This is my least popular opinion, but NFTs should have been applied here. We desperately need a legally binding, decentralized and distributed way for us to attest ownership of digital products. Sure, sure, "blockchain bad" and "don't apply crypto to everything", but this genuinely seems to me like the most mutually beneficial way to proceed.
When you start talking about "legally binding" then the "decentralized" part doesn't apply anymore. You're relying on government enforcement for the "legally binding" part; whether the system is centralized or decentralized is a moot point.
The issue is that you’d have to figure out who has the right to create a NFT. The NFT solves none of the problems, rights attribution, and it creates a bunch of places for grifters and scam artists to make money doing nothing. It’s worse than our current solution.
What problem do NFTs really solve here? They just make sure that a ledger (in this case, of rights) is immutable but...is anyone worried that record companies are mutating the rights to begin with?
It seems like what would really help would be to make rights public and easily accessible. However, making the rights platform into an NFT platform specifically wouldn't really help.
We could do something like that, probably. Or we could tell these bloodsucking copyright lawyers to get fucked and reform the whole damn thing so it makes some sort of sense and does something good for the world.
There is no such thing. Data is just bits. Really big numbers. Asserting ownership over numbers is simply delusional. The second that number is published, it's already over.
Non-fungible tokens do absolutely nothing to change those facts. They just let people delude themselves into believing they actually own stuff. The only thing they own is the token.
You're just talking nonsense. I don't think you thought this through at all.
I own a house. In what way? The land registry says that I do. If it starts saying something else, then I don't. The police and courts will make it real.
My wallet is only mine because that's what we agree.
The brand Coca Cola is just information. But if you start selling your own under their brand you'll find out just how real intellectual property is.
Everything is society is only real because we make it real. "Ownership" isn't any more or less real of tangible or intangible things.
All of your examples are real things. They exist in the physical world. Naturally finite, tangible. It makes intuitive sense to most people.
Data is the opposite of all that. Society is trying to retrofit all of that physical world intuition into the virtual world. It doesn't work. It sorta worked up to the mid 20th century because data was still tied to the physical world. Now that computers exist and are globally networked, there are absolutely no physical barriers holding us back.
> The police and courts will make it real.
Police, courts, entire industries worth trillions of dollars, entire countries have been trying to make it real for what, over 50 years? The US will put your country in a literal naughty list if it doesn't take measures against infringement. Yet it happens every day, all the time. People don't even realize they're infringing copyright when they download a picture and post it somewhere. It's just a natural thing to do.
It's not working. Maybe it's time to understand that the world just isn't the same anymore. Times have changed. It's time to let go of these illusions of ownership and control.
> All of your examples are real things. They exist in the physical world. Naturally finite, tangible.
"Ownership" isn't physical.
> It makes intuitive sense to most people.
This is just pleading to the anonymous crowd of an imagined silent majority who agree with you.
Ask a majority if they think it should be legal to open a store selling bootleg copies of Britney Spears CDs, videogames, and whatever else they want to sell.
> Police, courts, entire industries worth trillions of dollars, entire countries have been trying to make it real for what, over 50 years?
So you think it's not real? Go ahead. Try it then. You're saying it's both ethical and de facto legal. Seems like a slam dunk million dollar idea. Good luck.
Land ownership is physical too. Apply a little violence and your land is gone. Villages can be raided. Countries can be invaded. Organized drug traffickers can literally take over entire cities.
You need to be there and defend your land if you want to keep it. The fact that in civilized society people have transferred this responsibility to governments doesn't make it any less physical.
