NFTs Are Legally Problematic ft. Steve Mould & Coffeezilla

[@LegalEagle]

🐒 Do you think NFTs are a scam? Learn more from Steve Mould: kzbin.info/www/bejne/f4vEhZdmnamnoas 🚀 Get an EXTRA VIDEO on CuriosityStream/Nebula for 26% OFF! legaleagle.link/curiositystream

[@my3dprintedlife]

They're ripe for scammers

[@coralreeves4276]

Yes.

[@FriscoFlame]

If you are willing to pay to say that you own digital art do I have a JPEG of the Brooklyn bridge to sell you

[@mfaizsyahmi]

OBJECTION to your pitch for Nebula. It's conjecture, untrue and misleading that KZbin WILL GUARANTEE 100% demonetize said content and WILL GUARANTEE 100% not make it available to viewers. You can't know in advance whether videos will get demonetized. Even if it ends up being demonetized it doesn't amount to a strike so it's still available on your channel. You can use other tools e.g. community posts and shorts to lead people to the content. It's the BS misleading VPN pitches all over again. Just be honest and say outright that you chose to put said content behind a paywall.

[@ickess]

@@FriscoFlame HA!

[@santeroel]

The more I listen to this, the more the whole NFT world seems like a MLM meant for slightly computer literate people who think they are too smart to fall for MLMs.

[@adrycough]

No, NFTs are a straight up ponzi scheme that build up their attractiveness by uselessly using cool technology. Crypto-hype and FOMO are the main driving factors. Anyone who actually understands the technology either doesn't buy into it or buys into it for the memes.

[@ebonychan]

you did it you boiled nfts down to the bare essentials

[@jeaniebird999]

Well said!

[@Ana_Ng]

and you'd be right to think that

[@crowhaveninc.2103]

That's exactly what it is

[@milkteamachine]

Every time someone claims that NFTs benefit creators, I remember that one time someone minted NFTs using art by an illustrator who died of cancer just months prior, and people told her family that they should have just minted it themselves if they didn’t want this to happen :)

[@oneopinion6806]

@@bigvidboi4909 And Bob Ross.

[@raychances6251]

Quinni, right?

[@maitezonga1170]

Man Quinni was so beloved the artist community and still is,It’s disgusting that someone would do this.sadly artists getting their art stolen and used for nft is pretty common

[@terminuscoagule3059]

Hey what about Beeple?

[@adamcourtenay8716]

people have been stealing artists work long before NFTs. it's only sad that the fraudster got paid, but it takes nothing away from the original artist. the fraudulently minted NFT is for all purposes a fake.

[@collettehinz5427]

Minting an NFT without permission of the artist led deviant art to create an entire program that scanned open seas which notified an artist when their art showed up as an NFT. Open seas mostly ignored all takedowns issued by the victims. NFTs are not for artists. Also it's hard to take legal action against those who are smart enough to remain truly anonymous for a pump and dump

[@Julia-lk8jn]

Word. the most frustrating (and telling!!) thing about the NFT community is their blame-the-victim response: the artists are to blame, they should have all minted NFTs for every single image. (Which, as far as I can tell, still wouldn't stop somebody else from minting _another_ NFT and then selling that.)

[@StabbyTheSkaven]

@@Julia-lk8jn it wouldnt. also minting an nft is not free, it can actually be quite expensive and listing it somewhere to be sold/seen is also again expensive. so now you have to pay to make something you dont want because people are telling you that they will do it themselves if you dont to make money of it and they probably still will regardless.

[@01chittarihesvarkrishnaput95]

Current DeviantArt member here. Yeah, I remember the site had issued us a notice about someone's art showing up as NFT by someone else. And like you said, the site created a program to do just that. I never had any notification of any of my art being posted as NFT but I hope that doesn't happen to me and anyone else.

[@Carewolf]

Also, NFTs are only links. You can't copyright links.

[@2egenjerry]

Open seas are where pirates roam

[@EdrickBluebeard]

I once believed that planking was the dumbest thing I'd ever see on the internet, but every year, the internet exceeds my expectations. NFTs are just... bafflingly absurd.

[@TARINunit9]

Planking at least requires a theoretical artistic merit. The juxtaposition of a picaresque landscape and the human laying facedown. NFTs are almost always computer-generated in the ugliest ways possible. No artistic merit whatsoever.

[@yeknommonkey]

Nft are definitely a big old scam. Beeple sold 5000 of them for like $69m then goes on to do a normal art project of printing a book of the same things and still makes all the money. The owner of the NFT’s gets naff all unless they can find an even bigger idiot to sell them to.

[@SevenEllen]

I agree. They're tacky, naff, ugly, and kitch at best. Money can't buy taste but it can certainly make a scammer rich until they're caught.

[@salamantics]

wow, remember planking?

[@EdrickBluebeard]

I try not to.

[@kelaEQ2]

To me NFTs are about as "Legitimate" as "Naming a star" after someone. It is technically not a scam but also are not actually getting anything either.

[@stefanietaushanoff3079]

I had a college boyfriend buy me a star - it was useless but so cute. And I'm pretty sure no money was laundered as a part of that transaction.

[@Acteaon]

Yea That’s good. I like that. What about highways and schools for example named after a person. Surely they gain something…?

[@653j521]

@@Acteaon A dead person got something out of it?

[@adrycough]

Haha buying a star is so stupid, I could print out my own phony certificate and it would be just as legitimate.

[@TomSedgman]

Do you mean that I don’t actually own a square yard of the moon?! 😢

[@rudeboyspodcast]

I can't recommend "Line Goes Up" enough for people who want to learn about the history of NFT's and how they're being used and abused. Thanks for covering the legal aspects in detail here!

[@Ahrpigi]

Folding Ideas might just make the best videos on the platform

[@yuvalne]

+

[@abbewinter9249]

Funny enough, your comment was displayed right next to that very video in the suggestions tab.

[@aircraftcarrierwo-class]

Line Goes Up is an excellent breakdown of the NFT space.

[@ryansalmon6507]

+

[@eternalskeptic]

NFT's are a great modern example of the old adage: "A fool and their money are soon separated."

[@clickbait007]

"a fool and his money are soon parted"... Is the way I've always heard it. But I agree. I don't think many people got wrapped into the whole monkey jpeg idiocy. Having said that I personally invested a lot of my savings in a company working on an NFT project and I was promptly parted with my money. This was with a friend who I've known for 15 years. Oh well... Everyday is a learning day...

[@samgoff5289]

I just can't wrap my head around buying into any of this garbage...how are people so stupid I really just can't imagine thinking this crap is worth any money at all

[@lafeelabriel]

And "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is"

[@AnEnderNon]

@@clickbait007 u a fool 💀

[@dianapennepacker6854]

Unless you're Timothy Dexter. Luckiest fool ever. His story is hilarious TBH.

[@lisahenry20]

"Programmers are really bad at understanding contract law" I wonder if that's the reason my uni has a mandatory 'Law and finance' module for enginnering students (including computer science students) and one of the topics is contract law.

[@prize9550]

my IT course also had a tiny bit of copyright law

[@EarsoftheWolf]

Sometimes that's why only vaguely relevant modules exist in degree courses. Sometimes the uni is just filling the time because they don't have enough modules to fill a degree.

[@RandomAnimeGamer]

And of course the only people who know less about contract law are company executives, who are the ones that are writing what the programmers are doing detail for detail, and won't accept any deviation

[@xFukairix]

It's usually added to degrees that have a high amount of exploitation at entry levels. I.E graphic design, software devs, 3D artists etc. At least that was the case in my country.

[@la_niina]

But computer science students aren't programmers nor does it have anything to do with programming.

[@jacobpatton969]

“Programmers are really bad at contingencies.” Me a programmer: looks up what a contingency is.

[@dustinnabil798]

Do programmer usually code some sort of failsafe or redundancy in case something go wrong?

[@GeorgeCowsert]

@@dustinnabil798 no, since they're usually burnt out with coding the intended functionality they fail to even think about Joe Schmuckitelly, who will inevitably do something dumb with it.

[@michaelkenner3289]

@@dustinnabil798 Ideally yes. They are typically known as "exceptions" and most programming languages support implementing them. Whenever a part of the program gets an unexpected answer, like it was expecting a number but gets a word instead, it can trigger an exception. Theoretically the programmer should instruct it how to handle exceptions in advance. However people don't always have the time with deadlines etc. Also if the program pops up an error message the end user might ignore it or override it. It's hard sitting in front of a computer to anticipate every single thing that might happen and the best response to it.

[@extrastuff9463]

@@michaelkenner3289 Ah exceptions/errors, I tend to either implement them or deliberately skip some depending on the job a script/program has to do. But importantly never essential ones to prevent bad data processing inside the process itself. I tend to get a fair amount of specific one off/temporary things that are manually started and logging verified type situations. In that scenario when it theoretically won't be used long and won't run fully automated it's often not worth implementing extensively. Especially since those things tend to fall more frequently in the "we need this instantly for a (soon to be) urgent thing". Sadly some of those in their entirety or partial have a bad habit of making it into production processes later, retrofitting proper logging and error handling for a job that runs long term and maybe even fully automatically later can be a nuisance. And sometimes hard to explain to certain types of people why more time needs to be spent on this "already working thing that they can click on". When it's known ahead of time it is intended for long term and/or automated use I put a bit more effort into it up front. And there's always a balance to figure out in how granular and extensive you want to make the exception handling. But trying to implement it at least for bad inputs by users and external systems it connects to that can go wrong is definitely worth it long term in my experience so far. Nothing beats the frustration of generic "it doesn't work when it runs and there's an error", much nicer to know what specific location in the code it fails and ideally with the reason too (invalid credentials, access denied, host not found, connection timed out, connection refused, etc).

[@rageoholic1007]

@@dustinnabil798 Not really. Programmers are pretty bad at this kinda stuff. There are things like formal methods you can use, but they hurt development speed and "velocity" is a buzzword in most engineering organizations. They'll just throw an exception or something and go home. It's not a great system tbh.

[@TehVulpez]

Gotta love how the supposed "future" of the internet is overpriced receipts based on unenforceable contracts, and every tech company is diving headfirst into it for speculative purposes.

[@JimiCanRead]

Not just tech companies, even sports teams

[@flubnub266]

What I hate about NFTs is that they basically reinforce the overbearing and outrageous DRM ideas pushed on us by the film and video game industries. It was never okay to begin with, and yet people are now making a fad out of it and screwing themselves over.

[@sweepingtime]

Money makes stupid people, a tale as old as humanity itself.

[@gercobosch2870]

The same reason you should question subscription platforms, they don't need to provide anything useful. They can take stuff away from you because you don't own anything and can't sell anything. That last part is the definition of online copyright. If I buy a song from the Internet am I allowed to sell it. With hard copies there is no question (almost)

[@jessestreet2549]

digital tulips.

[@umbra4540]

Actually, a star in a faraway galaxy is an interesting comparison, because that's really very similar to nfts. Plenty of places claim that they can sell you stars, but no one official actually recognizes those as authorities. All you've bought is a line in one company's star catalog. Another company could easily sell someone else the same star, because no one actually owns it. (Edit: clarity)

[@aaronwebb1548]

That is exactly the business plan I thought of immediately after hearing him mention that. Why aren't I making heaps of money off idiots? Oh. It's morals again isn't it? Shit gets expensive.

[@LabGecko]

Seems like this should also be grounds for fraud legislation

[@kneau]

@@LabGecko unregulated. Present circumstance creates the need for regulation, yet it's a long road.

[@milkmeapollo9048]

This is exactly what an NFT is. Its like buying an art piece that's being displayed in a museum, you don't own the art, you just get a plaque with your name on it on the art piece in the museum, or like putting your name on a park bench. I don't see how NFT's could have legal repercussions other than for the people stealing others art and making NFT's out of them. I only watched 10 mins of the vid and already heard some ill interpreted information about what an NFT actually is

[@zoverlvx8094]

I was just thinking this. Glad I'm not the only one

[@KrissieDeathy]

I have a coworker who sees me making animations during my breaks and constantly asks me about turning my stuff into NFTs even though I keep saying no. Not interested. They have a bad rep. He still brings it up. Might show him this video next time

[@natashalaurentia2763]

boy do I have a god news bout this NFT for your coworker...

[@boxhead6177]

Additionally with Consumer Protection, NFTs are sold globally which means they run foul of consumer protection laws of other countries which are far stricter on terms, conditions and liabilities than the US market. (For example in Australia, even as a US company, since the consumer is Australian, your bound by Australia law to deliver a working product). That failure to deliver on all promises and features of your "NFT" can still be considered fraud.

[@SioxerNikita]

Only if you, as the company that made them, sell them directly. If it is legal and only sold directly to people in the country you are inhabiting, then you cannot be liable for someone selling it on, unless you were aware that was their direct intent. See guns for example. Selling a gun in the US to a US citizen is not illegal. But if that person sells that gun to Denmark, you are not legally liable for that if you had no hand in that. So it depends on HOW it is sold on.

[@mf--]

Did someone not deliver their terrible ape picture?

[@tyrongkojy]

Wait... in america yoo don't legally have to deliver a working product? That explains a lot....

[@boxhead6177]

@@tyrongkojy In the US the concept of "buyer beware"... which is the buyer should assure that the product is good and that the seller had the right to sell it. In most other countries, the seller must assure the product is good and that the customer has every right under the law if the product is faulty.

[@boxhead6177]

@@SioxerNikita In most countries, even if the sale is indirect... the seller and all those on the supply chain, must guarantee the product is good and has no undue liability as its delivered to the consumer. Regardless of country of origin. (ie Apple is still liable for a faulty iPhone regardless of its sold by an electronic store in Denmark due to their being a 2 year consumer protection guarantee under the Danish Sale of Goods Act)

[@therealstubot]

"For better or worse, lawyers exist for a reason" - LegalEagle

[@BigHotSauceBoss69]

I trust a computer more than a human. Most plane accidents happen when taking off and landing, not on autopilot. We trust computers for good reason. I doubt people who don't. Our financial system will be handled through the internet, 1s and 0s. The internet is only 30 years old, commercially. Our old guard institution has yet to digitized, as the rest of the world has. The points raised in this video are already obsolete. And lawyers exist because we haven't been able to replace them yet. Believe that.

[@emtheslav2295]

Nice I’m the 669th like

[@baguskusumaloka]

@@emtheslav2295 im 700th. Is it can be sale on nft?

[@gokuxsephiroth4505]

Can't say the same about NFTs lol

[@joachimtheboss5326]

The whole concept of defi is staying as far away as laws as possible not because Defi is criminal but because Defi is free

[@MrChrisKlingler]

Saying NFTs irl equivalent is receipts is going to ruffle every cryptobro’s feathers and I totally love it. Perfect analysis legal eagle

[@KoopaKontroller]

Receipts that just keep getting longer and longer, much like CVS receipts.

[@yikesforever6006]

@@KoopaKontroller at least I can get a refund with CVS receipts.

[@KyleDavis328]

It's what myself and many other folks in the technology community who understand what NFTs actually are have been saying for a long time.

[@videogamecoverss]

Most crypto people who have been there a while understand that an NFT is a spot on the blockchain you own. That's it.

[@TornaitSuperBird]

@@yikesforever6006 And at least they usually have coupons on the back.

[@jarrydwilson1232]

First time I heard about NFT's many moons ago, the first thought that came to my mind was "you could easily make a mint selling garbage to idiots with this". Nice to know I was on the right track :)

[@SsnakeBite]

I'd also like to remind everyone that you don't need an NFT in order to acquire a copyright or otherwise form a contract. That's how ownership, including digital ownership, has worked forever and adding an NFT to the mix does not in any way facilitate this (if anything, it needlessly complicates things by making people with more money than sense believe that they own things that they don't).

[@dmcgee3]

Reminds me of that group Spice DAO that bought a screenplay for a Dune adaptation that was never realized. This was in January of this year. Christie’s expected 30-40k and this group bought it for 3 million. They thought they bought the rights to Dune. They publicly tweeted a three point plan and of course were immediately mocked. If I recall they planned to burn it as well to retain sole rights. What they got was a unrealized screenplay that is available online. It’s truly mind boggling how dumb some people are.

[@ChrisJones-rd4wb]

I understand where the NFT people are coming from, because they live in a post-copyright world. Though NFTs are a pretty stupid alternative.

[@NakedGrizzly]

@@ChrisJones-rd4wb how do they live in a post copyright world? They live in the same world we do, and copyright is still definitely viable

[@ChrisJones-rd4wb]

@@NakedGrizzly Legally speaking, yes. Practically speaking, copyright is a leacherous tool of the rich and companies. Ever since the dawn of the internet, copyright has been extremely hard to enforce, even for big companies. For small creators that don't have a lawyer, it is effetively impossible to enforce copyright. Thus the market has adapted. Artists have switched modles. Patrion, commisions, art has switched to more ethical payment models, reconizing art is a scarce service, not an scarce object. The only ones behind the times are big companies and old people. Companies use copyright as more of a spiteful baseball bat to crush people they don't like. While not really affecting overall piracy. And Old people still think it's a fair and functioning system, even as record labels take millions from artists, and patent trolls just sit on ideas, not innovating, and just making passive income off people that actually want to make a product.

[@kakizakichannel]

@@ChrisJones-rd4wb Cheers bro I'll slap to that give me five 👋

[@germanvisitor2]

"Humor is subjective. However it is _objectively_ funny to copy other people's NFTs." - Hannah Reloaded (quoted from vague memory)

[@KitagumaIgen]

Yay Hannah! LegalEagle has made a number of videos explaining peculiar legal issues in an enjoyable way. This NFT-nonsense, however, is too stupid for me to endure more than a couple of minutes at a time before I have to bang my head against the desk. Your quote saved me from that this time.

[@germanvisitor2]

@@KitagumaIgen :D

[@BigHotSauceBoss69]

i think its funny that i can sell mine for money and... your copy is useless. this meme is like a marker that people repeat that silently screams "i have no idea what an NFT actually is but I act like I do!"

[@germanvisitor2]

@@BigHotSauceBoss69 Which describes the vast majority of NFT buyers. And no, it is not useless when there are plenty of people who freak out when someone copies a worthless little picture.

[@DeltaOfNothing]

@@BigHotSauceBoss69 did you know you also have to buy it for money as well? It’s not a free money game you’re playing. Unfortunately most people playing the game are either already rich and screwing people over, or are the people who are getting screwed over. I’m not paying my life savings for an ugly monkey, I’ll just gamble in the Pokémon casino instead

[@Just_A_Dude]

NFTs, to me, always seem like the old "bill of goods" scam. You're buying a receipt, not the thing on the receipt.

[@matheussanthiago9685]

nice pfp

[@aenorist2431]

Its not "seem" ... they are just that. The fact that people selling NFTs are not routinely pursued for wire fraud is just another sign of the law being slow to catch up.

[@iesika7387]

It's that PLUS a bunch of separate pyramid schemes - the scammers have weaponized the sunk-cost fallacy to build themselves an army of people to defend their "investments" so they can try to pass that hot-potato down the line

[@JanBruunAndersen]

@@RobABankWithABagel - that sounds a lot like the stock market. Or selling expensive Nike shoes.

[@ViktorAstril]

It is a bill of goods scam, with a whole bunch of techno pollution associated with it.

[@RoseDragoness]

NFT felt like buying and selling stuffs on an MMO. The people that play the same MMO may able to value your purchase, but people outside the game would pull their hair of how you spend hundred to thousand dollars for a single digital sword. And when the developers decide to close the game, you cant demand anything about it.

[@Knux5577]

Well yes but usually that sword actually has uses, even if it's just in that game

[@RoseDragoness]

@@Knux5577 you are right, in games you buy things for +happiness, in nft you buy things for +bragging I guess? xD

[@TheCapitalWanderer]

​@@RoseDragonesscan be used for combat and defense purposes bruh

[@Killabeezee]

Csgo skin money go brrr

[@DarkFrozenDepths]

gacha games in a nutshell. but in those cases, some do it for the thrill or to actually get something (more powerful characters for example) out of it. NFTs are just misleading from the onset, although you can still "pay for the thrill". At least the MMO/gacha stuff does give what's promised. NFTs is pretty much a gamble if you even get what you paid for, with little to no chance of winning if it's "legal ownership" of something.

[@cheezemonkeyeater]

"As soon as an NFT crashes . . ." The guy who bought the first Tweet NFT for 2.5 million tried to sell it and his first offer was less than $1000. I think it went up to 10K after several months but has remained unsold because the guy wants 10 million or so for it and nobody wants to spend that much on it. Yeah, when these things crash, they crash hard and I am just waiting for the fireworks to begin when people start filling lawsuits on the price manipulation. It will be glorious. Edit: Ah, I see you mention that later in the video.

[@AudoricArt]

Exactly, NFT's are just a bigger fools scam. People who were fooled into buying NFT's always expected there'd be a bigger fool out there to buy their reciept so they can make a profit. but what can they do when the world runs out of fools?

[@5226-p1e]

Didn't I recently hear about a gaming company who was recently pushing very hard on these nfts, essentially sell their company for $3 million, and then they turned around and invested $2 million dollars worth of their nft stuff, and they eventually came out with nothing because nfts are worthless? And they only have $1 million dollars now.

[@cheezemonkeyeater]

@@5226-p1e I don't know what you're referring to, but it sounds like something that probably happened.

[@TaveZgg]

@@5226-p1e square Enix sold most of their IPs to work on nfts, but the losses you mention might be exaggerated since I didn't hear about those, then again I haven't followed it super precisely.

[@davidmurray3542]

@@5226-p1e I think you're referring to Square Enix, who sold many of their successful IPs (including the Tomb Raider franchise) in order to focus on applying NFTs and other blockchain technologies to gaming. I don't think it's as simple as "they lost $X million" because it's R&D spending, but a lot of people in the gaming press have pointed out that NFTs are broadly unpopular among gamers (e.g. Ubisoft tried introducing them and reportedly sold only 100 of the 10 000 NFTs they minted)

[@CompiledGabriel]

"programmers are really bad at planning for contingencies" As a programmer: Hey! How dare you attack us with the truth?

[@mikearisbrocken8507]

Even in something as simple as data dumping VBA Excel Macros.... "Nah. They'll never change the format of the original document"... Famous last words.

[@Razmoudah]

The real problem is that you can't program for a contingency when you don't know what will happen and what is needed. That's mostly because of the exacting nature of programming and the very imprecise nature of the rest of reality.

[@danielmorton9956]

@@Razmoudah Yes, and while that is fundamental, there is also a secondary cultural factor. The short iteration cycles encourage design around faster turnaround and phasing out old work. Often environments are built around low-cost failures respectively. Resilient engineering built around contingencies is smaller subfields of programming which are often taken over by subfields related to the direct use case.

[@Razmoudah]

@@danielmorton9956 Not exactly. Even for factors that have a degree of prediction there is still a limit to the long-term viability of a set of programming due to the changing nature of the hardware that the code may be ran on. Yes, there are ways to limit the problem, but it can't be completely negated.

[@danielmorton9956]

​@@Razmoudah So code for resilient systems is not for changing hardware. When you design embedded code for interacting with PLC's, managing an industrial process, military operations, or a NASA probe, your life cycle expands to be similar to that of a subsystem. When your system requires years of testing for safety or reliability, there are no swaps. By assuming the program is run on changing hardware, you've ignored programming that doesn't fall under the stereotypical programming types because it's associated with its specific industry or subfield.

[@The-Zer0th-Law]

One time I told a NFT shill "Well, if you believe NFTs to be any worth, then I have a bridge to sell to you..." Never thought it was that close to the truth.

[@DarkZerol]

Well now, Trump is selling his own NFT trading cards.

[@WilliamAikin]

More than a few bridges have been sold as nfts. tulips too.

[@ronneyrendon5045]

@@DarkZerol he's always late to the show.

[@TheDesertRat31]

@Ronney Rendon but always looking to scam people, and wouldn't you know, there are plenty of rubes ready to give him their actual money....SMH

[@lifewater]

I used to think there were a large amount of naïve people buying NFT's and getting scammed, but now I realize the overwhelming majority are: 1. The scammers themselves who make the NFT projects. 2. The people complicit with the scam, hoping to mint & sell at a profit so they aren't the one left holding the bag. So basically scammers scamming scammers hoping to not be the scammed. They all understand the risks, and still participate knowing its likely a rug pull, hoping to beat the odds, as if they are some exception. They are gambling addicts in their purest form.

[@viiltelijamurhaaja7225]

Nft are hot potatoes. It goes up and up and then it falls

[@theomegajuice8660]

This might be weird analogy but it reminds me a bit about the Pick Up Artistry scene and all the money people make from that. It sounds like an industry designed to exploit women when it's actually an industry designed to exploit the men who want to be exploiting women!

[@Kilometers_KPH]

As the saying goes, sir this is a casino

[@MrDaAsif]

It's a greater fool scam, the naive people ARE the scammers

[@EnbyFranziskaNagel]

@@theomegajuice8660 Second degree exploiters.

[@Techydad]

"Programmers are really bad at understanding contract law, in general." As a programmer... This is entirely true. Give me a piece of code and chances are I can decipher what it does even if I don't use that programming language. Give me a legal contract to review, though, and I'm going to refer you to a lawyer. If someone were to rely on my legal expertise then they'd definitely be seeing the other person in court.

[@NXTangl]

Also, a big difference between code and contracts: contracts are necessarily executed by entities capable of introspection. No computer will ever be able to look at its own code and decide whether what it has been asked to do is enforceable or consider the intent behind a stipulation in order to apply additional rules, at least without being programmed to do so when interpreting.

[@youkofoxy]

to be fair, lawyers have developed a unique no fully logical language. even for a normal person, trying to understand what it does can easily lead to jail time.

[@Nasrudith]

@@NXTangl To be a smartass compilers do the same thing all the time but well, Halting Problem.

[@StarPlatinum3000]

"Give me a legal contract to review, though, and I'm going to refer you to a lawyer." But before that, my eyes will glaze over and I'll stare off into the distance for about 30 minutes, instead of actually reviewing the legal document.

[@vylbird8014]

Legal terminology is what you get after a thousand years of people hunting for holes and exploits and the legal profession adding more and more special case handling to fix it until they produce spaghetti code. With code as contract, there's nothing to stop a lot of perfectly legal but underhanded tricks. Eg, you could take out a loan, use the money to buy a 51% stake in a DAO, use your majority vote to introduce and pass a 'give all of the company assets to me!' proposal, and make off with all the company crypto-currency. Do it right and you'll finish up with enough to pay off the loan and have some left over.

[@rohansampat1995]

"Programmers are bad at contract law" Yeah I am with you there legaleagle, I was accused of stealing when I made changes to a minecraft mod and released my version. I had proper credits and proper licesnsing, but turns out that these people did not read their own license and just slapped LGPL on it lol.

[@jamesrivettcarnac]

Hahahaha. Viral license win right there.

[@NotLe0n]

Choosing a licence without knowing what it says is a classy move

Classic 😁 I think it was Steve Ballmer who said open source is like cancer, which is kinda true in ShareAlike licenses. Once the work is open source, you can't get rid of that license. It stays with the work and it's derivatives.

[@rohansampat1995]

@ Not all open source lics do that. There are a good number that let you close source new versions of the software

[@philtkaswahl2124]

Unfortunately, a lot of programmers--well, a lot of people really--who are proficient at what they do often assume that proficiency extends to things beyond their field.

[@meh9607]

One time a fellow student at my university hired me to be a discord mod for an nft project. They never put in any actual work to make the project realize, even the artist quit out. My 'workload' was pretty much just looking at an empty server (the marketing guy also didn't do anything) and verifying that no one was misbehaving. That and getting proper documentation of our agreement and such. Seeing as how he was a student in the business law class i was also in, it really shouldn't have surprised him when I sued him for wage theft. Eventually his father found out a month or so later and settled on his behalf for a couple k.

[@mateofrisk2426]

That's called good work if you can get it

[@ShimmeringSpectrum]

As someone who has a reasonable grasp of the technology, but isn't a lawyer, I appreciated you taking a detour into the fundamentals of contract law for those us who never went to law school.

[@user-lk2vo8fo2q]

i also appreciate him having the humility to get someone with more of a tech background to give an explanation of that side of things, instead of grasping at abstract analogies like too many of these nft "explanation" videos tend to do (looking at you, folding ideas). that simple, concrete, example of how an NFT is typically implemented was one of the strongest parts of the video.

[@Erideah]

35:12 Yep, there’s a huge problem with artists having their work stolen, minted as NFTs, and sold on shady websites. What does the buyer end up with? A link to art they have no rights to, not even the limited ownership they would have if they bought a non-exclusive copy from the artist. NFTs are of less than zero value to society as long as they can be made without verifying ownership of copyright to ALL NFTs ever produced. That must be the standard NFTs are upheld to-that’s the only way they have a point

[@KaitouKaiju]

If I doodle a copy of the Mona Lisa and sell it to some idiot telling them it's the original, isn't it their fault for not doing the due diligence? You wouldn't blame the paint, you'd blame the fraudster Artists need to protect their work and one way of doing so is by making an NFT with it before uploading it anywhere else. Then it's provable that you are the original creator

[@TheInevitableHulk]

@@KaitouKaiju There's nothing stopping anyone from making NFTs with stolen art regardless if the artist has done so already.

[@gomez9949]

@@KaitouKaiju the fraudster making an NFT without the artist's consent should already be held accountable. Just because it's new and there aren't laws against it yet doesn't mean you should bully artists into buying NFT insurance.

[@Erideah]

@@KaitouKaiju It's not a doodle, however. It's a perfect copy. With the NFT slapped on top, which helps, since most people don't understand copyright law, much less NFT law Creative works are inherently protected by copyright law. You can also register your copyright, but you don't need to--if someone steals it before you even publish it, you're still protected. You can use things like previous sketches and drafts, a body of work in the same style, to prove authenticity if you need to force a legal issue. Granted, most artists can't afford taking legal action, just legal threats. Same issue remains with NFTs if they don't already verify the copyright that they rely on. If they're not additional security on top of a copyright, they're another point of failure, security-wise. That seems to defeat the purpose, to me

[@russelljackson2818]

@@KaitouKaiju they may be an idiot, but that doesn't justify you committing fraud. You decided to do that on your own. This idea that the only way artists can protect themselves from the grift is by participating in it is basically extortion to try to forcibly manufacture legitimacy for NFTs, and by extension, cryptocurrency. Pretty telling about just how much people in this space actually value art.

[@malachiReformed]

"programmers are bad at contract law." Am programmer can confirm. The most miserable project I had was taking a CBA and having to program the (often contradictory!) requirements laid out in that document.

[@John-tr5hn]

They're not necessarily contradictory; you're just bad at contract law.

[@malachiReformed]

​@@John-tr5hn Lol. Not in this case. Literally had to call the lawyers who then had to add an appendix to explain the contradictions. That was fun for all parties.

[@Aniaas1]

@@malachiReformed I've been there - non-technical managers meet with clients and thrash out requirements, and you only see it when signed and they want you the build this travesty of an idea.

[@fwiffo]

Also worth saying that contract lawyers are bad at programming. I literally came across a situation where lawyers promised a software feature that was NP-Hard. No, I'm not making that up. They were pretty confused when they were told that it might take several thousand years to fulfill the terms of the contract.

[@TomNook.]

That indicates how ambiguous contract law is. Programming is about absoluteness - law is the opposite ie loopholes

[@besluitloos]

This is the very first time a KZbinr has talked me into buying their sponsor's product. And if course it's a lawyer

[@raimarulightning]

Damn it. They can't keep getting away with this T_T

[@hardcoreclassicenjoyer]

@@raimarulightning if it wasn't for those meddling lawyers I would have ..

[@Nocturne989]

The way I tend to describe NFTs is that they are a unique sign that you own that points to some non unique thing that you don't own. You can stand in the museum next to the art with your sign that points to it, but you can't stop anyone else from browsing the museum. They just dont have your sign.

[@RockitFX1]

🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯

[@coreyfrank506]

That's only when they are used incorrectly Some artist use NFTs properly. Exclusive clubs, access to perks and merchandise, meet n greets, access to discord channels with the artist, etc. In reality, NFTs are basically Costco memberships. (except one time fee and transferable) Only buy an NFT if you support the artist and what they offer. If you abuse NFTs and sell them for Mark ups, it's no different than the PS5 scalpers NFTs are designed to connect artists with their audiences. And remove the middle man. Imagine bands selling tickets as NFTs. No more ticket master! And all funds go directly to the band! Not to all the added expenses.

[@eaglestdogg]

@@coreyfrank506 you can do literally all of that much easier and much less terrible for the environment without crypto.

[@TSarczuk00]

@@coreyfrank506 you don't need NFTs for any of that.

[@Lazzyrus]

@@coreyfrank506 I can still do the same thing without that for free

[@grahamers]

The best analogy to NFTs are "Star Registries." Those companies who advertise "name a star after a loved one" when all they actually sell you is a promise to write your star name in their records and not accept another name for the same star from anyone else. They have no official recognition in the scientific community and you have no actually rights or power to control the name of the star.

[@milamberarial]

Although most of those do actually make it clear (assuming you read the paperwork) that it is a novelty thing and no rights or privileges are actually granted by the transaction. So at least they are avoiding the NFT problem of false promises that so often goes along with the NFT sales.

[@mordsythe]

I bought one of those… knowing it was just a cutesy fun gift. Do I regret it? Not at all. I married the lady i got it for. The difference in NFTs is that I was clearly informed as to my product I was purchasing. NFTs very rarely have any info on what you’re actually getting.

[@RWAsur]

I was thinking this too. I've framed certificates of these star registries from poor folks who bought them after deceased family members or as something for their grandchildren. On one hand, if it helps you with coping with the loss of a loved one, that's fine. If it inspires a child to look up at the stars and think of the mystery of space, that's also fine. But it's a bit deceptive in the certificate and the premise. A much better, and thankfully more popular, trend is getting the "night sky" mockup based on the latitude and longitude of a particular date, so people are doing that for birthdays, spousal meet and marrying dates. Those are lovely and they don't carry some false connotation that you own something you most definitely do not.

[@TravlingNow]

Wait, are you telling me that I wasted my money? There will never be space explorers who have to report that they are approaching Alpha DeezNutz?? Talk about a let down.

[@kelly4187]

@@TravlingNow damn, now I want the ability to name systems I discover in Elite Dangerous just to make this happen.

[@wabznasm9660]

NFTs are the first thing in my life where I’ve actually thought “satire is dead”. If it was a Black Mirror episode I’d think it was farfetched. It’s the massive wave of embarrassed disgust they give me. They’re just so obviously crap and worthless. It’s like a selling a parcel of land on a planet in No Man’s Sky or something.

[@MolloyPolloy]

Like buying the receipt of someone else's meal at a fancy restaurant and claiming you've eaten in it.

[@LAG09]

You and me both. First time I read up on cryptocurrencies was way back in 2010, thought it was stupid as all hell and you can imagine how I feel 12 years later seeing that idiocy keep chugging along with offshoots like NFTs. My only regret is that I didn't buy those bitcoins for less than $200 each like I thought I'd do back in 2012 when the first mining boom blew, but I was a broke university student at the time.

[@BlastedCharacterLimi]

I have bad news for you... Go look into Earth 2 (KiraTV and JoshStrifeHayes have some particularly good videos on it)

[@totsukabladez369]

Bro, anime waifus have more use than NFTs because at least the art is good and they can be used for entertainment purposes.

[@viderevero1338]

@@BlastedCharacterLimi Yeah, their example LITERALLY exists. Which just makes their comment bring even more sadness.

[@slothzzzowo]

0:02 liking the very quick erasing of scam so that you know the answer from the start.

[@fleurmal7648]

An art group I follow, and used to participate in, got tons of their art stolen and were being sold as NFTs. Thankfully everyone reported it and they were taken down. Can't support something that basically makes art theft thrive!

[@jmiller6066]

The fact that the NFTs can be "taken down" at all also puts the lie to the idea that this stuff is anywhere near as decentralized as claimed

[@laughaway7955]

@@chemicalfrankie1030 ?

[@consumerofbepsi5254]

@@chemicalfrankie1030 how does the video relate to this person sharing their own experiences with nfts? Unless you're implying that the art wasn't stolen because "yadda yadda Blockchain or whatever" and in that case I'd feel really bad for anyone who's affected by your financial decisions

[@danyg0000]

@@chemicalfrankie1030 it was stolen because they were essentially selling the art which even if it was a NFT, it is still stealing

[@communications23]

@@jmiller6066 NFTs cannot be taken down (unless you take down every copy of the ledger). The NFT most probably still exists, only the link to the copy of the art is now broken.

[@NeoMatrixYT]

When NFTs were first introduced to me, I thought that it was simply the original copyright people were buying. Later, I realized that it was just money laundering/scamming.

[@skrounst]

Yep I thought the same. I thought that the owner would have that specific art copyrighted. When I found out that they DIDN'T actually have the copyright and I could just download their jpeg NFT and use it however I wanted (without owning it), I realized they might as well be buying air.

[@StCreed]

"Would you like to buy a bridge?" Yes, I would "Here's a picture of the bridge. Cool isn't it?" Indeed! "Pay me 2 million dollars and it's yours" Amazing! Take my money! "Thanks. Here's the picture!" Wait, what? You're buying directions to the bridge. Or the picture of it. But nothing more.

[@JojonathanOliveira]

@@StCreed almost right, but with NFTs they don't even give you the picture, they keep the picture with them in their catalogue and can change it to another picture if they desire.

[@CanIHasThisName]

The biggest problem is that NFTs are usually presented in a way that makes people believe they're buying something more substantial. NFTs in and of themselves aren't really that complicated in terms of what they can do. But the way they're presented and the way they are used makes them incredibly confusing if you don't understand what they are, because it becomes pretty difficult for people to wrap their head around the fact they are not buying a picture, or that they aren't really accounted for in current laws.

[@ChansuRagedashi]

it's quite fun to make NFT-bros instantly irate by going "oh it's like beanie babies!" after they explain the blockchain contract.

[@TheSchultinator]

Except with Beanie Babies you had cute animal dolls (idk what to call them?), NFTs have literally nothing for you.

[@CollinMcLean]

@@TheSchultinator At least with beanie babies I still have a cute stuffed whale in a sailor hat. Even if I can't resell it I still have something whimsical to make me smile.

[@dark_wolf017]

I did a research project our initial goal was to predict how much an NFT will make and Mitch they will make based on the transaction data. However, when we did some in depth analyst we found a bunch of weird transactions. We ended up figuring out that it was a bunch of wash trading. We found that our dataset that contained 4.5 million transfers from between April and September of 2021 31% of the transfers were wash trading. So it’s kinda no wonder people are so skeptical.

[@nielsbishere]

Have you seen how the bored apes and mutant apes basically follow the same pattern with floor price too (at least in big lines)? Very suspicious

[@asturias0267]

Painting the tape is also very common. Weird how this stuff is illegal for real art auctions, but enforced on NFTs.

[@DickTheBirthdayBoy]

share the data or gtfo

[@runenorderhaug7646]

I mean this is definitely a reason to be skeptical of specific assests and is definitely a problem, however, I admit that personally i find many are more skeptical out of a mksunderstanding of the fact that there isnt any distinct underlying technology itself and associations with particular assets.

[@Colopty]

Did your paper get published? I'd like to add it to my "proof NFTs are terrible" folder.

[@Chrisiskewl100]

I'm surprised you didn't talk about how easy it is to launder money through NFTs. IRS: "how did you receive $200,000 in one transaction?" Drug dealer: "I sold an NFT that I created and valued it at $200,000. And someone bought it." IRS: "Huh.... okie doke then."

[@Retrocaus]

not much differnt than the traditional art market lol...

[@Chrisiskewl100]

@@Retrocaus it really is the new age art market

[@seneca983]

They can ask you to point to the NFT to check that you're not just making stuff up. Of course, you can create an NFT for the transaction even though it's not *really* what you're receiving the money for.

[@Chrisiskewl100]

@@seneca983 yeah, thats what im talking about. They can just spend a little money on a good machine that'll be great for making nfts and then make an nft whenever they're doing an illegal transaction, and boom. Immediately laundered money.

[@aname9417]

This is exactly what the physical fine art market is :) also i was in washington d.c., where it is illegal to sell weed but not to own it, and there you can go into nifty NFT shops and buy NFT art, and you will get the strain of your choice for free! Isnt that a nice loophole. So you’re right on the money with that one 🤣🤣

[@BrayTube]

This is like buying a tattoo on someone else's arm.

[@republic_of_kyle]

Brilliant! 👏🏻

[@mateofrisk2426]

Bro you just gave me a great idea for funding my infinite wish list of tattoos.

[@just_some_bigfoot_hacking_you]

exactly 😂

[@sagittated]

Except in that case, the tattoo actually exists.

[@meticulousgeek]

Literally two weeks ago I was telling my 72 year old dad: an NFT is buying a receipt. I wasn't sure if that analogy would hold but I'm glad the Eagle confirmed it.

[@Martin-yh7vi]

Even my dad got curious about it, good thing I had known it wasn't anything good before he invested anything. We could have been bankrupt with only a jpeg left to our name.

[@erikc.2462]

@@Martin-yh7vi Hell, it's not even clear if you would have had THAT in the end.

[@casshernsins8333]

It’s worse than that. It’s a non-official unenforceable receipt

[@crhu319]

But that's exactly like buying other art, you are buying proof that it wasn't stolen by Nazis.

[@Martin-yh7vi]

@@erikc.2462 True, probably wouldn't have anything at all lmao.

[@toromei]

The same people most excited about NFTs due to their belief in “ownership” seem to be the same ones who think that paying for music or software means you “own” it, as opposed to the reality of the limited license to use it.

[@deirdre_anne]

Except in those cases you *have* the software, or at least a license and an available copy. Here it's not clear there's any license (except maybe for the basketball example and even then it's so limited you can't even download it for offline access).

[@Gl-my8fw]

which is why you don't pay for any of it if the source is someone you don't want to support.

[@LiddlestLady]

i would argue that the ppl _most_ excited abt the NFTs are the ones purposefully intending to rug pull. oh it’s disgusting for sure but hey, in their mind, it’s not their fault. it’s the stupid fan base who thought buying nfts from their favorite youtuber. and so since they’re so much smarter than you, they actually _deserve_ to get paid. ugh. the mental gymnastics is so gross.

[@playwonderwall]

This video proves why I'm glad my programming degree at college required me to take a Contract Sales/law class; everyone needs to know the basics of how these contracts/law work in society.

[@Slackbot]

My artwork has appeared on NFTs. Not with my permission, of course. I was tempted to change the URL to break the link, but OpenSea delisted it and removed the account that minted it and hundreds of other stolen-art NFTs, so the issue is moot. OK, it's still on the blockchain somewhere, but not likely anyone's ever going to buy it. The whole concept seems ridiculous to me. Spending loads of money on a few electrons saying you're foolish enough to spend loads of money on something you don't own? Really? At that point you're just looking for holes to throw money into.

[@scooterman30]

The technology is valid though, even if ppl are ripping others off. In the same way people thought bitcoin is a scam, and now fidelity is offering it on retirement accounts, so will NFT technology and ideas mature for the common person, though likely in many forms. Its honestly easy to call things BS and scams when you don't have a good understanding, or the tech is not evolved enough.

[@TheBlargMarg]

Yeah and that's bs that people can profit from others work by interjecting some random code with a timestamp in other people's work. It's absolutely such a scummy system.

[@scooterman30]

@@TheBlargMarg Unfortunately that is possible on the internet no matter what you do. Blockchain just highlights one new route. And copywrite/owners rights is a legal one (govt), not a human or social one. Not saying what is right or wrong morally, but that is the reality.

[@seekittycat]

@@scooterman30 Honestly everytime someone tells me "The technology is valid it can be used for this" there is usually already a well established alternative.

[@scooterman30]

@@seekittycat Alternatives create competition and innovation, so if so it is a good thing, as if we settle, we stagnate. But anything blockchain based is intended to be controlled by people, and not brokered by a central entity. It honestly comes from rebelling against anti-ownership trends and government overreach to an extent, besides what it can give as benefits that are new.

[@GameDevFox]

As a software engineer, it makes me smile to see stock footage of a fellow "developer" at 14:51 typing "adoijdiwqjdoij" into a terminal command line, hitting enter 3 times, then repeating the process. lolz

[@Julia-lk8jn]

you're right! I didn't notice it at first, but once you know it's painfully obvious. Adorable. Reminds me of the good old times when you could tell movie extras "just shout something in Finnish, it just has to sound foreign", without suspecting that one day there'll be an internet, as well as people who will joyfully inform anybody online that the cute alien fleeing from the Big Bad just shouted "run for your lives, our boss came to work naked _again_!"

[@ArseneGray]

lol u made my day

[@schmid1.079]

And on the right screen the classic "color 2" hacker move.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Must be long into the session. stock-fottage-coder is so done with the code that that is all they bring together.

[@halneufmille]

43:53 That one looks solid though not even looking at the screen.

[@munstrumridcully]

After familiarizing myself with the basic details of NFTs (Adult Butters in the South Park special got me curious as I couldn't make heads or tails of them from what the show said about them) I am simply dumbfounded by the amount of NFT owners-- often these ppl paid large sums of money for these things, too -- who simply don't know what an NFT is, even though many arrogantly and condescendingly dismiss anyone who tries to correct them. I mean, I have seen NFT owners in videos, and I've even encountered a few in comments threads, who assert with the self-assured confidence of a walking case study of the _Dunning Kruger Effect, _ that they own the NFT's _image_ rather than sort of leasing the bit of code that links to the artwork... I've seen owners ranting about how so-called"right-clickers" -- who are ppl who copy various NFT jpegs and then use them as thumbnails and profile pics and such -- are "stealing their" --the NFT owner's -- property, and bemoaning how they should all be arrested for theft! Then when someone helpfully explains to the NFT bro how they are misunderstanding what NFTs are and how they work, the bro will often be flippant and rude while derisively, and ironically, "roasting" the helpful explainer for being just "ignorant", and smugly explaining to the channel viewers how hilariously "ignorant" Mr. Helpful was about NFTs/Crypto in general.

[@dlscorp]

clearly some nasty youtuber cut you deep _pets_

[@dontmisunderstand6041]

Not that it contradicts what you're saying, but to correct a bit about Dunning and Kruger's conclusion... it wasn't that people who think they know don't. It's that the people with average performance had the highest discrepancy between their performance and their confidence in that performance. People who did extremely well and people who did extremely poorly were generally correct in how much confidence they had in their performance. Average performers overestimated themselves. It's a nitpick, but one that I think is important to point out, given how popular the misconception of their study is. It's not about the people at the low end of the curve, or the high end. It's the people in the middle.

[@KnakuanaRka]

@@dontmisunderstand6041 Sounds like the people talking about the study don’t know what they’re doing either.

[@TaranTatsuuchi]

The best description I recall regarding nft's in gaming... "They're a solution looking for a problem" Pretty much everything game companies are doing with them can be done with other existing methods.

[@Nerdsammich]

Not to mention that it can already be done better.

[@TheArrowedKnee]

And other methods can do it better. They just want to hamfist it in.

[@GrimReader]

Good description of Blockchain in general an excel spoken of like it’s a relic

[@xiph90]

Exactly the argument I keep making. Every problem they solve is already solved better. Every "opportunity" they create is some anti-consumer crap you really don't want catching on.

[@moscanaveia]

What game companies do is craft addiction mechanics to milk money from players. One way to do it is with lootboxes which are essentially gambling. Another way is to use the NFT grift of promising big financial returns if someone buys or earns a token with no intrinsic value in hopes of selling it later to a bigger fool.

[@apjtv2540]

The way I see it NFT's are the epitome for the golden rule of marketing: "Always be selling the concept of selling to other salespeople" Or, in the case, "Sell the idea of selling something to an idiot with money to an idiot with money"

[@themagitechie9955]

So they're basically MLMs. No wonder I hated the concept the second I heard about it🤦‍♂

[@Stratelier]

...or a pyramid scheme?

[@vividandlucid]

Iirc Folding Ideas explained it's basically a Bigger Fool scam. What you're selling is essentially worthless, and its real value won't increase, but since every subsequent buyer needs to make a profit, they all need a "bigger fool" who will buy it for more money. Eventually that fool can't be found, and the last buyer will have lost a fortune. All to a worthless jpeg.

[@benjamin3658]

So just like real art then. Except real art also has the side effect of being able to put on a wall.

[@dr.floridamanphd]

A fool and their money are soon parted.

[@mattmmilli8287]

I work for this startup and there was a serious push to bring NFTs into our app. Me and this other guy were going nuts trying to teach everyone what a scam they are and just a flash in the pan and nothing to pin the company to. Thank god we won

[@CamJames]

I co-founded a startup and I very much did not win that argument. VCs were crazy about NFTs then, and are crazy about AI now.

[@warriorcatkitty]

@@nicdegrave3313 for real!

[@innocentqwa4630]

Please do an episode on the legal issues with AI generated art. Everyone who are talking about these issues seem to have no idea what they're talking about. I'd love to hear a lawyer's take on this.

[@RobespierreThePoof]

I'm an art historian. I would just tell you that AI has yet to generate anything resembling an even remotely interesting artwork. Don't waste your time - and certainly not any money. Yeah, the technology is interesting ... slightly ... But that's about as far as I would go at this point. As for the legal issues, I am guessing your question comes down to one of authorship. Perhaps you are wondering if the programmers of the AI have any ability to claim copyright? Definitely a question for a lawyer. Maybe he'll reply. But I can tell you that copyright law varies a lot between countries, medium (image vs film vs. text) and how the work might be republished or used by others. I would guess that the AI would qualify as intellectual property, but the human creator of individual images would still hold the copyright. After all, Kodak doesn't get the copyright for photographs taken with their film and Adobe doesn't get the copyright for images edited with Photoshop, right? Unless AI becomes sentient, I see no reason why anything would be any different.

[@Zarkyun]

​@@RobespierreThePoof for someone who claims to be an art historian you sure are painfully out of the loop. I'm guessing you haven't actually spent a lot of time researching AI art. I get it, not everybody lives on the internet.

[@zuniamos]

What part did they get wrong/miss? Genuinely curious, since I'm also out of the loop ​@Zarkyun

[@l4cunaz]

@@zuniamosone of the biggest problems is that ai can’t just generate art out of nothing, it needs to collect pre-existing art which is stolen from the original artists who are not given credit. i don’t think anyone truly believes that ai art can fully pass as man-made, the problem is the parts that DO look man-made… are man-made. aka, stolen

[@dokapuff]

​@@l4cunazbut if this was true we wouldn't see AI constantly getting things wrong. Why do hands always have too many fingers, when artists are either drawing all five or less in a simpler style? Image AI is trained on hundreds of thousands of images, it then tries to guess based on that how something should look. If it were true that it was just copy pasting from other artists, we'd easily be able to see irrefutable examples of it, and there would be many lawsuits about stolen IP, yet we don't see this regularly despite the vast amount of ai generated images

[@calliethompson9837]

I've avoided getting into NFTs because it just seems like a new way to spend real money on intangible "art". After watching this, I stand by that opinion

[@jmitterii2]

And a pointless way to spend money on art... art you can just download for... free.

[@rolib6108]

@@jmitterii2 BuT tHaT dOeSnT mAkE It YoUrs. YoU caN dOwnLoad MonA LisA too ItS nOt YouRs. Every nftards argument

[@bachaddict]

I spend real money on digital art... but I commission artists so I get something totally personal and unique while supporting their dreams!

[@Jkjoannaki]

@@rolib6108 but why do they want to "own" art if they don't own copyright of the art. You can't own a song unless you own the copyrights for it. Just because you downloaded and can play it doesn't mean you own it. So the question is, why does it matter to actually own it if they can't actually profit from it or use it? We thought the Paris Hilton type of spending was what was wrong with the world, buying useless shit just to flex expensive brands, but somehow nfts are even worse, they by literally nothing and they can't even flex it.

[@adrycough]

Every company with an online presence buys intangible art. NFTs aren't cringe because of its intangibility. It's cringe because it's just a digital status symbol created by an illusory sense of scarcity. No different than rich people buying a canvas with a single blue vertical stripe for millions of dollars.

[@Xanderqwerty123]

Crypto enthusiasts really need to realize that purchasing an NFT is more similar to a limited license than a copyright. Having that disclosed and widly understood would help a lot of people avoid rug-pulls, scams, and wasting money

[@Plaston_]

They just buying the pixels not the image on it.

[@aenorist2431]

Crypto enthusiasts need to realize they are buying nothing. Its not a limited licence, its just a notice of bragging rights. "Hear hear, this dude burned that much cash to be known as 'the dude that burned that much cash for literally nothing'" Thats all you get.

[@AnimuncuIus]

@@aenorist2431 This is exactly right. Even a limited license has a use insofar as it can be utilized to produce other works or goods. An NFT is literally just a receipt that indicates you bought an empty plot on the Blockchain that has a jpeg as a placeholder showing that space exists at all (after all, if it were really just empty, it might give away the game that you purchased void and nothing else). You can't even license something out that isn't copyrighted, which many of these things aren't, because the lack of copyright makes whatever the thing is public domain. There are still people in the comments here defending this nonsense even though Legal Eagle summarily dismantled any arguments about what is actually being bought.

[@Julia-lk8jn]

just checking: rug-pull := you are sold something, then it turns out that thing doesn't exist, or you still don't own it, or both ?

[@Plaston_]

@@Julia-lk8jn I think its both but you can't do anything with it.

[@KyurekiHana]

As a programmer, this is why I watch legal stuff like this. I may not be a lawyer, but I can know enough to sniff out stuff which I should probably ask a lawyer about.

[@lifotheparty6195]

As an auditor (CPA)I do too. Textbooks and articles are typically 2-4 years behind the times on whatever new scam techniques and grifts that are happening at the moment. CoffeeZilla is a good one to follow but for the most part I find Reddit to be a good source for real-time info on financial fraud.

[@carloscaro9121]

One of the scariest concepts for me, a physician, is these crazy yahoos entering my field. Imagine your medical records in a fork.

[@RWAsur]

"I'm sorry, we don't have any record of your past heart surgery."

[@carloscaro9121]

@@RWAsur "Listen, your EKG says A-fib, but the blockchain says normal sinus rhythm, and who am I gonna believe?"

[@Redlin5]

Hahaha until suddenly that is critical to a prescription being renewed...

[@Foolish188]

Sorry, we removed your left kidney. Unfortunately the block chain was corrupted and we didn't know you were born without a right kidney.

[@ComanderSazabi2000]

@@RWAsur Imagine your medical records being public for anyone who wants to know. Death of medical privacy ethics as we know it

[@phaikia13]

You know you should stop pulling scams when Coffeezilla, Steven and the LegalEagle tell you it's only a matter of time before the law catches up with you.

[@dr.floridamanphd]

It took a while for the courts to give email 4th amendment protections. Crime is fast. Laws are slow.

[@sweepingtime]

It is quite an exciting time at least. I don’t think that any sci-fi or cyberpunk writer ever predicted a crime type close to NFTs.

[@ng.tr.s.p.1254]

@@sweepingtime Reality's the true horror all along

[@raifikarj6698]

yeah it need 3 creator collaborating to make this video more legit because one creator made video about the problem of NFT is usual but when the creator is a lawyer and partnership with 2 other youtuber too one in the field of science other in the scam busting story video

[@CloudCarry]

Let me put this into context for everyone. The people that will come after scammers routinely have less information to go on than scammers in crypto leave behind. It's gonna be a slaughter. RIP to all crypto scammers, we warned you.

[@markw.schumann297]

Thanks for clearing up the fact that "smart contracts" is just a weird way to say "little apps that run on a blockchain as if it were an operating system." They're not _contracts._

[@autohmae]

They are contracts in the computing sense: Design by contract. Just not in the legal sense. But blockchains can be used to record things for legally binding reasons. That's all it does so far. Recording transactions. If the transaction was legal by the law, etc. is all out of the scope of the technical side of computing.

[@Mobin92]

They are not legal contracts, but they are functional contracts. I.e. you write your requirements and conditions as code, and that code will always run exactly as you specified it. It doesn't need to be backed in a legal way, because it's just technically enforced without anyway of breaking it.

[@patrickwarren3579]

@@Mobin92 By that definition any application with branching logic is a functional contract. Labelling them with the word contract is just an intentional obfuscation of what these applications are. A smart contract is only immutable from the perspective of the blockchain itself, but the behavior of that application is not. In the case of Ethereum/Solidity, for example, one smart contract can be used as a proxy for another. That endpoint, which houses the underlying logic, can be changed at any time, effectively rewriting the "contract" from the perspective of the end users.

[@rancidkippa4589]

Apparently the individual who coined the term "smart contract" has actually renounced the term as well, once faced with criticism from legal academia

[@ceoatcrystalsoft4942]

That's like saying the web isn't the web because a spider didn't build it. Don't confuse apples with carrots

[@jamiebertram9744]

In the case that an NFT contains a link to an ipfs URI like in the example, the off-chain content cannot change like with a hyperlink - this is because ipfs URIs are content-addressable. The random-looking text after the "ipfs://" scheme is something called a hash of the file contents - basically a number derived from the binary information contained in the file. If the file's contents changed, the address would no longer point to it, and since IPFS is distributed, once a file is published to IPFS, the uploader of the file is powerless to change or remove it, because it is distributed between many people who maintain the IPFS network.

[@rgnestle]

To the John Cena anecdote, an addition: I bought a copy of Microsoft 2000 OS from Goodwill and Microsoft forced eBay to cancel my listing for it saying it violated the Terms and Conditions of their employee purchase program. I'm not a Microsoft employee, never have been, and Goodwill sold it to me. But, somehow, Microsoft decided that I (who never opened the box) could not sell the item on eBay because of a contract they had with an employee who donated the item to Goodwill. I still hate Microsoft for that!!!

[@Matt_History]

That's because they own the product. If they find someone selling their product without a license they're required to contest it otherwise they lose the rights to their product the windows os is a copyritten product that they still actively sell. Your listing was taken down because of that product not being yours to sell, the good will shouldn't have sold it to you either. If Microsoft knew the employee had donated the disc they would've prevented goodwill from selling it, you just were the one they noticed

[@rgnestle]

@@Matt_History No. It was not opened, it had never been installed on any computer. Once I purchased the license from the previous owner, it became mine. Even Microsoft's own Website says it IS legal to sell a copy that you do not also use on your computer. I told them that and they STILL took down the listing.

[@GoldenSunAlex]

@@rgnestle It doesn't matter if it was opened or not. It's like saying 'because I purchased that stolen watch from the thief, it became mine'. The employee was given it under specific terms and conditions, which he then broke (pretty standard stuff to stop employees giving stuff to friends and family for cheap). He broke those and gave it to Goodwill - they should have rejected the donation, but they didn't, so you got stuck with the short end of the stick.

[@varethedemon]

Except, that kind of scenario was covered in the video, illustrating the idea of privy in contracts... If Microsoft has no contact with you not to resell it, they can't particularly sue based on copyright or license, as you never agreed to a terms and service. If you install it, you agreed, thus are liable for breaking it. Since they never used it, Microsoft could only sue the original licensee, the employee who was licensed the software. It's not equivalent to recovery of a stolen watch, as the original owner did not agree to have their watch stolen. If they SOLD the watch with a contractual agreement to not resell the watch, then the purchaser did, then it would be more like that example. Stolen goods recovery is not comparable to license violation.

[@eekee6034]

In the past, Microsoft EULAs forbade resale. I haven't read Win2k's EULA.. I think it was Win98's which I read, and it clearly forbade resale. You buy it, you are not allowed to sell it. The computer software and ardware industries are really nasty places for megacorporations clawing for every scrap of money they can get, and Microsoft got to where they are in part because they were amongst the most ruthless of all.

[@Smilley85]

I always knew this Bored Monkey thing was a ripoff, but now that I learned that it's literally a random combination of 4 preset features - eyes, mouth, fur and clothes - it's even more stupid. This whole blockchain thing is just the ultimate culmination of "everything is worth exactly as much as people are willing to pay for it".

[@DoomsdayR3sistance]

I think it was Callum Upton that actually produced like a 10 line program that is capable of producing such images; as he wanted to prove that these NFTs really are minimum effort things that have no real scarcity at all.

[@TheNaldiin]

Blockchain technology could be useful for some boring tasks. Crypto and NFT are the least useful but most hyped applications.

[@MrImOriginal]

Art is "Worth exactly as much as people are willing to pay for it". Art is expensive because you have wealthy people who are willing to outspend other wealthy people for something that they are willing to spend lots of money on because they're wealthy.

[@Smilley85]

@@MrImOriginal Only NFT-s are not purchased for their art value. Especially the Bored Monkey NFT is a derivative piece of generated code - by design. The only thing unique about it is the combination of its 4 settings - one of tens of thousands of similar pictures. I don't even think any single building block has increased rarity - then at least you could say "I own the star-eyed, rainbow-fur, toothless grin, president suit monkey. That's all-rare, so I won BMYC."

[@kayohwai]

@@MrImOriginal Art is worth as much as it is because rich people can buy it and then arbitrarily reassign it's price as they need for tax avoidance and money laundering. Kind of like crypto.

[@maxwell9211]

When I was a kid, I convinced my brother that I can sell him the White House for $5, which I proceeded to do. Did I NFT?

[@653j521]

Was that after selling him the Brooklyn Bridge?

[@adrycough]

You must be the one who sold the Sun to that crazy lady

[@MCPicoli]

No, but just because of not having the "on the Blockchain" part...

[@herzkine]

Only if you scribbled him a picture of it

[@lawrencelopez9839]

did you wrote him a deed saying that he owns the White House but cannot enter, use, or live in it?

[@boiledelephant]

I can't recommend the Folding Ideas 'Line Goes Up' video highly enough, it's long af but absolutely fascinating.

[@achristiananarchist2509]

So I am a computer programmer and all this blockchain nonsense is really just a solution in search of a problem most of the time. The Alfa Romeo thing, for instance, is completely ridiculous. If they really wanted to have a service record follow a car, they don't need the blockchain to do it. It's much easier and much more maintainable to store that data on an AWS server somewhere and program the whole thing using conventional means. You could even just put a website on the internet somewhere and remind Alfa Romero drivers to request that third party mechanics go to the website and export their maintenance reports if they don't want to have their car serviced at the dealership. Doing such a relatively standard task on the blockchain just introduces unnecessary complexity that, as you mentioned, is probably intentional in order to lock you into the Alfa Romero ecosystem. Even if that was their goal though, maintaining service records in a more conventional way would still be cheaper, easier, more efficient, more maintainable, and more environmentally friendly than doing it on the blockchain, which makes me think that this decision is mostly about capturing hype. The thing people tend to like about the blockchain is it's decentralized and "open" nature. It's near impossible to make changes to and anyone who knows how to can inspect it so this triggers weird emotional reactions that associate it with some sort of abstract idea of "freedom" and "transparency" in the communities the stan crypto. But it has, from the beginning, been a resource intensive pyramid scheme searching for reasons to justify its existence. The blockchain isn't necessarily inherently worthless. If it were disentangled from the crypto bros there are niche situations where a well thought out blockchain solution may be an interesting idea, such as recording votes digitally in a publicly viewable, but unalterable way. Such ideas come with a rash of their own problems, however, and so long as the blockchain remains integrally tied with financial speculation and the fraudsters that gravitate to it, I think it's a good rule of thumb to distrust anything with the name "blockchain" attached to it by default, and I have, thus far, seen no application for the technology that has served any other purpose than an attempt to justified the continued existence of that technology.

[@RyanTosh]

This. I do think blockchain is a semi-viable way to do digital currency, but a semi-trusted central authority and some digital signatures give you basically the same benefits but without the environmental and usability disadvantages of a decentralized system. Same with voting really, I spent a few days once designing a protocol for online voting that used blockchain tumblers and stuff, which was fun, but in real life centralized semi-trusted authorities are just more practical. Hopefully by 2030 some other stupid buzzword will catch on.

[@Retrocaus]

@@RyanTosh polygon is carbon negative

[@NiftyKnot]

A notebook in the glovebox works just as well

[@Ugly_German_Truths]

Why not just put a pretty cheap Memory chip (EPROM style?) in the car itself and save the service history on THAT? Or as we are getting smaller and smaller with such storage... in the key like a "Memory card" and you can access it through the key or whatever. Nothing outside of the owner's access is needed.

[@Crazmuss]

>they don't need the blockchain to do it biggest problem of blockchain is that everithing usefull you can do on blockchain, you can do without blockchain >to store that data on an AWS server well, you think AWS is very reliable, then suddenly your country invade Ukraine with no reason at all and AWS kicks you out. Real story bro.

[@andrewjohnson6716]

Your work is brilliant. It’s rigorously factual yet accessible to laymen, while still being pop culture relevant and entertaining.

[@raptornomad1221]

Am finishing up law school, and I am *very* surprised that everyone who is excited about NFTs are professors and older people. All law students despise NFTs and always without fail openly express their disdain towards NFTs when instructors bring it up. I honestly think current practicing attorneys (or older people) are trying way too hard to make NFTs a thing because they see it as something to exploit for financial/clout gain, whereas the younger generation generally look at the fundamental characteristics of NFTs and properly dismiss them.

[@totally_not_a_bot]

It's also worth bringing up that exchanging blockchain currency for an NFT grants you the gift of a personal carbon footprint. Every transaction must be updated on every instance of the blockchain everywhere. That update includes various checks to verify the transaction and probably some things I don't care enough to learn about. Point is, it's computationally expensive, but that expense is so widely distributed that nobody notices. Assuming it takes a watt to process an NFT transaction, you're burning probably a couple megawatts by buying one.

[@UnreasonableOpinions]

That may be part of it, but the big thing is that you can't join in the grift party if you don't have money to burn. Professors and firm partners have money. Students don't, unless it's family money, and children of family money have usually had the fraud talk by now.

[@imightbebiased9311]

I've found this to be true. The people who are the most excited about this crap are like, "THIS IS WHAT THE YOUNG PEOPLE ARE INTO", and then all the young people I talk to are like, "None of us want this trash! Where the hell do you think we'd get the money to pay for it? Do you know what rent costs right now?!"

[@asdf09er]

@@totally_not_a_bot Do you have any idea the carbon footprint of a $20 bill?

[@aenorist2431]

Also (and simpler) Boomers are the generation of scams, of course they love a good scam. You get the willfull scammers and then you get the tech-clueless that buy any random buzzword.

[@nanorider426]

As a retired programmer I agree with LegalEagle. I have seen so much bad programming and so little rem or // or /* */, that is remarks to other programmers that have to go over your code, and that is inevitable. I have to agree: Programmers don't think of contingencies - or even know what is it. What I usually saw was: "Daaa, me programmer. I smart."

[@MrCmon113]

Program safety in theory and practice is a huge, prolific field of research, every programming language has a zoo of errors, there's a myriad of testing techniques and software packages for them, software engineering courses and universities put great emphasis on testing and edge cases. Automatically generated tests, fuzzing, invariants... Programmers know infinitely more about contingencies than lawyers.

[@addemac5353]

When I was doing non-technical research into NFTs, I found a paper that said NFTs would bring equity for artists. The authors probably have egg on their face now.

[@BUG25985]

if it's the one I am thinking of, that whole paper is hogwash

[@Zeromaus]

It will bring equity for artists, it's not just widely in use like that yet.

[@lomiification]

@@Zeromaus they *could* bring equity. They never will though. Somebody else can mint another copy that gets used exactly the same. The value and use of the NFT is unrelated to who drew the artwork, but who made the NFT

[@artstsym]

@@johnmaster420 All artists will be equally dead when the Earth spontaneously combusts.

[@KenBladehart]

>bring equity >instead bring bunch of stealing

[@PortfolioPL]

I like how the owner the server where the target of the NFT is can delete or change them any time and the buyer cannot do anything about. Who can take this seriously?

[@Stettafire]

Also that server is like any other, it could get DDoSd it could go down, there could be a power outage at the server room. Also you don't know where that server is or where that data is being held.

[@rolib6108]

@@Stettafire so basically ethereum could disappear anytime, just like btc? This is what iv been saying for years

[@sorryifoldcomment8596]

@@rolib6108 Yeah, at the end of the day, the only money any of us truly have is the physical cash and gold/silver/etc. in our possession. Everything else is just numbers on a computer. At least online dollars do have a one to one to physical cash, though. Cryptocurrency though? Well, there's a reason every single person who brags about "making money" from crypto...sold that crypto for actual dollars. I don't know how more people in crypto aren't panicking about this. The idea that it could replace actual currency is ridiculous. It's fake, with no real world representation. It could all disappear tomorrow!

[@adrycough]

@@rolib6108 and so could your bank's servers

[@angelkilier]

@@adrycough Say the bank takes down their server and never intend to bring it back online. Your money is still there and they can't deny your right to those. If they decide to just eat your money, the bank would be hold liable and worst case scenario you have insurance covering it up if the bank goes out of business. The monkeys on the other hand, you can't do anything about it if the server goes down. The NFT you bought is just a link. What the link links to is not contracted and not protected what so ever. You literally bought NOTHING.

[@aircraftcarrierwo-class]

I never liked the idea of "Digital Scarcity". Only capitalism could look at something that is functionally infinite and then try to find a way to make it scarce so they can sell it.

[@nielsbishere]

Ahhhh so like diamonds and a lot of other resources

[@fellinuxvi3541]

@@nielsbishere Diamonds are not as scarce as advertised (or didn't use to be), but they're not functionally infinite lol

[@wta1518]

@@fellinuxvi3541 No, but they can be made in labs at large scale fairly cheaply.

[@fellinuxvi3541]

@@wta1518 The difference between that and the internet is still nearly infinite.

[@kennethkho7165]

scarcity has always been the backbone of the art industry. the reason that picasso paintings are expensive is because of picasso's celebrity status and that he only painted a finite number of paintings. digital art is also kinda similar, if jack dorsey mint his first tweet as nft, it would be seen as the only legitimate nft and therefore scarcity + legitimacy, and people find security not because of the legal system but because of blockchain. but the blockchain is kinda pointless because we already have real intellectual property which is better, and arguably you should just trust the government on the simple matter of art.

[@jhosioja]

I've read about that monkey selfie thing, and it's a bit of a shame the photographer lost, because he'd been going to see those monkeys several times, trying to get them used to him, having them see him operate the cameras and leaving them out, basically trying to maximise the chance they'd do something with them. Sure, the monkey took the shot, but he created the circumstances for it to happen, and then he started to lose income because the photos were used without license and the legal proceedings ran him dry. I can't say if the court decided correctly or not, but it's kind of misleading whenever the situation is painted as the photographer just being greedy trying to capitalise on the lucky shots.

[@jamiefrontiera1671]

its also a shame because he went bankrupt fighting the case, first fighting the person who sold photographs without his permission where he lost, and then when peta sued him, he won against peta, in fighting them is when he went bankrupt on legal fees to fight them

[@ng.tr.s.p.1254]

Well, at least the silver lining is that it created a precedence so cryptobros can't enforce copyright on procedurally generated images.

[@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721]

A lot of the time, that's a big problem with common law. When the law is based on a legal precedent, it's bad for the person who's unlucky enough to be the precedent.

[@loke6664]

Yeah, they should at least split the rights, giving half to the photographer and half to the local wildlife foundation or something similar.

[@RWAsur]

Then be happy for the experience? He still did what he did, that moment exists forever. I do like that artists can be paid for their work, but he can still be paid for his work. He can do talks on how he achieved this, he can make signed prints which the signature is licensed as he is the one to train the monkies, provide the camera, and sign the work, etc. I wouldn't feel so bad for him, first strikes of law always have "one side" losing and his lost side isn't the dead end to his revenue you make it sound like it is. He can also go on to collect revenue through stuff like Patreon for him to continue his work, there are lots of people in the world who would pay him just for the opportunity to see the next shot first or get access to him, the guy who *did* achieve this moment. If he lost the license for anyone to just share and show the image and didn't capitalize on the opportunity from the news from the court case or the photo itself, then that is his own lost opportunity.

[@SixofQueens]

Anybody who's seen Line Goes Up really has to watch this. So many of the underpinning philosophies that are touted by the NFT cult which are presented in that documentary as shaky at best are legally ripped apart here. It's glorious. Edit: This really illustrates a real world example of a classic, fundamental premise in any kind of engineering (I take this as an offshoot of computer/digital engineering), that your idea doesn't exist in a vacuum. NFTs were created by people who had zero to limited understanding of all of the areas of law and regulation that their creation would interact with, and so made assumptions and promises backed by nothing. Tech bros thinking that they know better.

[@ng.tr.s.p.1254]

And it sucks that the tech bros get rewarded for their megalomania while others suffer.

[@charlottefrancescakoch]

One major takeaway I got from Line Goes Up is that so many people involved seriously misunderstand copyright and intellectual property law -- or they just don't care. It was pretty cool to see the Leagle Eagle here expand upon that

[@Silvarret]

I think libertarian techbros ignore and avoid laws and regulations on purpose, if anything.

[@Tao_Tology]

"Tech bros thinking they know better". Equally: 'already rich folks finding a new "thing" based on not much real value at all.....to sell off for a quick buck'

[@RaptieFeathers]

I love the argument of, "B-b-but NFTs will finally let digital artists make money from their work!!!" _laughs in furry artist_

[@fountgarde]

Ikr, like we’ve been doing all of our commissions pro-bono this whole time.

[@ProfessionalKonigSimp]

Which is fine for furry artists but there’s a lot of small artist doing other stuff trying to make money but can’t. I really don’t think NFTs and crypto are the way to go for artists, the real roots to why artists struggle to make money is supply/demand and the societal attitudes towards artists, and that stuff that isn’t changing any time soon.

[@Mernom]

@@ProfessionalKonigSimp commission art is something that anyone can do, not only furry artists. The question is if you can get people to want to commission it from you, which basically translates 1 to 1 to the NFT market as well (you need to make an NFT that people WANT to buy, without the benefit of it being part of a known and hyped collection)

[@wanderingsoul881]

Are people with NFT brainrot just completely unaware that Art Commissions exist?

[@thehoodedteddy1335]

@@wanderingsoul881 my thoughts exactly

[@lolafendetti970]

The visual components of this explanation during Mould's section was AMAZING and really helpful in understanding all this.

[@Keenath]

"Contract" has a special meaning the computing world. It's a way to define how a piece of software expects to interact with other pieces of software. It's not a legal document, just a definition of what kinds of behaviors your software is "agreeing" to implement. Failing to fulfil the contract just means your code won't compile; the system says "no, you made a mistake, go fix it and try again". I feel like 'smart contracts' are closer to that meaning of the term than the legal sense and tricking people into thinking they're enforceable by law.

[@autohmae]

I think it would be helpful to add a term: "Design by contract" for those who want to look into it some more. And I agree, I feel like people are conflating the the legal and computing term in a legally very confusing way. Lots of people not in the computing industry make assumption just based on those terms. And those doing the marketing, sales, etc. for smart contract products are thus usually doing the same.

[@devforfun5618]

@@autohmae well, i do understable the program part and didn't realize they called it contracts because of the design, they marketed it so well as contracts that i just assumed smart contract just meant digital contract like the ones you click agree when you use a website for the first time, i thought the smart part was because you could transfer the ownership of the contract during a transaction

[@anyazendyajoy3388]

Yeah smart contracts aren't real contracts at all. And with NFTs, you are essentially buying JPEGs & the link to a smart contract... most NFTs don't even have legal business entities tied to any of their promises or anything... its extremely sketchy, essentially they promise anything for marketing & hype & then dump the people that gave them money due to the promises.

[@LAG09]

As a software engineer by trade (master's in Computer Engineering) I can tell you that we do not use the term "contract" to describe behavior between pieces of software. We have APIs, ABIs, XSS and protocols, but not "contracts" as those have a clear spoken language definition as a legal document. You're either lying or have been lied to.

[@Keenath]

​@@LAG09 Cool, I've been a professional programmer for 20-odd years. Since you're a professional with a master's degree, I'm sure you're familiar with the concept of an interface in C#. Well, this is right off Microsoft's C# reference page on the topic of interfaces: "An interface defines a contract. Any class or struct that implements that contract must provide an implementation of the members defined in the interface." WCF practically revolves around contracts. Heck, .NET even has an IContract interface that defines how a contract should be built. You can also look up the phrase "Design by contract" for a more information. I'm sorry you've never run into the term, but I don't appreciate the accusations.

[@toaolisi761]

Wouldn't NFTs kind of become worthless if something happened to the source? Like if an NFT is a form of hyperlink and the website/server/marketplace or whatever closed down, wouldn't people be left with just a broken link.

[@sameash3153]

lots of scam NFTs replace the file with some troll picture like a rug or rick astley after the purchase is done

[@keltzar1]

That is currently happening to many of them.

[@AudoricArt]

Yup! it's called link rot and it's one of the many flaws with NFTs

[@yutro213]

Ubisoft Quartz is a good example of this.

[@DaraelDraconis]

There is theoretically a way to mitigate this - in the section from Steve Mould, this is why he mentioned IPFS, which is a way of storing data that doesn't require any particular person to keep the link alive… but even IPFS can lose data if nobody explicitly chooses to hold onto it and nobody accesses it directly often enough. So, y'know. It's a bandage, not a cure. But it does exist.

[@trickvro]

It's just like those "name a star" schemes, but tech-bro-ified.

[@KevinWeatherwalks]

Bro, these stars are on a chain of blocks tho. It's decentralized which means it's good. /s

[@Mellowbaton]

This is surprisingly rigorous, whenever I talk about smart contract concepts to other people I have to spend most of my time on super basic stuff. This has been helpful to me as a developer, thanks 👍

[@Mobin92]

Yeah it's funny how just a legal, real-world view of it can point out all the flaws of NFTs. You don't even need to get technical, it's purely the practical applications that are complete nonsense to begin with.

[@fatherWolt]

As someone on the tech side of things, NFTs blockchain and whatever else falls under the general umbrella are solutions looking for a problem. Blockchain tech is a very hacky solution to a problem nobody was having.

[@jgalvan09]

Really no body has the issue of opening a bank account ?? And private Institutions companies are basically getting hacked and I don’t known saying that your date is being late but yeah apparently there’s no issue right it’s not saving any issue at all and yet you know the tech savvy part about. holy crap sounds like you’re full of it

[@4815162342sbf]

You must work at a bank

[@crashandsideburns]

I absolutely agree. I think that NFTs (and crypto in general) are some of the best examples of the solutionistic tendencies in tech.

[@tmage23]

One could argue that the problem cryptocurrency is trying to solve is that of bad behavior of the global banking systems (cf the housing bubble bursting in 2008) affecting economies globally but I agree that it's not a very good solution because it doesn't implement any controls to prevent the same thing from happening to crypto.

[@technoturnovers7072]

The blockchain is basically only good for cryptocurrency and nothing else, because a cryptocurrency doesn't rely on outside information, unlike NFTs which point to a copiable, dropbox hosted PNG file

[@moarjank]

A note on ipfs files changing: they can't. But they _can_ disappear. How can't they change? The url itself is a checksum of the image. It's impossible to change the content of the url without also changing the url on ipfs. The url isn't representing a location, it's representing a summarization of the data requested. (More accurately it's a digital fingerprint). It's like going to the library and asking for that one book with a lion on the cover where British siblings defeat an ice queen. A standard url might be more like "could I get a copy of _The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe_ by C.S. Lewis?" That doesn't make IPFS links inside of NFTs any less problematic, however. A file only remains present on the ipfs network so long as someone chooses to keep it "pinned" or so long as it stays within a cache - which eventually will be emptied. Files disappear off of IPFS all of the time. (said as a regular IPFS user)summarizationsummarization

[@mal_dun]

There is just a problem with your claim: A checksum is a hash and by definition a hash function is not necessarily unique (an injective mapping). True it's hard to falsify checksums, but there are ways to do it and some of them had dire consequences for security already.

[@Gladiva19]

The url IS a location, it just HAPPENS to be a summary too

[@TruthNerds]

​@@mal_dun Right, but IPFS generally uses SHA-256 (i.e. SHA-2 with 256 bit hash length) and there are as of today no feasible collision attacks on SHA-2, so the likelihood of a collision is minuscule. Some well known cryptographic hash functions that have been compromised are MD5 and SHA-1. Collisions have been demonstrated for both.

[@markhaus]

For NFTs to be “the next big thing” they need to actually solve a big problem that exists. No one seems to actually know what that is other than giving conmen an easy platform to part fools with their money. Sorry but an immutable database isn’t that interesting a problem other than the computer science theory behind it. The practical applications that can lead to just aren’t that interesting and has a whole host of problems that preexisting technologies like signatures or distributed key hosts don’t have

[@TAP7a]

It was also already a solved problem without using blockchain tech

[@DaremKurosaki]

@@TAP7a The only use I've been able to figure that NFTs are actually useful for (and some other existing system/tech would not be), would be in some sort of theoretical decentralized internet replacement that uses NFTs and other cryptographic-key based systems to determine ownership of digital items/sites/etc. In other words: It would be useful in a system that requires you use NFTs.

[@jessegoonerage3999]

The problem is scammers not having enough money.

[@tiffyw92]

@@DaremKurosaki In other, other words, it's a feature of tech that became a bug, rather than the other way around.

[@DannyboyO1]

I was enjoying, in a lot of 2021, arguing with NFTers on twitter. They are absolutely all proof of late-stage bigger-idiot sales strategy. They'd try to argue the case for their "tech" (it's software. It doesn't magically mature with time, especially when it cannot be edited) with the same buzzwords that fooled them. And then I would google the words and explain what they meant. It never got old.

[@realfakesockpuppet]

Just for the record, I have never offered an NFT nor have I been involved in any NFT transactions.

[@Nick12_45]

2022 was a year huh...

[@shortcake_sweetie]

It was the most year ever.

[@Vsmovies100]

From Steve's explanation, I can only imagine that NFTs are the equivalent of museums selling the signs with the names of art pieces

[@yuki97kira]

What makes me understand it is buying a grocery receipt and youre going around telling people you got the groceries for the week

[@briannelson27]

yes, and then anybody else can sell another nameplate on it. SO DUMB!

[@84gssteve]

Holy Sh*t, am I glad to be old! While all this stuff is fascinating to learn about and understand a bit more, I am infinitely grateful that I grew up before the internet and its effect on young people's financial responsibility and spending/saving habits. They say, "a fool and his money are easily parted" , but this stuff seems complex enough that you need to be far smarter than a step above the average fool, to keep from being taken. With the last couple generations of people who grew up with and are comfortable (but not experts) on electronic transactions, and you've got a huge portion of the population that is susceptible to this form of risky purchasing.

[@glarynth]

That's a good point, the technological angle adds a lot of razzmatazz to what would otherwise be a more easily spotted scam.

[@Terra_Lopez]

For me, the bottom line for any investment is: Does it have inherent value? Property, for example has inherent value (everyone needs a place to live, and we need space to grow food, and this doesn't change much), whereas NFT's don't really have any inherent value. If the value of something relies on a 'greater fool', and not its inherent value, I don't think it's a good investment. But I'm no investor.

[@annwilliams6438]

… especially when it is pushed by some ridiculous ‘influencer’ whose main aim seems to be to get money out of gullible followers…

[@clydecraft5642]

in reality all you have to ask is "what does it do for me" and if they stutter or start doubling down on how much it can save me, dont believe it

[@keithmarshall4350]

Let's be real before this it was Enron or any other number of companies where claims were made about its inherent value that were simply untrue. Lots of older people fell for bad investments based on lies before the most recent young generation came around.

[@davidgoldstein729]

And here's the weird thing... In a "walled garden" like NBA Top Shots, there's no need for NFTs to be used. Ownership records and transaction history can be held by the servers which host the "walled garden" because ownership claims have no context anywhere else. NFTs only become a "necessary" mechanism to enable transactions, and claims on those transactions, to happen "in the wild", i.e. outside the "walled garden". Using them in a "walled garden" setting is effectively like renting a garage-sized POD to store a coffee cup in your office's parking garage between uses.

[@Jkjoannaki]

PETA WENT TO COURT TO DEFEND A MONKEYS PICTURE COPYRIGHT... LITERALLY. Wtf why did I just learn about that, this is amazing Also, I'm so sad the monkey didn't get the chance to testify

[@aaronburkeen6409]

I know right. I have been seeing that picture floating around for awhile now. I never knew it actually had a story behind it.

[@egoalter1276]

Amd was the chimpanzee recognized as a natural person under law? Becazse that opens a lot of cans of worms.

[@TheJustinJ]

PETAs mission is to eradicate human rights because humans aren't animals and we did not evolve here we are aliens sent by god.

[@whensomethingcriesagain]

​@egoalter1276 It was not. It was declared that animals cannot hold copyright, only humans can

[@dontmisunderstand6041]

To be fair, the case in itself shows the glaring flaw with the notion of copyright. Notably, the notion of ownership of an abstract concept based on the act of creativity falls apart under rather lax scrutiny. They escaped having to reckon with those flaws in that case with an off-handed dismissal of non-humans having rights at all, but imagine for a second that the situation is slightly different. Imagine you ask someone to take a photo of you. Who owns the copyright of that photo? Any collaborative effort with no pre-set hierarchy or agreement, who owns that?

[@TheSpearkan]

The second I heard of NFTs I though "this is mainly going to be used for money laundering"

[@chartle1]

Just posted this same thought. 👍

[@morganrobinson8042]

Quite a bit like the art market in that one way, really.

[@joebrownstone6746]

@@morganrobinson8042 It really is just fine art market “the sequel”-_-.

[@JewTube001]

@@morganrobinson8042 it's exactly the same. the problem stems from the subjective value of art. NFTs simply just digitize the entire process.

[@chernobyl169]

"Innovation so mundane.." I'm a programmer and I've always called this "Rube Goldberg Design". The programmer was so busy thinking about whether they could, they never stopped to evaluate whether they should. It always manifests in a complex system that can't be easily reconciled with normal human behavior. For example, absurd restrictions on passwords coupled with enforced regular password changes. Systems like that are less secure because users are forced to use difficult-to-remember passwords which radically increases the risk of passwords being stored unsafely. Cryptocurrency, on the balance, runs afoul of this. Bitcoin is vulnerable to loss via user error. NFTs offer few perks above traditional IP law, but are a magnitude more difficult to understand and use. Blockchains create artificial security through artificial consumption of real, genuinely scarce, resources. The price of decentralization is bloat, and the benefits are questionable at best.

[@StabbyTheSkaven]

thats the the thing. this all feels to me like a bunch of programmers (no insult to you) flexing what a complicated, intrikat, mindblowing system they can come up with that basically does the same as the things we already had but worse because it takes ages, solves nonexistent problems and introduces new ones/ones that had already been solved for the old system but cant be yet for the new one. its like they want to say: look at my nightmarish rube goldberg machine, it is objectively worse then whatever it replaces but so pretty. like they are building a new type of doorbell but this time it takes 8 hours between button press and ringtone, it is absolutely protected against meteorite strikes but also has a backdoor that allows me to open the door its connected to without the key and all that because it sounds cooler on paper.

[@thebravesirrobin.]

I'm currently learning programming. I've taken very much to the "I'll cross that bridge when I get to it" attitude towards *potential* problems in code I've written. Myself and my super smart classmates have been very guilty of over-designing code (and it's in some of our assignments unfortunately). Simplicity is just a better approach to problem-solving, and you should never underestimate the 2nd-order effects of an unnecessary feature.

[@schemage2210]

Three points. A) Bitcoin is not the only type of currency vulnerable to user error. I could be given a cheque for a billion dollars which I put in my pocket, forget that it's there and proceed to wash said pants. And we all know how likely a piece of paper is to survive a washing machine cycle. I could withdraw ten grand, place it in my wallet but then proceed to loose my wallet on a busy street. By the time I realize, and even if I get that wallet back, the cash will be gone!! User error is user error and not confined to any one medium, let's not pretend crypto is at fault here. B) perhaps the real problem is your narrow view. "Traditional IP laws", well laws can change, and some desperately need to to keep up with the changing world. "Magnitudes more difficult to understand and use", yeah so is any piece of alpha staged software (or product in general). But the user experience, and user interface can evolve. Undoubtedly to the point where paying via Bitcoin is no more difficult than using a credit card. C) decentralized nature of the block chain leads to complete data security with limitless redundant copies. Last I heard that was a prised value in terms of data backups.

[@thebigdawgj]

I've never liked that line, even in Jurassic Park. OBVIOUSLY, if you can, you should.

[@MurphyIsMyLastName]

Re: "Systems like that are less secure because users are forced to use difficult-to-remember passwords which radically increases the risk of passwords being stored unsafely." Curious how this is the case--would you mind linking me to something expanding on this?

[@stevenflebbe]

This is the first time I've ever heard of NBA Top Shots, and I've never heard of anything so ridiculous in my life. And the fact that there are people who actually pay money to say they own some little slice of video from some basketball game, is quite simply beyond my comprehension. This all goes to prove the second line of the quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln: "You can fool some of the people all of the time."

[@wta1518]

You don't even get to own it, you get a license to use it when the NBA decides that you can.

[@stevenflebbe]

@@wta1518 Really? I don't know if that makes it more sad or just hilarious.

[@lukerinderknecht2982]

I mean, I guess I could understand why a fan would want a clip of their favourite player, kind of like how people collect sports cards, but I have no idea why someone would pay for something like at 22:23 in the video.

[@nofreeshows]

This isn't unlike trading cards and that market is pretty significant. There are people that find utility in it--you don't necessarily have to agree with it or understand it. There are some ridiculous prices with trading cards as well.

[@stevenflebbe]

@@nofreeshows I would agree on the ridiculous pricing on some of the trading cards, but at least there, you have a real, physical thing...not just a line of code that may link eventually to a video clip.

[@agdevoq]

NFTs could've been plain old rows in a relational database, hosted by the central authority "minting" them. No reason to register them in an immutable ledger if they don't legally bind the minter. If you need to trust the minter in the first place, you might as well trust its centralized server. Furthermore, the NFT is usually just an hyperlink which points to the central server anyway. "Oh, wait, marketing department said blockchain is cool! Let's do that blockchain thing!"

[@RyanTosh]

NFTs, and all of blockchain in general really, are the most egregious instance of a buzzword I've ever come across. Just a sheet of paper you and a bunch of other people can write stuff on, that ususally works, and usually doesn't require any trusted authorities (unless you want it to be practical), and yet if you just listened to news stories and stuff you'd think they're this once-in-a-century innovation that's going to eliminate banks, cure cancer, allow secure computerized voting, make the law enforce itself, and make it impossible to copy a digital resource. Blockchain is a halfway viable way to do decentralized currency, and basically nothing else, as far as I can tell.

[@Pigen_]

I thought I was going crazy with this idea, why is noone really addressing this ??? XD

[@TheArchimedesEffect]

I don't think you're seeing the real innovation here. It's not about ledgers and minting. It's about decentralization. Not having to ask for permission from middle men, not having to convince sometime you're trustworthy, or wait until your credit is approved by a bank, etc. These are the nascent stages of a giant technological and cultural shift.

[@agdevoq]

@@TheArchimedesEffect The problem is not in the "middle", it's in the end. Why do you care so much about being independent from a "middle man", if you ultimately depend on an "end man" to turn your token into something actually valuable? It all boils down to a "bigger fool scheme", in which you leverage the unregulated nature of the "middle steps" to make a profit, hoping to sell before the scheme eventually collapses.

[@bryanjimenez1025]

@@agdevoq It's just semantics. The "middle men" many times are simply offshoots of the "end man", essentially one and the same. This is not unique to crypto. Today's fiat system is no different, populations crossing their fingers hoping that their circulating promissory notes are substantiated before its inevitable devaluation.

[@beckhamforbes3066]

Although< I have interests in global economics I don't watch the news anymore... I have enough FUD. Thanks for this news and offering your insight on how to navigate during unfortunate times/events like this. You're right about keeping level headed when investing so that's why I think it's important to limit the amount of fear, uncertainty, and doubt we consume. I don't watch the media but the news that you present has enough to know issues going on without riding the emotional rollercoaster if I were to watch the news everyday. Now I buy and just trade long term more than ever, I have made over 14btc from day trading with Vinod Kuria Signal in few weeks, would advise y'all to trade your asset rather than hold for a future you aren't sure about.

[@stanley4318]

Simple step-by-step process, excellent communication and response times. The service was extremely streamlined and friendly throughout. Would recommend them to anyone give Vin a reply

[@sabastain538]

The tradlng s!gnal i have been receiving from him is always 90% accurate

[@williamsjones2375]

What's his TELE`GRAM.S... Asking ?

[@beckhamforbes3066]

Vinkurian

[@williamsjones2375]

Thanks for dropping this information, I just sent him a detailed message on tele

[@nawarelsabaa]

I love that both you and Steve shouted out "Line goes up". It is probably one the most comprehensive videos about a subject I have ever seen. Your (you and Steve) additional insights is sure to make a very complete picture.

[@hiten_style]

>It is probably one the most comprehensive videos about a subject I have ever seen. I would like to introduce you to a man named Adum who has some opinions about The Lion King (2019)

[@nawarelsabaa]

@@hiten_style Might check that out. I have some very boring shifts coming up 🤣

[@kyrie4451]

Take notes kids, this will be the crazy hypothetical question in the next contract law exam.

[@DemocracyOfficer289]

i still fondly remember telling someone I saved their nft into my google drive and they went off the deep end

[@redpandamurphy]

I think the best way I can describe what an NFT is is that it's like a receipt for a sports game (baseball for example). You aren't buying the ticket, you are buying a thing that proves that the ticket exists. It can't be used to go to the match and therefore has no real value except for the fact that it can be an expense on your bank account.

[@chuckybang]

You obviously don't know much about NFTs

[@Zeromaus]

Yeah you don't understand NFTs, please don't describe it like that.

[@fugyfruit]

That's a great explanation

[@M50A1]

@@Zeromaus Cope

[@lomiification]

This suggests theyre much more benign than they are. They can also empty your bank account when you try to give one away, for instance

[@jonathanh4443]

A quick FYI. The album artwork is usually a work for hire and copywritten as art. Thus making an NFT out of album artwork may not violate the musical copywrite, but it definitely violates the copywrite of the artwork. The owner of these different copywrites is usually the same as in most cases it's a work for hire.

[@avsystem3142]

"Work for hire" is a red herring. It has nothing to do with whether a work of creative expression can be copyrighted. Only the creator of the work may copyright it. To whom the copyright may be assigned is a different matter. Depending on the circumstances and any contract that may exist, a copyright to the work may be retained by the creator or it may be assigned to the entity for whom the work was created for hire. The same concepts applies to patents. On my first day of employment with a company I was required a a condition of employment to sign a release that assigned the rights to any patent I might create to the employer. In fact, I did create two patented inventions while working there. I am named on the patents as the inventor, but the assignee of the patents is the corporation I worked for at the time. One of the patents was worth tens of millions of dollars to the company but the only compensation I received for it, other than my salary, was a check for $100, a brass plaque of the first page of the patent document, and a picture of me shaking hands with the CEO.

[@HVolnWhatnow]

Eehhhnnnn… Hitpiece thought the same thing, or pretended to, when they used their Spotify contacts to scrape album art from tons of artists and made the cover art NFTS without the artists’ consent. I knew a few bands caught up that and it’s going to get ugly.

[@JUnit41484]

Watching this 2 years later, it's wild how quickly everyone saw NFTs for the scam that they were. Completely out of the zeitgeist at this point.

[@FoxMacLeod2501]

I heard John Cena turned out to have been too big for the Ford - imagine that! He barely fits between the drivers' seat, pedals, and steering wheel, but squeezing through the door opening was pretty much the deal-breaker... for a car he was, originally, really excited about owning. Ford was unwilling to work with him on the issue, as far as making an exception for him to sell it, not with the intent to flip it, but because of the fact he couldn't use the car like he'd hoped. I think at that point, if he did make a profit, it was to offset the costs associated with Ford suing him.

[@Ragnarok540]

Having the money to get one of these cars then not being able to fit into it... That's sad.

[@tullochgorum6323]

John Cena must be a moron because the car is famously small, being based on a specialised track car with a low profile to minimise drag. Even I know that, and I'm not even interested in cars. Ford must have known that too - if they'd pointed it out to him they'd have spared themselves the expense of litigation.

[@layalibintmona]

Is there some reason he wouldn't have taken one for a test drive, to figure out the fit issues prior to purchase?

[@silferdeath]

You do know if that was the case he just could have refunded the car to Ford? Then he would have gotten back all the money he spent on the car. The contract was against John Cena making a huge profit because he sold a car that was owned by him within 2 years of purchase. He could have stored the car in his garage and wait 2 years and a day to sell the car. He didn't because he wanted a quick buck.

[@h8GW]

@silferdeath Yeah, John Cena's a dick. I hope this statement carries extra impact, coming from a Chinese-American, that I believe he learned Mandarin for teh moneys.

[@bestcreations4703]

"Programmers are really really bad at planning for contingencies" Never before have I been so offended by something I agree 100% with. My code would like to have a word with you... once I untangle everything and find out what my code actually is.