But the museum gets to control what happens to the ***work itself***: eg which exhibitions it's included in at the museum, and whether it gets loaned to a certain show at another institution. It's the museum's physical, if not intellectual, property.
The fact that the artist, after selling a work with an NFT, gets to sell the work again (eg off chain, as an edition) means that the artist has retained ownership in every sense of the term--not just controlling the IP, but in a way still possessing the work itself. (3/)
As @habitual_truant pointed out--this is kinda cool! Artist gets even more control over their work, can monetize it again, etc. But for the collector: you "own" literally nothing. You control literally nothing. Except the NFT. I know, I know, we all knew this. But still. (4/)
We knew this was true in terms of storage--you don't possess the file, you possess an NFT that points to a JSON that points to IPFS blaaaerrgh. BUT it ***also appears to be true in the abstract too***. You have no claim to the work, on any level--even symbolic.
tl;dr: If someone can sell a work I supposedly "own"--not an "edition" of the work, but the ***actual work***--I don't own it. (But I own an NFT, which...I get means something, to some people! But for the rest of us, we should understand when we bought it that we have no rights.)
(IF that is indeed the case, some platforms are better about enumerating your rights as a collector, so I'm not talking about ALL, just the ones I was looking at today. @FeralFile you're cool)
Thinking about all of this again: there is a difference between “anybody can see or download this work, but I’m the only one who owns it” and “many people can also own this same work that I own.” So if I’m reading these terms correctly...”owning” an NFT means what, exactly?
I mean, they do literally say you don’t own the work. So I guess you are basically just kinda licensing it, in very limited way? Ugh this is all such a mess.
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“These numbers do not show the democratization of wealth thanks to a technological revolution. They show an acutely miniscule number of artists making a vast amount of wealth off a small number of sales while the majority of artists are being sold a dream of immense profit...”
...Hiding this information is manipulative, predatory, and harmful, and these NFT sites have a responsibility to surface all this information transparently. Not a single one has.”
“Business is whatever you want it to be, and whatever terms you agree to. There are plenty of other digital art marketplaces that don’t charge this amount of fees. There are business models that directly pay digital artists prices that they set themselves, like commissions...”
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.
I'm enraged: A company called @globalartmuseum has begun minting NFTs of works in the @rijksmuseum collection. They claim "Any revenue derived from sales or rental will be shared with the museum" to help them during the COVID. How? Does the museum know about this??
The use the title "The Rijksmuseum Collection" and the website link at the bottom here goes to the Rijksmuseum website. I would love to know if the @rijksmuseum knows about this.
On December 22, 1995, I was diagnosed with Type 1 (aka juvenile) diabetes. I was 12 years old.
But today, I don’t want to talk about how I’m diabetic.
I want to talk about how I’m disabled.
Until now, I have never identified that way. Even though I’ve always known that I am legally disabled (according to the federal government), I never claimed disability as an identity.
Despite the endless hardships and limitations (and brushes with sudden death), I didn’t feel “entitled” to it: I’m not “really” disabled, I told myself—not like someone who uses a mobility aid, or who is blind or deaf.