That’s a question that many knowledgabe people from the Crypto and Finance world get asked a lot these days.
The simple answer is.. if you invest money in stocks, crypto or any other financial investments, you should truly consider NFTs!
So far so good. The next step in such a discussion would include things like: what is an NFT? Is it a secure thing? What happens when the NFT is lost? And so on. We certainly have an exciting and evening spanning discussion on our hands ;-).
I do not intend to explain to you now all the stuff that many people already wrote tons of articles about. Feel free to use our friends located at Mountain View to find the most informative ones.
What I would like to share with you is an experience I made once I bought my first NFT ever. This actually made me understand that the hype around NFTs pushes technology and activates more and more people as potential buyers BUT ultimately some real world needs somehow limp back.
I bought my first NFT, and this is what happened
After I did spend the money and gladly called myself an progressive and innovative investor I wanted to tell my friends and family about it. Here I did hit the first barrier: How can I show them what I bought? I pulled out my phone and logged into the market place where I bought the NFT to show how cool it is. Let’s forget for a moment about the discussion on what it means to buy an NFT…(or what it is).
The reaction was as good as if I would have pulled out my camera roll on my phone and showed them some photos I made or did receive. And instantly we came back to above’s discussion, that we are not talking about here.
Secondly I wanted to enjoy the investment a bit more than taking the private key of the holding wallet and reading it backwards ?
I wanted more than the private key
My solution? I did create a decent print of the NFTs artwork and put it on a wall in my home. Instantly it got recognized by my friends and my family and the discussion about what an NFT is was easier, as they understood something is behind the NFT.
In a good mood, back in the office, I casually told our legal guy about it and how good I feel to be the owner of that particular NFT. You can imagine that I was unpleasantly surprised when he told me that this is not legal. Basically maybe the creator of the artwork would somehow accept it, but there is no guarantee that this is the case!
But I am the owner of this!
I did argue that I am now the owner of the NFT (which contains the artwork) and therefore I should be allowed to do whatever I want with that NFT and the content. It was pretty simple to make me understand that this is not the case. Our real world laws clearly regulate the copyrights of creators and artists as well as the image and marketing rights that are still remaining with the artist. Bummer!
So do I need to destroy the nicely framed print of my NFT? Indeed I should!
And that’s it? I am spending a fortune on NFTs and I am not allowed to have at least a printout hanging on my walls in my private home? The reality is that after asking many Artists a lot of them do not have any problem at all that you print it out and document that you own the NFT. BUT, not all of them do see it that way. And this is the problem.. at least this is the problem I faced.
Legal clarification is needed for NFT owners
There is a clear lack of legal clarification on this. The technology fathers (maybe they are younger than me ? mostly have a clear view on this. With the ownership of an NFT you have all the rights. But our real world regulations do not cater for this technology approach. The solution is simple: We need to add a broad legal clarification along each of the NFTs which can be easily configured at the time of creation of the NFT. This makes sure that the NFT is valid and intact as a whole even after years have passed.
Yes, you can add this to the marketplaces with Terms and conditions, but the nature of a token is that it should be transferable also outside of a marketplace. In return this means: How can I prove that I have the rights to create a real world print out for my private usage. Or how can the copyright owner of the artwork proof that somebody did break the rules. I think it is clear that going byond private usage this gets much more of a topic as there is likely money behind.
You need to have an unchangeable link to the applying legal regulation of this specific NFT.
In 4ARTapp artists can select the applying rights
And there you go, this is one of the features we did build into 4ARTs feature to create non fungible tokens from our secured artworks. Now the artist can simply select applying rights to the NFT owner before the smart contracts are published.
Should you face such a discussion, I can promise you this can be a really emotional one, we have at least a solution to avoid it for the future. Check us out ?
Kind regards,
Kai, CTO
About the author:
???? Kai Zeh loves that at 4ART we can be creative ourselves, but also develop creative solutions for creative people.
His superpower is to adapt his digital competence and tactical knowledge to innovative projects, always thinking about how to make the client’s life easier.
Fun fact: “I have curly hair. I just don’t show it anymore.” ????
