6 ms·

As much as HN hates NFTs, they could really help solve this problem. Decentralized online digital ownership is a great use case.

Gigachad 4y ago
How does that help when the google drive link on your NFT goes offline?
politelemon 4y ago
HN hates NFTs because of 'self evident' statements like this, it's seen as little more than micro-hype statements to up the value of something seen as useless. NFTs do not solve this problem, the content has been removed. If you feel they do, feel free to explain how it would have helped in this situation.
ageitgey 4y ago
NFTs don't let you include the movie itself as a payload, so they are just a token that gives the owner to a claim to a movie via some external system. In this case, there is no disagreement that the consumer purchased the movie, just a refusal to honor that purchase. An NFT that said you bought a movie is meaningless if the system streaming the movie to you to stops honoring it. It's no different than what is happening here.
- grumbel 4y ago
  > so they are just a token that gives the owner to a claim to a movie via some external system. Yes, but that's exactly what you don't get with a central database. There is no way to use your Sony-database-entry to access the movie from whoever holds the rights right now. Companies also go out of business or change plans, so that central database will cease to exist in the future anyway. With an NFTs you have a proof of ownership. You still would need a service to honor your NFT token, but NFT usage would be the very thing that makes those services possible to exist in the first place. We have seen with MP3 that this can work, just in that case the MP3 itself was used as the ownership token to move content to other services. With movies that doesn't work, as companies don't even give you a raw file of a movie, but they might be willing giving you NFTs, as those don't circumvent the DRM measures they have in place. Either way, NFT are of course only a small piece of the puzzle here, there is a lot of supporting infrastructure that would need to be build and that nobody is building right now. And given the energy usage and cost of blockchains, it's not really usable for your $3 movie anyway. So it's not a workable solution at the moment. But even with all it's faults, it's still the closest thing to a possible solution for digital ownership that we have.
  - dividedbyzero 4y ago
    Sorry, we don't accept Sony Media NFTs, you need a Sony Xperience Plus NFT. The old ones were phased out last year.
    - grumbel 4y ago
      The beauty of NFTs is that that doesn't matter. You just go to another provider that still accepts your NFTs. NFTs are a proof of ownership, not a right for getting free downloads from Sony forever. The only thing you have to be careful about is what ownership the NFT grands you in the first place. An NFT to a public link to a monkey picture is of courses quite useless, just as an NFT for items in MMORPG that will stop functioning when the servers are switched off. But with static data like books, movies or single-player games, you can very much make an NFT that gives you the rights to that digital thing.
      - ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
        >The beauty of NFTs is that that doesn't matter. You just go to another provider that still accepts your NFTs Disney: "sorry, we don't accept your Sony NFTs either" Netflix: "same" Amazon Prime: "same"
      - daveoc64 4y ago
        Why would anyone accept such an NFT? "Yeah, we can see that you paid someone else for this content, so we'll pay the bandwidth and any licensing fees needed for you to stream/download it from us.". A business model like that makes no sense.
        grumbel 4y ago
        You pay for the bandwidth, either directly via a subscription fee to the service (Prime, iCloud, etc.) or indirectly by using the service, e.g. Steam lets you import CD-keys for free too, since they value you more as customer than they care about the money lost for downloading games for free. Also there would be no licensing fees. People paid those when they bought the games. Companies providing those games after an NFT-check would just be a digital storage lockers, not a movie/game/book seller. Content companies don't get to double dip: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine The only reason why they get away with that right now is because there is no concept of "digital ownership". Everything in that space operates in a legal gray area. NFTs have the potential to change that and put digital goods an a solid legal ground, as most of the same rules we have for physical goods could be applied to digital ones.
asxd 4y ago
Don't mean to seem like I'm piling on, but I sincerely would be interested how they would help here?
- boffinAudio 4y ago
  NFT's: Anyone can check and verify ownership. Receipts/Credit Card statements: only people with access to the finance system and authorization to check, can verify ownership. For some things, a common public ledger is appropriate. For everything else, there's Mastercard ..
  - shakna 4y ago
    Verifying ownership is kinda useless when the distributor no longer distributes, though. You can prove you own a copy. Congrats. So can everyone else with a receipt. However, that doesn't somehow coerce Sony into continuing to provide access.
    - boffinAudio 4y ago
      Where do you stash your receipts? Somewhere you'll find them in two years time when challenged to prove you paid for something? Think that solution scales through the entirety of society? Sony could make a blockchain/NFT solution to their problem and everyone would be happy - it'd be future-proof, licenses would be in-perpetuity, and nobody would have to pay much for the effort. Heck, it'd even give pirates a way to become legitimate service providers. Sony et al., are not doing this, because of antiquated business ideas that serve more as dark patterns than anything else.
      - klez 4y ago
        > Think that solution scales through the entirety of society? It does when I need to get a repair for something I bought that is still under warranty. EDIT: Also: does keeping a cryptographic key safe scale through the entirety of society?
whatisweb3 4y ago
Only in theory - multiple streaming services would have to be licensed rights to the movie, so that if PlayStation revoked your right to watch it, you could use the NFT in another service like Netflix. This is unlikely to happen with big Hollywood movies cause of their tight IP laws. NFT could be applied to movies in new ways[1], but probably not in the way of limiting access to the file. [1] https://www.billboard.com/pro/camp-chaos-songcamp-nfts-50-person-band/ https://www.billboard.com/pro/camp-chaos-songcamp-nfts-50-pe...

Gigachad 4y ago

How does that help when the google drive link on your NFT goes offline?

politelemon 4y ago

HN hates NFTs because of 'self evident' statements like this, it's seen as little more than micro-hype statements to up the value of something seen as useless. NFTs do not solve this problem, the content has been removed. If you feel they do, feel free to explain how it would have helped in this situation.

ageitgey 4y ago

NFTs don't let you include the movie itself as a payload, so they are just a token that gives the owner to a claim to a movie via some external system. In this case, there is no disagreement that the consumer purchased the movie, just a refusal to honor that purchase. An NFT that said you bought a movie is meaningless if the system streaming the movie to you to stops honoring it. It's no different than what is happening here.

grumbel 4y ago
> so they are just a token that gives the owner to a claim to a movie via some external system. Yes, but that's exactly what you don't get with a central database. There is no way to use your Sony-database-entry to access the movie from whoever holds the rights right now. Companies also go out of business or change plans, so that central database will cease to exist in the future anyway. With an NFTs you have a proof of ownership. You still would need a service to honor your NFT token, but NFT usage would be the very thing that makes those services possible to exist in the first place. We have seen with MP3 that this can work, just in that case the MP3 itself was used as the ownership token to move content to other services. With movies that doesn't work, as companies don't even give you a raw file of a movie, but they might be willing giving you NFTs, as those don't circumvent the DRM measures they have in place. Either way, NFT are of course only a small piece of the puzzle here, there is a lot of supporting infrastructure that would need to be build and that nobody is building right now. And given the energy usage and cost of blockchains, it's not really usable for your $3 movie anyway. So it's not a workable solution at the moment. But even with all it's faults, it's still the closest thing to a possible solution for digital ownership that we have.
- dividedbyzero 4y ago
  Sorry, we don't accept Sony Media NFTs, you need a Sony Xperience Plus NFT. The old ones were phased out last year.
  - grumbel 4y ago
    The beauty of NFTs is that that doesn't matter. You just go to another provider that still accepts your NFTs. NFTs are a proof of ownership, not a right for getting free downloads from Sony forever. The only thing you have to be careful about is what ownership the NFT grands you in the first place. An NFT to a public link to a monkey picture is of courses quite useless, just as an NFT for items in MMORPG that will stop functioning when the servers are switched off. But with static data like books, movies or single-player games, you can very much make an NFT that gives you the rights to that digital thing.
    - ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
      >The beauty of NFTs is that that doesn't matter. You just go to another provider that still accepts your NFTs Disney: "sorry, we don't accept your Sony NFTs either" Netflix: "same" Amazon Prime: "same"
    - daveoc64 4y ago
      Why would anyone accept such an NFT? "Yeah, we can see that you paid someone else for this content, so we'll pay the bandwidth and any licensing fees needed for you to stream/download it from us.". A business model like that makes no sense.
      - grumbel 4y ago
        You pay for the bandwidth, either directly via a subscription fee to the service (Prime, iCloud, etc.) or indirectly by using the service, e.g. Steam lets you import CD-keys for free too, since they value you more as customer than they care about the money lost for downloading games for free. Also there would be no licensing fees. People paid those when they bought the games. Companies providing those games after an NFT-check would just be a digital storage lockers, not a movie/game/book seller. Content companies don't get to double dip: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine The only reason why they get away with that right now is because there is no concept of "digital ownership". Everything in that space operates in a legal gray area. NFTs have the potential to change that and put digital goods an a solid legal ground, as most of the same rules we have for physical goods could be applied to digital ones.

asxd 4y ago

Don't mean to seem like I'm piling on, but I sincerely would be interested how they would help here?

boffinAudio 4y ago
NFT's: Anyone can check and verify ownership. Receipts/Credit Card statements: only people with access to the finance system and authorization to check, can verify ownership. For some things, a common public ledger is appropriate. For everything else, there's Mastercard ..
- shakna 4y ago
  Verifying ownership is kinda useless when the distributor no longer distributes, though. You can prove you own a copy. Congrats. So can everyone else with a receipt. However, that doesn't somehow coerce Sony into continuing to provide access.
  - boffinAudio 4y ago
    Where do you stash your receipts? Somewhere you'll find them in two years time when challenged to prove you paid for something? Think that solution scales through the entirety of society? Sony could make a blockchain/NFT solution to their problem and everyone would be happy - it'd be future-proof, licenses would be in-perpetuity, and nobody would have to pay much for the effort. Heck, it'd even give pirates a way to become legitimate service providers. Sony et al., are not doing this, because of antiquated business ideas that serve more as dark patterns than anything else.
    - klez 4y ago
      > Think that solution scales through the entirety of society? It does when I need to get a repair for something I bought that is still under warranty. EDIT: Also: does keeping a cryptographic key safe scale through the entirety of society?

whatisweb3 4y ago

Only in theory - multiple streaming services would have to be licensed rights to the movie, so that if PlayStation revoked your right to watch it, you could use the NFT in another service like Netflix. This is unlikely to happen with big Hollywood movies cause of their tight IP laws. NFT could be applied to movies in new ways[1], but probably not in the way of limiting access to the file. [1] https://www.billboard.com/pro/camp-chaos-songcamp-nfts-50-person-band/ https://www.billboard.com/pro/camp-chaos-songcamp-nfts-50-pe...