Thread by @TinaRiversRyan

You guys. YOU GUYS. We (@ReginaHarsanyi @habitual_truant @KelaniNichole) sat down and read the legal terms and conditions of a very popular NFT platform, and our minds are blown. (1/)

When you buy an NFT from them, ***you are not buying the work.*** Not even a little bit. You have no rights to it. The artist could still turn around and sell it to someone else (as long as they don't mint it). You really are just buying the NFT. (2/)

We were trying to figure out if a museum could borrow the work from the person who bought the NFT. The answer is no. And not because the rights aren't granted. It's because you don't actually own the work. At all.

Think that sounds bad? IT GETS WORSE. You know who DOES own the work?

The platform. (4/)

The platform reserves all rights to use the work however it needs to--including sublicensing it (!!!). I'm not a lawyer, but this sounds a lot to me like the platform could sell the work. But you, the buyer of the NFT, can't. Because you don't own it. Even a little bit. (5/)

Okay, I'm being slightly hyperbolic. They're not claiming "ownership," just certain "rights." But you know who DOESN'T get those same rights? The buyer of the NFT. (6/)

So basically, the buyer of the NFT and the artist who made the NFT ***are paying the platform a commission for them to acquire the rights to the work.***

By "them," I mean platform. You're paying the platform for the platform to get rights to the work that the artist made. I'm really bad at this numbering thing btw, sorry. That was (7/). This is (8/).

This means that ultimately, the buyer of the NFT isn't a collector at all. You have collected nothing (as collecting something would mean acquiring some rights, if not actually also possession). Basically the artist selling NFTs is kinda issuing bonds of themselves. (9/)

First of all--Duchamp FTW, again (Monte Carlo Bond, go look it up if you don't know it). Second of all--WHY NOT JUST BE TRANSPARENT ABOUT THIS??? As @habitual_truant said, gamers love paying other gamers to game. Maybe art lovers can love paying artists to art. (10/)

In this light, NFT platforms aren't competing with the auction house or gallery--they're competing with Patreon. (end, I think)

Dropping this further clarification in here in case it helps people catch this:

https://twitter.com/TinaRiversRyan/status/1374912502295883782?s=20