space needs developers, so if I convince one person a week to take a look at it, that's a big win. If it doesn't happen, well my foot is still broken.