I just read a great post from two months ago, about copyright and NFTs. It's a bit dated, already, but the comment thread is thoughtful and interesting.
https://hive.blog/hive-181964/@jarvie/nft-art-is-useless--unless-it-comes-with-rights-or-utility
My gut feeling is that copyright assignment, or licensing, is a different application. I'll talk about this in a different post, but I think there's some potential here.
What caught my eye was a post by @richardfyates, who went contrarian, and said he bought NFTs to support the artists. I'd been thinking about this the past few weeks, so I'll share those ideas.
Art Patronage
NFT art isn't physical art.
It's hard to prevent copying pixels on the web, because we can all screenshot anything and save it to our personal archives. We can record the sound output of any song we can play, and save it.
Conversely, it's difficult to copy physical art. Hell, it's difficult to preserve the physical art from damage from water, sunlight, pollution, and humidity. It's difficult to keep track of the location of the art if you have a lot of art; you can't copy it if you can't find it!
What's the point, anyway? Nobody else knows about the artwork, unless someone photographed it, and got it into some art book or catalog.
While an NFT token isn't fungible, and ownership of the token is exclusive. Keeping a digital file exclusive is virtually impossible.
The entirety of popularity on the Internet, in Social Media, is based around this fact: copying is inherent, and sharing is inherent, to these media. NFTs won't change that.
So, what do you get from purchasing an NFT? Here's my pulled-it-out-my-ass theory.
- You get to show that you paid for it, and supported the artist.
- You get to show that you paid for it early. If you sell it, you are getting some evidence that someone else not only shares your taste, but considers you a good collector.
- It could also show that you're a lousy collector who sells low... but let's ignore that possibility.
- The NFT platform probably has a way for you to show off your purchases. You can have a small museum! You don't need to be a billionaire to open a museum anymore.
Much of this information is on the blockchain. Think of the blockchain for NFT artwork like social media. It shows that you "liked" the artist, by paying the artist.
It's like Patreon or Kickstarter or Gofundme.
Those platforms are for fundraising, but they're also a form of social media, where people can show off their spending.
While the NFT is unique, you can mint multiples of the same artwork, so each NFT is slightly fungible. The value of an NFT associated with a specific artwork would change in value as they became relatively rare, because the artist is becoming more popular, increasing demand for patronage opportunities.
For example, if you needed to raise funds to create a work, you try to sell 10 NFTs for $20, because you're a noob, and don't have much clout, and even fewer friends. To sweeten the deal, you invite them to video conferences to talk about random bullshit, and show them how you work.
When the work is complete, you release it. You don't paywall it. You don't blur it. You just have it out there, and maybe charge a little here and there. The point is to make that artwork as popular as possible.
Make it so popular that some business or rich person wants to license it for a nice payday.
A year later, after struggling, you might find yourself relatively popular, because your pals showed off their NFT. They'd be saying, "yeah, I paid $20 to help them out, when they were nobody," and feeling extremely hip.
With this increased popularity, you could fundraise for the next work by issuing 100 NFTs, and charge the same $20. You could give away prizes, and maybe a couple stickers.
Strangers would be buying these NFTs.
You'd net enough money to be a professional artist. A starving one, but pro, nonetheless.
The Small Timers
Right now, the NFT market's saturated with celebrity objects, and artist superstars, reflecting the two ends of the art market: the mega-popular mass market, and the rich collectors.
You have NFTs for footage from sports films, and NFTs that sell for millions of dollars.
This just reflects the capitalist mindset of the community: they don't have much need for working class and middle class artists... except as consumers or sycophants.
I think they're ignoring the recent tradition in art, where artists, particularly musicians, could make a living selling their work to an audience that was happy to pay moderate prices, knowing the artist was able to live off their work.
Reselling NFTs
My fantasy scenario doesn't include reselling the NFT, but the inventors of the NFT were thinking about that, and have worked royalties into the sale of NFTs.
The stories about royalties usually give a small amount to the creator or first seller.
Imagine if the royalty was 50%, and given to the artist. How does that change things?
I suspect it would reduce a lot of the social stigma around reselling at a profit. The break even price would more than double the original price.
At break-even, the reseller gets all their money back, and makes no profit, while the artist gets all the rest of the money. There's no "guilt" or "shame" for reselling that NFT. In fact, it could be seen as a kind of charity to the original artist!
Now, imagine, if you set a precedent of licensing the work by requiring the licensee to buy out some of the NFT owners!
You'd be helping your friends to make money, and get paid back for supporting you when you were nobody.
Conclusion
What do you think?
Is this idea half-baked?
See Also
Here are a couple pages about middle class collectors, who worked for the USPS, and supported the arts by collecting.
Enrique Serrato : https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-this-l-a-delivery-man-amassed-one-of
Herb and Dorothy Vogel : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_and_Dorothy_Vogel
Herb and Dorothy are heroes to me!!!
Me too. Who would have thought they were these great collectors? I guess, their artist friends :)
I only recently found out about Serrato, and his story was inspiring because he's a local. I grew up a few miles from Whittier, within the range of what might be called "the greater eastside" of LA, which extends from downtown Los Angeles to the Orange County border, and is majority Chicano. It's a vast working class and middle class (and some wealthy) area that's largely Mexican American, and was the urban center of the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
I heard he's selling off parts of his collection to pay for his retirement. My feeling is, "good for him!" He probably gave up a lot of his savings to buy art, and now, his past support's going to help him live out his life.