related to it are immutably recorded. “So, what is different about NFTs?” Dinusha asks: “One of the fundamen- tal things is this aspect of speculative investment. That you can buy an NFT, sometimes for ridiculous amounts of money, with the expectation that you can sell it again for an even more ridiculous sum. But the only thing dis- tinguishing the ‘original’ from identical copies is that the original is recorded on the blockchain which has the potential to authenticate originality and owner- ship.”
However, there are many variations of NFTs.
Some follow the original token plus file, but with extras. “I like the NFTs created by the band Kings of Leon – the first band to release an album as an NFT. Their terms and conditions say that you can’t copy or play the NFT for commercial reasons, only for personal use. And while the album When you See Yourself will be sold on usual platforms, iTunes, Spotify, the NFT version (called NFT Your Self that sold for $50) comes in three forms that include digital art and added real-world extras like front row seats to future concerts worldwide.” Other NFT content is more abstract and in some cases much more expensive. Dinusha uses the example of CryptoKit- ties. The game involves players buying,
selling and breeding virtual cats – that’s the sole aim of the game. The old and new Kitties are static images, but some have sold for more than $1m, even though with a right click you can get an exact copy. But the original is unique because it has the proof on the blockchain that it is the original.
Terms and conditions
In all these cases Dinusha says: “You have to ask yourself how much do you actually own, because ownership in a non-legal sense and a copyright sense are different and you won’t own the copyright unless the owner has assigned it to you. Own- ership has many facets to it. It is also worth noting that the company that runs CryptoKitties, Dapper Labs, was valued at $7.6b in September 2021 – so it’s part of a significant commercial operation. “In the case of CryptoKitties, the NFT is a kitty, and the owners of CryptoKitties meet with other owners to breed new CryptoKitties and sell them. However, the “breeders” of CryptoKitties are bound by terms and conditions (
www.cryptokitties. co/terms-of-use) which state that they can’t earn more than $100,000 a year from their CryptoKitty. So, as in anything in life, there are terms and conditions. You can’t assume that because you’ve bought an NFT, that you can do whatever you want to do with it.”
Are NFTs relevant to libraries? “We are usually talking about art works, but papers and books and many other dig- ital assets could be tokenised as NFTs too. One way I think this could be relevant to libraries (other than maybe issues about owning NFTs and lending them out) is that libraries have very rare books, limited editions, that could be tokenised and sold. Why would the library do that? It may be that the library is willing to share owner- ship, subject to terms and conditions. In practice, the rare book could be digitised and sold as an NFT but the actual book will stay in the library… and the money from the NFT sale could be invested back into development, or into other work in the library space.
“And there are already plenty of inter- esting developments in digital ownership models that may one day be relevant to libraries and information professionals. For example, the decentralised autono- mous organisation (DAO), one of which nearly raised enough money to buy one of 13 existing copies of the US constitution, as part of a scheme to prevent one institu- tion holding it.
“For libraries though, it might be that those who buy the rare book as an NFT can also claim ownership, subject to the terms and conditions, however, the physical book would stay in the library – because it is impossible for so many
March 2022
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