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Comment by gspr | Hacker News Reader

NFTs are pure, unadulterated insanity.

From what I’ve read and come to understand, NFTs may one day become meaningful if they are legally recognized as a claim to ownership. Then, they can serve as a decentralized, easily sold form of copyright. To sell IP for example now, you need a bunch of lawyers and everything is all on paper anyways. There’s nothing tangible to exchange; it’s all dependent on contracts, lawyers. NFTs could expedite this process according to people whom I’ve asked what possible usefulness NFTs could have.

Bullshit. You're describing a system to replace the paper and ink part of copyright, at best. What you're proposing would still need law behind it to be meaningful as a replacement for copyright itself. So then what's the point?

Only the law stops you from using IP without permission today. And only the law will stop you with what you propose.

> So then what's the point?

It's useful to keep track of ownership of digital goods. And if you did it in a centralized way there are issues with that. We have seen with Amazon and Apple that there can be issues with ownership getting revoked, or services being discontinued as with Google music. It may also not be transferrable. And if you instead make the Government keep track of who owns what there can be some privacy concerns.

Ownership means nothing without adjudication and enforcement, and that's still centralized which means ownership is centralized.

NFTs don't change anything, they're not real ownership.

Yes it would need to be fit into a legal framework, and would benefit by being integrated with centralized systems made by companies. I think you are arguing against some kind of "everything should be fully decentralized" ideal, which is not what this would be. Rather, it could offer clear benefits here and now by integrating with current systems and institutions.

Like I said, if the ownership is centralized then what are you "decentralizing" exactly?

The point is there are no benefits. At best you changed how the paperwork is stored, which is a non-issue.

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