Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) DRM for owning the original

[excreationist]

https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/nft-non-fungible-token/

NFT allows the buyer to own the original [usually digital] item. Not only that, it contains built-in authentication, which serves as proof of ownership. Collectors value those “digital bragging rights” almost more than the item itself.
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It includes:

Art
GIFs
Videos and sports highlights
Collectibles
Virtual avatars and video game skins
Designer sneakers
Music
​

This talks about NFTs that are worth about $1 million or more....

 

[Jayjay]

I think it's a fad, but this type of digital authentication is one of the very few actual use cases for block chains / cryptocurrencies. Not for bragging rights for owning ridiculously priced art pieces, but to verify that the person or entity who claims to have created something actually did so, and at a time that he claims it was created. In the age of arbitrarily realistic deep fakes there may be actual use for this sort of thing.

Imagine a court case where a politician accuses a journalist for faking a video or audio of him saying something stupid. With regular media files the politician's lawyers can always argue that there was tampering, or that the file wasn't created at a time when it was claimed to be created, or that the metadata was corrupted, and so on, especially if the journalist didn't publish the information until much later. With proof of authentication on the blockchain you could very easily and cheaply register the authenticity of the file without actually publishing it (by posting the hash only). This could be done even automatically for every recording that a person makes, just in case.

But yeah, for art this is bullshit. If you can afford to pay 5 million for an art piece, you can afford a lawyer to write a document that proves you are the owner, and you can afford to keep that document in a safety deposit box in a swiss bank or wherever.