Deltasquid posted:

So, looking at NFT's from an intellectual property law perspective, one could argue that NFT's are a way to prove ownership of intellectual property over an artwork.

For example, let's say you're a digital artist selling smut commissions online. Under a lot of legal systems, the artist keeps the intellectual property rights (eg they can stop unauthorized third parties from altering the image, profiting off of it, resharing it etC. without their permission) but you can legally "sell" the intellectual property rights (for example, the person commissioning the art piece) so they can use it for whatever they feel like (eg, using it on their company website, for advertising, etc.) One of the issues in litigation is the burden of proof: it's not too problematic in fight between parties A and B themselves (the purchaser can point to the contract by which they bought the IP) but things get messier when, for example, the original artist (or an agent claiming to represent them) tries to get a third party (eg a hosting website) to remove content that was allegedly uploaded without permission. The third party has no real way of knowing who sold their IP to whom.

My understanding is that NFT's could be used as a public registry to prove that ownership has been transferred from party A to party B, so that when party B goes to court they can point at an NFT (similar to how you can go to a notary and prove, on the basis of a public registry, that you own a piece of real estate or a security on some assets or whatever)

However my understanding is also that, in practice, the NFTs you can buy online are not actually sold alongside the intellectual property rights, so the artist keeps the rights to do as they please with the image?

I feel like theoretically NFTs linked to images could be used in an interesting way (increase legal certainty in fringe cases which might be useful like with copyright litigation and proving who is owner of an image) but techbros aren't actually doing that?