Someone downloaded 80k Winamp skins and is now selling them as NFTs

Re:Someone downloaded 80k Winamp skins and is now selling th... by Wyoming23 on Saturday December 04, 2021 @08:06PM (#29445851)

Genuine question- my understanding is an NFT has no legal rights and no legal connection to whatever real thing it's a token "of".

Therefore, does existing copyright even consider an NFT as any sort of derivative work? It seems to me like anyone could sell an NFT of anything. If you say "this token on this blockchain is for fans of (copyrighted thing)" or "this token on this blockchain represents (copyrighted thing)" can the copyright owner stop that sale?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Someone downloaded 80k Winamp skins and is now selling th... by pornel on Saturday December 04, 2021 @08:20PM (#29445934)

NFT itself doesn't contain any copyrighted material, so it's rather not a derivative work. It's technically a URL with extra steps.

On a technical level NFTs seem to be completely separated from copyright. Even if they weren't, people making them could try to claim it's Fair Use (a transformative work or merely referring to a work).

But it really needs to be tested in court. I wouldn't be surprised if the judgement depended on whether the seller says "buy this artwork" vs "buy this token of an artwork" or details like that.

It also has interesting connection to "link tax" laws. News orgs are lobbying for laws to make linking a some form of copyrightable use, to get Google to pay for linking to news articles. If NFTs linking to copyrighted material get a legal status, it may set a precedent for other types of links.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Someone downloaded 80k Winamp skins and is now selling th... by tinus_hn on Sunday December 05, 2021 @06:08AM (#29448386)

I think an NFT is a statement about a hash of the item, which is a derivative calculation of the item.

[ Parent | on HN ]