Thread by @TinaRiversRyan

Now that I've had some more time to stew on this, let me try to do a better job of explaining this particular point.

When an artist sells an artwork to a museum, they retain copyright to the image, which means they can dictate how the work is reproduced. (1/)

https://twitter.com/TinaRiversRyan/status/1374822835806425097

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.