NFT - What do you think?

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buonamorte.records
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NFT - What do you think?

Post by buonamorte.records »

Hi!
What do you think about NFTs ?
Is there a way to create an open alternative? I've understood that they are into the blockchain, and that's a big problem: ethical, ecological...
But I think this kind of ideas could be interesting for the future of music in a digital world...
In facts, I'm more interested by alternatives...
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Re: NFT - What do you think?

Post by Fmajor7add9 »

Have only scoured a few media sources so go ahead and call me out if they're ill-informed.

Supposedly all bitcoin mining equates the total energy consumption of all of Argentina.

And https://finnoworld.com/debunking-nft-myths tore apart my blockchain understanding to a degree where I'm not so sure about it being an obvious solution to digital copyright and ownership:
NFTs aren’t decentralized, they’d work the same with an SQL database on a website

Theoretically, individuals could mint tokens themselves, and use “sufficiently” decentralized auction and discovery services through trusted open source clients. This is not the current situation however in the case of Nifty and other platforms:

The minting process (“primary market”) is entirely managed by a third party. That third party acts as an agent, taking a cut in the process. That third party could be faking it, make mistakes, or be hacked. This denies the benefits of using a public blockchain in the first place.

The reselling process (“secondary market”) is also managed by the same third party. In effect, you can’t do peer-to-peer trading of unique objects. You need a centralized platform where the discovery process takes place between buyers and sellers. They have to register on the third party website to make buying and selling offers and communicate together.

The public blockchain is merely used as a recording system. Those serial numbers, transactions and users could be recorded more efficiently in an SQL database. You can be sure that the websites of the NFT issuers store their data in an SQL format anyway, so why duplicating the data and the effort?
https://everestpipkin.medium.com/but-th ... 28ef72e6a3 rants eloquently and concludes
Cryptoart lets a few artist early adopters get rich from a system made to reward investors, not artists.

The value system a fully functioning NFT marketplace creates is reprehensible. We cannot let it get there.

The only option is to reject this whole-cloth. There is no “my rig is solar” or “we plant a tree for every coin” or “we’re moving to proof of stake” or “we have a bounty for a less devastating NFT” or “my smart contract is a viable alternative”.

This is liberalism at its finest- a reformist attitude that thinks if we can just fix the worst problems- remove the bad apples- get some better regulatory structures in place- then the system might just work rather than internalizing that a system based on fundamentally broken, greedy, hyper-capitalist models is one that will always produce harm.

The only viable option is total moral rejection. Anything less (selling, collecting, posting links to artists selling NFTs, yes even trying to find a less ecologically devastating model) holds up the power of the worst parts of this platform. It grants moral grayzone- an “oh, if my favorite artist is involved, maybe it isn’t so bad?” or a “but I know this person cares for the environment and they participate- maybe they know something I don’t?”
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Re: NFT - What do you think?

Post by sysrqer »

Those are very alarmist articles and very biased in my opinion. I had a hard time getting past the mention of liberalism. Blockchains don't have to be bad for the environment and it's a good idea to think about it in context. I'm not going to try to argue for it but research yourself and look at both sides of the (bit)coin.

I don't know a great deal about NFTs but I am dubious about the claims in that article. You certainly can do peer to peer trading of unique objects, cryptocurrency is a unique object and it is traded all the time P2P. I don't think you 'need' a centralised exchange either, decentralised exchanges exist and work.

On the subject of all this you might be interested in Audius and their coin $AUDIO. They are trying to take on Spotify and SoundCloud but provide a fair reward/payment system for the artists.
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Re: NFT - What do you think?

Post by Basslint »

The real question is: will legislation all over the world allow free trading of media if NFTs are accepted? In other words, if someone buys a NFT of a videogame that's only sold with DRM, will they be allowed to freely download it DRM-free without being investigated? This is not the case for physical copies and I am afraid will not be the case for NFTs. In other words, it does not prevent DRM from being deployed, IMHO. So, if they are just an alternative to receipts, I don't see the point of them.

And I am saying this as someone who's both against piracy and DRM, by the way.
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Re: NFT - What do you think?

Post by Largos »

It sounds like a move from physical junk to digital junk.
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Re: NFT - What do you think?

Post by buonamorte.records »

I totally agree with the last quote!
BUT maybe we can find out something, because I think that digital art needs a new way to survive. Probably using SQL, or something different. An open way, ethical, ecological...
Not for investors, but the "unicity" can be a concept that can move people to buy digital art. And I think that unicity does not mean "closed".
Yes, there are other ways for artists, like patreon or crowdfunding platforms, but by this way we can see artists selling themselves, not their works: this give more importance to the individual artist than his works. I'm not in love with that...
I own a little label, we use creative commons licenses and I'm happy with it, but I can't find how to guarantee the surviving of the musicians that work with me.

"freely download it DRM-free without being investigated": that's important! Probably we can provide unicity also under open licenses (you can buy an openNFT only if there is a copy completely free that everyone can use, or something like this).

"provide a fair reward/payment system for the artists": that's the goal! I'll take a look to audius! (thanks for the suggestion!)

(Sorry for my bad english, I'm trying to improve it...)
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Re: NFT - What do you think?

Post by folderol »

To be honest it's a total MEH from me - has no interest at all.
The Yoshimi guy {apparently now an 'elderly'}
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Re: NFT - What do you think?

Post by Fmajor7add9 »

Reading the responses and pondering the tech and law involved in publishing anything I'm getting a bit/byte old school FSF'y.

And wondering if there are modern day creators and artists who are able to basically just give their works to the world with a permissive Creative Commons license or something similar and still retain a decent income from sources like direct donation, patronage, corporate gigs, public funding. Like Mozart and Beethoven :)

Heard a writer the other day saying there are no money in written words but you can make money speaking words, ie. giving talks and lectures for specific interest groups or companies who needs an hour of fresh eyes and inspiration.

The years of extreme capitalisation of music ca. 1950 - 2000 due to distribution by specific analog and digital media formats and more or less monolithic media and marketing channels could also be considered an anomaly.

A tech challenge re. digital distribution regardless of licensing that isn't depending on high energy consumption data centers still remains. Can't be that far away future though since they're all running Linux and trimmed and nurtured by the savviest geeks on the planet.
Last edited by Fmajor7add9 on Wed Apr 07, 2021 12:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: NFT - What do you think?

Post by buonamorte.records »

Basically I agree with you, otherwise I wouldn't be here. And I wouldn't register musicians for free. And I wouldn't use CC licenses.
I don't really like to think of artists who, in order to survive, instead of devoting themselves freely to their creativity, are forced to spend a good part of their time managing social channels, or selling "a dinner with the band" to pay for their production. of the disc. Probably, in other parts of the planet, people are more likely to donate something to a valuable artist. The collection of the first album released for Buonamorte was around € 25 in donations. We opened the label last year, there is only one record at the moment (4 in production!), I'm certainly not an entrepreneur and I'm not interested in earning a lot. I'm not even interested in surviving, I'm a theater technician and I live on this job. But my musician friends would have full right to deal with their art in a free way and live from it. NFTs are certainly not a solution, and this is clear to everyone in this forum. A platform like Jamendo is already much better, but I feel it lacks a little extra appeal. Not for investors but for listeners. I used to collect original CDs when I was a kid, and I miss them a little. I therefore saw an interesting possibility in the idea of ​​digital uniqueness. But I also saw capitalism, the lack of care for ethics and ecology and all the serious problems of these NFTs. Maybe I should have used a different title for the thread, because I wanted to find someone with ideas on how to change the game, not by participating but by identifying and developing the alternative. In fact, the alternative is already there and is called an open license, but it is precisely lacking in the economic part, arouses little interest in those who do not have "political" positions and have little visibility (only Jamendo, to my knowledge, has structured a platform for CC music, and I'm afraid it's not very popular). In my opinion, if the right formula is found, something interesting can arise that could make our world of free art more attractive. Perhaps the concept of uniqueness is not the ram to break through the door, perhaps it is that of freedom. But freedom does not mean dying of hardship ...
(This time, if you don't understand what I mean, it's the fault of the automatic translator !!)
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Re: NFT - What do you think?

Post by Basslint »

@buonamorte.records IMHO the solution is much simpler: the Bandcamp model :D
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Re: NFT - What do you think?

Post by buonamorte.records »

@Basslint Yes that's a good model (our buonamorte.org works in a similar way, but without visibility...I think I'm going to create an account on bandcamp!). Thanks a lot!
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Re: NFT - What do you think?

Post by Fmajor7add9 »

@merlyn, reading this comment reminded me of your take on NFT.

The cardboard ref. is a rare sports collectable item sold for millions:
However that ink on flimsy cardboard is still somewhat unique. The NFT only associates a wallet address with a hash of whatever digital document. It's similar, but not quite. It has value in human imagination, sure, one can convince oneself that's the case. But the token is merely a hash of something that can be obtained very easily in full original quality on the Internet. The flimsy cardboard is not. At least not in the same sense (you could scan it and put a jpg of it online for example).

Also the card will stay in this world for a long time if protected from weather and light, I assume, where as the NFT needs to be constantly kept alive by "mining". I agree it's similar, but it's also different. And interesting. At least to me. :) Also value is relative, of course. I mean: One man's collectible is another woman's trash. It probably needs a certain shared set of beliefs/illusions to agree that something like that has value.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26779706
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Re: NFT - What do you think?

Post by merlyn »

Yes it reminds me of Pepe Cash :

http://rarepepedirectory.com/?page_id=1405

As vacuous wastes of time go, Pepe Cash has to be up there. The cards are worthless -- what has value is the code/hash/some digital thing.

Non Fungible Token. The key part is 'fungible'. On the video chat @LAM had a different definition of 'fungible' from me. I had heard of this before cryptocurrency as it's a concept from economics and for a while I wanted to work out why economics is a load of rubbish. Notice I didn't say 'if'. :)

My definition of fungible is that items that are fungible can be swapped with each other. Barrels of Brent Crude are fungible. You don't buy barrel A of Brent Crude because barrel A is better than barrel B -- they're all the same. Sacks of wheat are fungible if the type and grade are specified. Bakers don't specify the exact sack of wheat they want -- they buy a (any) sack of wheat. Commodities are fungible. 24 carat gold is fungible. The ultimate example of fungibility is money -- dollar A = dollar B = dollar C = every dollar on earth -- they're all the same.

Yes, business likes fungible.

So non fungible means something is unique, and in this case what is unique is the digital part.
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Re: NFT - What do you think?

Post by LAM »

merlyn wrote: Mon Apr 12, 2021 4:08 pm My definition of fungible is that items that are fungible can be swapped with each other. Barrels of Brent Crude are fungible. You don't buy barrel A of Brent Crude because barrel A is better than barrel B -- they're all the same. Sacks of wheat are fungible if the type and grade are specified. Bakers don't specify the exact sack of wheat they want -- they buy a (any) sack of wheat. Commodities are fungible. 24 carat gold is fungible. The ultimate example of fungibility is money -- dollar A = dollar B = dollar C = every dollar on earth -- they're all the same.
That's correct, i probably expressed the concept in a bad english. My definition was more on the "value" part of the fungible, something like that:
Fungible goods are interchangeable goods whose assigned value matters rather than the individual object

Anyway the NFT discussion is interesting, it makes me think of something I have already seen 20-like years ago (with obvious differences):
etoy.SHARE

in mix, nobody can hear your screen

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Re: NFT - What do you think?

Post by merlyn »

One way to fix the finances of art and music is to fix the whole financial system and that would carry art and music along with it.
LAM wrote:That's correct, i probably expressed the concept in a bad english. My definition was more on the "value" part of the fungible, something like that:
Fungible goods are interchangeable goods whose assigned value matters rather than the individual object
Not bad English, no. I now get what you're saying and bringing value into it makes it more modern in the neo-classical school. Bringing value in allows for e.g. futures contracts where value changes depending on time e.g. you may have noticed the futures contracts in oil went negative for a while in the early days of Covid. Yes, a person could have received money by taking barrels of oil. Of course it requires somewhere to store it ...

In classical economics value is derived from labour. Adam Smith and Karl Marx agree on that. It wasn't until neo-classical economics that labour was taken out of the equation and the market, and the market alone, determined value. So the idea that art is rare and therefore valuable doesn't hang together. The value is what the market decides the value is.

This was alright for a while but it has come off the rails. In the economist's language pollution and global warming are market failures caused by externalities. That's it. It's the economist's way of saying it's not their problem. People will continue to buy super-yachts and private islands and well ... shame about a few market failures.

The fact that cutting down the Amazon is profitable doesn't take into account the carbon stored in the trees, the medicinal plants that are lost, or the indigenous cultures that are wiped out -- those are mere externalities.

This is a problem :

The tree is worth more dead than alive.

There are respected economists who also think this way like Mark Carney -- ex-Goldman Sachs, ex-Governor of the Central Bank of Canada, Governor of the Bank of England in 2008. He thinks COP 26 in Glasgow later this year is our last chance to sort it out. He gave lectures on how we have come to prioritise financial value over human value available here :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvw-aC0KLD4

Or on the BBC :

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articl ... t-we-value
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