Hacker News Reader

Comment by photonpsd | Hacker News Reader

Instead of "working" with Amazon to get one of these books removed (sounds super fun), here's a solution I could help an author implement: attach an NFT to each "official" book sold. Either at payment (for digital copies; might require marketplace buy-in) and/or via an NFC in the book binding. Use the token/NFC as a means of authentication, and a way connect with the author, other fans, etc.

View on HN

How would that stop people from getting ripped off by fakes?

fakes wouldn't come with a token that verifies the book is authentic. They are doing the same thing with luxury watches and fashion items. i.e. the real Gucci purse comes with an NFT, (likely NFT + NFC) for authentication and coms with the brand.

How would anyone know to look for an NFT on the fake?

The target of the scammers is someone browsing Amazon, who isn't going to know to look for an NFT. Someone familiar with the author is just going to check the author's website and see the list of books they've published.

The NFT/NFC is locked so the tag is immutable, and only the seller and Amazon have the public key. Barring some hack on the NFT/NFC tagging software (which could happen in theory), you'd need both the private and public key to create a counterfeit object, along with a MFA token of some sort (e.g., biometric data, another OTP like Yubikey). And this would be true for every physical and/or digital print.

If I'm following your idea correctly, a prerequisite would be that we as a society would need to make it impossible to publish a book, digital or physical, without an attached NFT.

It's also worth mentioning that the OP of this comment thread promised a solution that any author could implement without Amazon's involvement, presumably because Amazon is disinterested or disincentivized to care.

No. Not necessary. You only need the verified NFT linked to “authentic” books. 3rd party service does minting and verification. It’s the same strategy luxury fashion houses are using with tagging physical products with NFTs for authentication

I do not misunderstand what an NFT is theoretically technically capable of. The problem is that your proposed idea is non-responsive to the underlying problem that fakes and counterfeits are trivial to source on Amazon.

Wouldn't that require the NFC tag to have a HSM / secure enclave? If the tag just contains a signed token, they'd just copy it, but sticking a secure enclave in an NFC tag is... probably doable, but not cheap or easy. (Or if I'm wrong please correct me, because cheap/easy secure enclaves would be interesting, or I might be missing some detail of how you'd do the NFT side)

No. The NFC chip plus the unique NFT makes it impossible to copy

The counterfeit book won't have an NFT. Someone browsing Amazon will buy a counterfeit Jane Friedman book, and won't know to look for an NFT. The only people who know to look for an NFT will be those who read Jane Friedman's website where she talks about her NFT books, and they'll buy a book from a link on her website, so the NFT won't serve a purpose because they'll already be buying a real book from a trusted source.

> The counterfeit book won't have an NFT.

Or it might come with an NFT created by the scammer, which they might trick the reader into trusting with social engineering.

NFTs would be overkill and a massive waste of processing power. All you really need is a cryptographic signature on your books. Now the hard part, as usual isn't even the implementation itself, but getting people to use it and look in the right place for your public key.

How does that help solve the problem, especially given it's a problem that the marketplace isn't interested in solving?

only "official" books that were written by the author would come accompanied with a token that verifies it; to side-step marketplaces (at least on physical copies), publishers could embedded an NFC chip into the book, consumer taps it with their phone to auth it; token also gets access to special discord, early release of author's next book, etc

How does one validate that the NFT was issued by the real author and not a scammer issuing NFTs in the same name?

Via a 3rd party NFT minting service. In order to create the NFTs the original author could set up an account with the 3rd party, KYC herself and then mint tokens for every book she sells. 3rd party verifies/authenticates the book + NFT

How does the book purchaser verify the third party NFT minting service verified the NFT was created by the author and not some skammer using the same name?

I think even without an NFC it's clear that it's not a real book as soon as you buy it. But it's still garbage, and it'll still be impersonating the author, making it look like they sell garbage.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com