The End of Ownership and now we can't even have NFTs?

I get it, NFTs are bad. For the environment, for creatives, legal currencies, etc. If this isn't a way for somebody to own some data, then what is the solution?

Interesting read for the weekend: http://www.theendofownership.com/

No thanks.

I probably won't read this book you're suggesting, but I would say two things.

First, I don't like the idea of introducing artificial scarcity for digital goods, and all of these concepts based on NFTs and blockchain are built upon that idea (in addition to the numerous other harmful impacts of crypto).

Second, I think there are more measured approaches we can take towards consumer protection and aggressively worded EULAs that strongly favor corporations. I don't think there's any way we're going to put the genie back in the bottle when it comes to SaaS and other cloud based services, but we could definitely be doing more to protect the interests of consumers.

Rich people can just get into regular TCGs if they're so inclined. Or just go full Seto Kaiba and make their own.

Respectuflly, fuck NFTs.

Austin Walker wrote a pretty great Tweet thread about how NFTs in particular pose a massive issue to artists. Yes, the creators and promoters of NFTs say the program will help empower content creators, but already people are seeing their comments and artworks pulled into this platform, against their consent, and turned into a commodity they do not have access to:

@zombiepie: Fuck NFTs. Fuck crypto. Fuck the block chain. Fuck stocks and stonks. Fuck Capitalism, go home.

Yeah. NFTs are not "ownership" any more than rich folk with giant libraries full of first editions tend to be"readers". It is just a status thing coupled with the never ending get rich quick schemes that dick over everyone else (speaking of, apparently GME is up again?)

All that being said: if we want to get full dystopic, NFTs CAN be one component to "ownership" in a way that protects the rights of creators... at the expense of everyone and everything else. That's right, DRM.

The first part of that is detection. Stuff like Twitch (and likely soon amazon) can analyze audio and even video to the point of detecting if something was registered and automatically muting, replacing, or DMCA striking the user. There is no reason to think a similar detection/hashing could not be done for more visual art and so forth.

The next component being the true hellscape. Imagine if every single printer and sound system and so forth had always on DRM and needed to constantly authenticate with servers that you were consuming media you had rights to. And if that sounds insane: The vast majority of us went from hating every aspect of DRM to somehow pretending Steam et al aren't. And if folk think this kind of migration can't happen: We went from SD CRTs to smart 4k TVs in like two decades.

The one silver lining is that because of (most implementations of) The Blockchain, we won't have to worry about our DRM hell because we'll instead be facing overcrowding and widespread natural disasters as more and more regions are exposed to weather and phenomena they have no preparation for.

But hey, at least a few people will make some good money off of selling slam dunks. And that is what really matters.

I had never heard of an NFT before this, but it sounds like something being pushed by one of two types of people.

1) Those who need to own unique things to make themselves feel special because their only quality is that they have more money than you.

2) Those who want to make a fast profit by pushing some serious nonsense.

...and both kinds of people are fucking awful.

That's my hot take anyway.

As a society we have all come together to pretend that certain things are real and have value and I feel like NFTs are the latest dark abyss that we have to stare into and hope that we can pull away from before the entire thing comes crashing down.

How did they manage to come up with something that sounds even more like a fake thing than crypto did originally. I hate all of this.

If anyone needs to justify the acceleration of climate change because the idea of owning a shitty jpeg of Elon's tweet temporarily fills in some void that makes them feel special, then I think we're already doomed.

At this point I’m rooting for the robots. Out time is over

We own too many things already, we should stop buying stuff

every time someone brings up NFT, i typically will wordlessly ponder how to best convey my utter despair for 15min. or so.

and then i'll realize that somehow, despite my intention to dissuade interest in NFT- i will have expended personal mental time and energy doing so. so NFT- not content to devour real energy and currency- but now also my time and thoughts- wins again. it kinda reminds me of logan paul or rush limbaugh in that way.

so i'll just say- 'nah.' NFTs in current form appear to be a wasteful plaything of the financially secure. i need more of that like i need more carcinogens in my air.

No system which makes ownership more exclusive and more expensive can ever truly be pro-ownership or pro-consumers rights. To pretend the two are at all compatible is to willingly scam yourself so someone else can make money.

You've never owned anything. A movie you buy is technically a license, you don't own the film itself.

NFTs are a way to turn digital 'goods' into an investor's speculative dream so they can raise prices artificially and make a bunch of money.

So now that the internet has made ownership easier to control for corporations but also more difficult to contain thanks to piracy, are NFTs even close to a good solution? Naw.

I keep thinking about that dude that bought an exclusive Grimes video for $300,000 with this NFT stuff, but naturally he wants the commoners to know what the hell the thing is he bought. But he also wants to feel unique about being the sole owner of this thing he put a ton of money towards. So he compromises and shares a low-resolution snippet of the video on twitter.

It's all quite silly i think. Imagine people talking about a basketball player scoring his first points and you getting all giddy about being the 'owner' of the video of him making that shot. Congrats kiddo, get yourself a cookie.

Based on the responses here I think I missed a mark. I'm not talking about animated gifs and jpegs or some one-off piece of art. There was a mention of license, and I think that is closer to what I'm talking about. But it's the same issue.

Here's another facet: In the last 10 years or so very little I've bought as media will be something I can give my kids. No movies that I've paid for, no books, none of the music. They're not moving out of the house in the near future, but it has also been a dystopian nightmare to share games. $60 bucks and all of this digital convenience, but navigating the being logged in, and not logged in on another box sucks. Or perish the thought of having netflix on more than 5(?) devices in the same household. What do you mean I have to have a disc inserted when literally all that is on the hard drive is 500 gb of Call of Duty?

None of it is easier, it's just a different pain in the ass. Physical is not a solution, nobody wants the clutter. Not to mention that outside of books none of it works without some other technology backing it up. If IP law holds the way it has the last few years we couldn't even repair a VCR without pissing off some corp somewhere. Or having to have valid firmware for something to work? What if I don't want to keep the license to something? There is no process for giving that to somebody, or selling it by first sale doctrine, or swapping it for a different format.

At the end of the day I just want something to show for my money. Why does everyone act like that is so villainous?

As someone who buys things physically when I can, I totally get the compulsion to actually own something that I can hold with my hands, that isn't technically a license on a server somewhere that'll disappear as soon as the service disappears. God help me if Steam ever stops existing. So yeah, if this about owning tangible things in an increasingly ownership-less world -- hell yes, I am with you.

But that's not what NFTs are about. They're just another commodity for profit. And the buyers aren't concerned with passing down GIFs to their children.

Personally i have somewhat of a hard time seeing the connection between wanting more control over your digital media, which is understandable and desired by many, and the use of NFT's as i currently understand it. The emergence of a new way to validate who truly owns a file, doesn't necessarily lead to a future where you will have the option to become a true owner of all the things you care about for a reasonable price. But i will say that i'm not super well versed in all of this. Most of my understanding on this can be traced back to this article.

If i buy a DRM-free game or digital album through an artist directly, i will be able to transfer these files to my children. If media comes in the form of a licence, probably tied to DRM, I don't see why the original source would want to offer you the ability to purchase full ownership of this product on the side no matter what tech could be used to validate it. If they had no issue with you doing whatever you want with the files, they could've already decoupled it from DRM in the first place. Making digital files be DRM-free and downloadable is possible from a technical standpoint. It's a conscious decision by many rightsholders to limit your ownership to a single use-license that could be revoked and can only be used by a certain service. These GTA games that have to strip the music out after a while are not going to be able to cut their periodic licensing deals by mentioning that they're letting certain people have full access to this soundtrack till infinity.

if digital art’s value is heavily tied to how scarce it is, we’re likely to see more limited releases and more restricted access to art. Decreasing the uniqueness of the NFT purchase would decrease the value of it after all, so there's a tendency towards exclusiveness that comes with it. Personally, i see that as a big negative and the early signs do point towards exclusivity. The guy that bought the Grimes video for $300.000 doesn't want to put it 1:1 on the internet for free. Pharmabro Martin Shkreli didn't want to release the Wu-tang album he paid $2.000.000 for. The artist 3Lau managed to earn nearly 12.000.000$ by giving a very elite group of people access to exclusive and custom-made songs. The more money you bid, the more chance you have of hitting a rare valuable gem! These rich owners are not buying these things because they're looking for a way to easily pass the things they care about on to their loved ones, or as a generous donation to the artist that they enjoy. They buy it because they want to bolster their status by owning things that others can't have. Or speculate on being able to sell it for a profit later on.

To me, this is like the digital equivalent to art collectors, but with a nebulous cloud of cryptobro's trying to come out ahead by speculating in real-time on which files on the internet will become high-value and then consolidating the ownership of these to their own person. You want to see the best goals of the premier league 2030 again? Buy a day-pass to Al-Khelaïfi's digital museum and you'll get to see them in 720P. You really dig that big hitsingle from Justin Bieber's son? Was he part of the creation process in any way or does the rich Dad have an audio-library filled with exclusive songs he bought full ownership of on the cheap? These songs are now finding a mass audience with the Bieber marketing machine backing it up, all while the original creators are kicking themselves for giving it all away early on in their career for some much needed gas-money.

Now i'm thinking of the movie Yesterday through this lens :D Yeah, you peasants haven't heard this legendary music yet, i know! I actively prevented that from happening!

I think this says it all. If you disregard the solution, then the solution isn't the solution. Especially when hobbies like board games are having an all-time high, which takes up enormous amounts of space.

The addendum I think isn't stipulated is that physical media also needs to be offline media. If your concern was to not own online media, you could stop supporting it. I think time has shown that people massively favor convenience over actual ownership, which has led us here. And yes, corporations are moving away from offline media, for the very reason they don't believe in individual ownership. That doesn't mean the same doesn't exist in independent form. Hell, even the archival efforts for current video game formats is an independent effort.

NFTs are just the same regurgitated form of fake wealth hoarding since the dawn of time, with the compounded issue that it's very openly destructive. It's like wanting to collect forest fires. I think the main takeaway is: Crypto in all forms can die and nothing of value would be lost.

Every time the subject of like.. stress over ownership and when or how they'll eventually lose access to the fake things they own I drift a little further to the side of apathy about it.

Physicality didn't save a ton of a shit I've owned from either being lost or broken or what have you so I don't think I'll ever devote energy to worrying about what's going to become of my digital goods. If I'm being honest they're probably safer anyway.

You realise you're arguing against yourself here, right? DRM free games exist; they can be preserved indefinitely. But slapping Call of Duty or whatever with an NFT isn't going to do anything to turn it into an heirloom--it will turn it into a collectible. It'd just be the same game with an added DRM check. The truth is, NFTs are not about preservation, but commoditisation.

If you want to give your grandkids something, plant some trees. 'Cause trust me, they're gonna need it.

@xrayzwei: "Digital preservation" comes up a lot. I guess NFTs could potentially allow you to transfer ownership of a license (so would any database...) but here is the thing: We got the Land Before Time VHS that I probably watched at least a hundred times as a kid. I don't got a VHS player. So even if I wanted that cigarette smoke soaked thing as a memory of the good parts of childhood, it is about as useful to me as the box it came in.

Fast forward and I really enjoyed Star Crusader on the family 486. I own that CD and have it in a bin in my closet. I copied that CD (gasp!!!), set it up in dosbox, and ran into some weird ass proto-DRM issues that resulted in me... making it better.

As always: Unless you are maintaining the actual hardware you are always going to need shims and shenanigans to consume older media to the point that preservation of the physical or even "legit" copy just don't actually matter outside of a museum piece. Showing someone one of the early written forms of Beowulf is great but they are probably going to want to read a translation or even just watch The 13th Warrior (everyone should watch The 13th Warrior).

Aside from that: As mentioned, you kind of are trying to argue that strict DRM would make transfer of ownership easier while also pointing out how DRM is making your CoD life annoying.

NFTs are just another aspect of capitalist bollocks designed to get the rich to invest in something trendy because they think they own something rare due to artificial scarcity.

It'd be great if, y'know, physical and digital archiving was given massive legal protections and support to keep things around, everyone including artists had a basic universal income level which covered the concerns of life and death, copyright law and money ownership was dismissed in favour of basic licenses which are chosen by artists, and more than a sliver of art was distributed freely via digital and physical resources (ie: libraries and galleries) rather than another naff late stage capitalism thing ruining lives and other things for the benefit of rich people and those stuck in tech circle hells.

a) Digital sales are goods. This has been decided unambiguously in court years ago. The case was even covered on the bombcast but, like everyone, they missed the forest for the trees and came away with "Steam are required to run a phoneline. Who uses a phone today lol amirite!"

Anyone in 2021 writing their "Well actually, technically you only license..." philosophical essay about the subject is choosing to live in a fantasy land just so they can write their pseudo-intellectual nonsense.

b) The difference between something like Giantbomb Premium and NFTs is that.

You pay Giantbomb for access to premium videos and content from Giantbomb Servers produced by Giantbomb. Exchanging your money for their goods and services.

NFTs involve a distributed network of millions of computers all shouting their fanfic about a purely fictional alternate reality to each other over and over again. In this purely fictional alternate reality you, as the holder of a NFT, are recognised as the owner of an animated gif.

NFT as a concept is a digital rights management provider's wet dream. You're telling me we can assign licenses and they're totally uncrackable? The analog hole still exists for music and video, but this would totally lock games/applications down. And it only costs a shitload of dirty energy and a hit to the environment to sign your name on the dotted line.

If you think the corpos are going to use this tech to allow for used copies, you're delusional. All of these companies love that digital stuff can't be resold or regifted. They'd never adopt the full package - they'll just use something like this as the heaviest, most extreme draconian DRM possible and make it entirely impossible to redistribute. Congrats you "own" something, but also you've taken a huge L for the dubious right.

If you want to own something, get it DRM-free on a plastic disc. Plastic is also a problem for the environment, but that problem is its strength - it's indestructible. Also don't tie the content to a console, which become scarce at a certain point. If you really want preservation, make it open source.

You'll want those copies of games when the company's servers go down. Assuming it doesn't require those online services (most modern games do), you'll still be able to play it. Do you "own" it? That concept doesn't fit our exploitative economy. Just because you "own" something doesn't mean you can even do half of what you might want to do, like broadcast it.

All we can do is avoid getting fucked over. NFT's just play right into the media companies' hands, and they also destroy the environment in the process - reject them.

The very first thing on the website linked is a red herring argument that isn't entirely based on fact.

"If you buy a book, you own it." Well, no. Not really. You own a physical copy of the book. While you may deface, alter, transfer, burn or sell that book there ARE limitations on what you can do. You cannot resell copies of it, or sell copies of a self-written sequel with the same characters. You don't own the book, you own the pages its printed on.

If these guys are gonna start their page with logical fallacy why would I ever read their (almost definitely shit) book?

It warms my heart to see the near-universal rejection of NFTs here and elsewhere. The only pro-NFT people I've seen are either rich people who have too much money and not enough creativity on how to use it or the insufferable crypto people, both of whom seem to love latching onto anything that looks like a get rich quick scheme they can take advantage of. Most musicians I've seen comment on NFTs have similar sentiments to the article Austin shared. The people way into NFTs love talking big game about ownership but then will happily turn a blind eye to other people's work being blatantly stolen and sold by other NFT people.

It's such a needless and wasteful concept that shouldn't exist. As it is now, it seems like NFTs only exist so the same insecure assholes that buy expensive things solely to show off can have another even dumber, even more expensive set of things to show off. One day hopefully they will learn that most people can see through their act.

Rich people making or losing money on speculative markets, that's not exactly news. Not really a fan of this narrative of both the Bombcast and the Beastcast that cryptocurrency mining is destroying the world. Humans have knowingly been destroying the environment since at least the 70s, while the blockchain has only existed for 10 or so years. If the blockchain were to disappear tomorrow, the climate and energy crisis would still need solving.

And honestly, Giant Bomb makes dumb videos for the Internet. 12 years of videos, multiple resolutions, available worldwide 24/7. I'm not so sure these guys want to be the gatekeepers on what's sustainable and reasonable use of our resources.

Not that I'm any better, mind you, I love Giant Bomb videos. But it sounds like blockchain has become a convenient scapegoat for people who don't want to sacrifice anything themselves. Brazil isn't cutting down the Amazon rainforest at an alarming rate so that they can build crypto farms, they do it so that they can grow cheap beef for the world, and how many times has the topic of fast food eating appeared on the podcasts?

@apewins: What is this ‘Ehh what’s one more disaster’ level take going on here.

@apewins: I agree that cryptomining isn't the end-all-be-all harm to the environment -- if cryptocurrency stopped being a thing tomorrow there'd still be a lot of work to do -- but it's still worth pointing out the harm it is contributing, no? I'm pretty sure that critics of blockchain would also condemn deforestation, carbon emissions from cars, methane from cows, etc. etc.

As for the point that that GB shouldn't bring this up because as a website they have servers that use a lot of electricity... I feel iffy about that. That's getting into "we live in a society" territory, and very few people in our time have the luxury to go completely carbon neutral. If it's an issue of the degrees to which they impact carbon, then that raises the thorny question of "what's the line?" How many tons of CO2 could you contribute to the atmosphere, and still be allowed to criticize other environmental hazards? The question is absurd and inherently unanswerable, because the answer can always get more specific, like those old Mohist paradoxes -- "at what point exactly does a hill become a mountain?"

(Plus, fun fact, there was a guy who went carbon neutral for a year as an experiment, and people tore him apart because they thought he was being insincere, casting judgment on those who couldn't follow his example. And even if we all went carbon neutral, the impact from large manufacturers and businesses would still lead us to global warming. So moralizing about the GB duders' individual habits is a little beside the point.)

So instead of policing who can criticize blockchain and why, or what is technically worse than blockchain, can we just acknowledge that it's harming the environment, and that it should probably stop?

Always strange to see this reflex into finding hypocrisy when we should all be more interested for our own sake in reducing our carbon footprint instead of cheering on a bunch of venture capitalists that get to feel happy because they get a custom song made for them by 3Lau. No one cares that all this is verified by some super secure blockchain! Pay this artist 5 million$ and he'll get you your custom song anyways! Let him use your name in the song so that everyone knows you are involved in the creation of it! Perhaps he'll sign the rights for that song away for that price as well! Afterwards you'll get to share a 15 second clip on twitter to boast that you own something very unique and specially tailored to you.

We don't really know what changes or 'sacrifices' the crew have made in their lives with the state of the planet in their minds. Do we need to know that before they are allowed to speak up on a harmful practice while governments, cities, districts, municipalities and civilians all across the world are trying to figure out ways to be a little bit less destructive and keep a larger chunk of the planet habitable? no one enjoys seeing populations having to flee their homeland.

@palemamba: Nah, everyone here is just not falling for the sales pitch.

@palemamba: Feel free to shine some light on the discussion. I'm genuinely interested in hearing a counterpoint of how the use of NFT's can improve the creator's position and/or provide value to the general audience. What prevented these rich fans and artists to come together and hash out a deal for personalized / exclusive content before NFT's popped up? The pornworld has done that kind of stuff for ages already.

@palemamba: I'm sorry, but I'm hardly inclined to take seriously the whinging of a guy whose sole contributions to the forums have been -- let's check real quick here: that GB is pretentious now, that the posters in a thread about the explosion of abuse and harassment allegations a few months ago were "hypocritical", and complaining about Ben Pack in podcasts. If you have a single thing to argue in favor of, rather than rail against, I'm sure folks will happily hear it. But no, you broadly call the community as a whole "proudly ignorant" with the ironic use of "flourished" -- nice touch.

Are you that guy who made the Twitter account "Ben Pack Sucks?" Just asking.

@palemamba: There's no content in your post, dude. If you're going to post a rhetorical question and try to sales pitch us, you could at least include a brief summation of what you're pitching in the post, but you didn't even do that. It's not ignorance, it's that no one is going to click your link without any context. You basically fucked this up from the jump.

NFT's are just another scam targeted at the extremely online, just like wallstreetbets, crytpocurrency in general, MLMs, Qanon, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. ad infinitum.

What do they all have in common? They're all a way to make people feel smart, like they're in on something big. Meanwhile someone else profits, or just plain has a cackle at all the suckers.

@development: They won in my game of sim earth that I left running overnight once, and I like to think that is an accurate predictive model.

There's nothing villainous about the sentiment, but to frame digital media as a better alternative to physical media just raises a lot of eyebrows. You don't own NFT artwork no more than you own Steam games. If the server for whatever platform that hosts the art goes out; what you have bought is gone, and there's something to be said about the lifespan of physical storage solutions whether it be a HDD or an SSD. Those storage media die. All mediums of art die. The idea that NFTs solve this inherent problem are largely false, and you have to consider the terms and services you blow through when you adopt a digital platform to host your media. Plus, when you do die, who inherits your digital media? Even with something as simple as a Steam account, the answer is a lot more complicated than you'd expect.

@apewins: Obviously the climate crisis isn't suddenly going to end if the blockchain died tomorrow. In fact, I agree that as things currently stand crypto is a small part of the energy crisis and an even smaller part of the climate crisis, with absolute worst case estimates placing total CO2 emissions somewhere in the region of <0.4% globally.

But comparing GB server racks and cryptomining and then vaguely gesturing at hypocrisy is a wild take. We're talking about several orders of magnitude more electricity being consumed by the various crypto networks annually. Estimates place energy consumption for the Bitcoin network alone at somewhere between 25 to 50 percent as much energy as total energy consumption of all data centers worldwide.

Advancing the idea that anyone who contributes the smallest harm to the environment can't criticise larger structural harms to the environment is already a sucker's game, but at least do the bare minimum of reading on a topic before hopping in with the concern trolling on behalf of crypto.

Mei Ling: Don't forget to save your memories of me too.

Solid Snake: You can't save memories even on that system of yours. Memories are fragile things. After you reduce them to binary numbers and send them through the air, they're not memories anymore.

Mei Ling: I wouldn't be so sure of that. There's nothing that my systems can't do.

Snake: Memories aren't just sounds and pictures. They exist somewhere between the sounds, between the pictures.

Mei Ling: I don't get it. Anything can be done digitally.

Snake: If that's true, why don't you go ahead and try to save what I'm thinking right now.

Mei Ling: I can't save that type of thing. You have to put it into words, at least...

Snake: That's right. And that's what memories are...wordless.

Mei Ling: I don't know about that...

Snake: No matter how far data technology advances, you'll never be able to penetrate the human heart.

@imhungry: You're comparing Giant Bomb to the entire Crypto space though. Compare video streaming as a whole to crypto. Say it was to be mandated that all businesses offering video streaming from Giant Bomb to YouTube to Netflix could only stream at a maximum of 720p. That would result in a pretty significant reduction in carbon emissions.

Edit: here is a recent article from the BBC about the environmental impact of streaming video at high resolutions: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-5516441

Whataboutisms are weak.

There are a lot of things humans should do to reduce emissions, so let's start with NFTs. Then we can focus those energies on other problems and forget about this miserable crypto scheme.

@noblenerf: It's not necessarily a whataboutism because both things ultimately require the same solution, which is clean energy. Our energy use as a species is only going to increase in the future, there is no reversing that.

@ape_dosmil: Yes I compared Giant Bomb to the entire Crypto space because that's what the post I was replying to did so I offered a response. That's generally how this whole 'conversation' thing is supposed to go.

I'm not entirely clear on what point you're trying to make here but I already included an even broader version of the comparison you ask for in my first post:

The range is wide due to differing reports on estimating global energy consumption for data centers but even the lower bound paints an ugly picture for Bitcoin specifically and crypto more broadly. I'll just include 1 link each for estimates for Bitcoin energy consumption and worldwide data center numbers.

I don't disagree that changes to how we consume streaming video would be welcome for our environment - although IMO the achievable compromise is going from 4K to 1080p rather than 4K to 720p like that article is suggesting - but so would changes to how we interact with the blockchain. If you're saying we don't need 4K video I can get on board with that (GB doesn't even stream 4K) but then we sure as hell also don't need a new get rich quick scheme for trust fund kids and investors masquerading as digital ownership in the form of NFTs. It doesn't do anything for ownership that people want you to believe it does and it contributes exactly nothing good to the majority of human society.

The gaping hole at the front of this whole operation, where you don't even have to be the actual owner of the artwork in question to be able to be the first one that mints it as a NFT says enough about for who this is designed. Random users are claiming other people's tweets left and right. For a system that's spending all this energy on figuring out who the genuine owner of a thing is, i imagined that would be an important step as well. But no, the energy is only spent making sure that the traders afterwards don't get ripped off in their transactions. Well, as long as the things they buy with their funnymonies actually possess the values they assign to them.

I am someone actually pretty into collectibles and its so offputting when they force digital collectibles, and then NFT, hamfsitedly forcing the collectible system onto art which shouldn't be involved. Its the ultimate force of will of Capitalism on art and its a huge bummer, especially because it causes a shit ton of pollution. just really a perfect totally awful thing to sum up America in 2021.