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Comment by the_lonely_road | Hacker News Reader

I have no cryptocurrencies and feel good every time it goes down because it validates my decision.

That said, is this guy even correct about having no recourse to enforce your ownership? If I buy a NFT from a guy in Germany don’t I have the same recourse as if I bought a Rembrandt from a guy in Germany? Sure if it’s $100 good luck getting any movement or if it’s from a guy in Iran also good luck getting any recourse but if it’s from a guy in Georgia (the US state) don’t I have the same small claims court infrastructure as if I bought a used PlayStation from him? Same goes for that German guy, if it’s above some threshold there is also certainly some kind of reciprocal treaty in place for me to engage with the local German court/police infrastructure to seek compensation.

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Until such a court case happens you literally don't know how that will shake out. If the artist runs out of money and can't pay for their server and the image goes down what exactly do you expect the court to do? I suppose they could force the artist to hand over the image and domain ownership to you assuming they still have it in the first place. And then you could stand provide the artworks url yourself.

But what if they no longer own the domain and it's now owned by an opportunistic squatter? The domain wasn't part of what you bought so the legality of forcing the squatter to provide you the domain isn't quite so clear cut. You still of course own the ledger entry asserting that your payed for the url but you have no legal recourse to ensure that the url stays up.

What exactly is there to sue over? Let's say the NFT is an image. Let's say that someone displays that image without your permission. Nothing in the NFT itself gives you copyright over the image (although there are some NFTs that do confer copyright), so you can't sue over that.

Buying an NFT does not grant you any ownership unless you have a separate agreement or contract along with it that does. How is a court in Germany supposed to know what it means that you paid some amount of cryptocurrency in exchange for an NFT? This has no meaning outside the blockchain.

Courts don’t play games like this. Everything is under their jurisdiction whether it’s novel or 1,000 years old. Worst case scenario you entered into a verbal contract where $100 of consideration was exchanged for x and you are engaging the courts because you believe the counter party failed to deliver x. If both parties are German it will not matter that blockchain was the medium of exchange anymore than it would if napkins at the bar were the medium of the exchange.

But what exactly are the rights you get when you buy an NFT? I'm assuming the absence of any other communication here, as that part would then be more like a verbal contract.

The NFT is a link to something, and buying the NFT means I get the ownership of the NFT. But I've no idea what this actually means in the end, which rights do you get by that? I paid someone $100 and got a link back, everything else is completely unclear. I've no idea how a court would be able to fill in all the blanks here.

I guess it would depend on how that NFT was marketed at the time of purchase. If a piece of digital artwork was displayed on the NFT's web page and the buyer believed that they would get ownership of that artwork in return for their money a court might side with the buyer.

> I have no cryptocurrencies and feel good every time it goes down because it validates my decision.

That's like saying "I'm anti-vax and feel good every time someone vaccinated gets COVID".

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