Charlie Bit Me NFT sale: Brothers to pay for university with auction money(bbc.com)
bbc.com
Charlie Bit Me NFT sale: Brothers to pay for university with auction money
https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-57333990
55 comments
When you look at university as a long 4 year vacation it can be very economical.
DNS can be thought of as an early form of NFT - something that is purely digital and has a unique owner.
Currently, NFT is about collecting and speculation, which is currently the exact same use case as many collectibles like baseball cards. I believe the space will evolve to allow NFT holders to have additional rights and utility, such as copyright and ability to earn royalties from licensing the art.
NFT is simply provable ownership of a digital asset. What that asset actually is and what it provides is an experimental and evolving space. I think HNers need to think less narrow about this.
Currently, NFT is about collecting and speculation, which is currently the exact same use case as many collectibles like baseball cards. I believe the space will evolve to allow NFT holders to have additional rights and utility, such as copyright and ability to earn royalties from licensing the art.
NFT is simply provable ownership of a digital asset. What that asset actually is and what it provides is an experimental and evolving space. I think HNers need to think less narrow about this.
The difference is that your domain name is useful. Knowing that you “own” some youtube clip or tweet is not useful, since you don’t actually own any of the rights.
> NFT is simply provable ownership of a digital asset.
How is this any different from traditional copyright ownership? Assigning the rights for a piece of IP has been commonplace for well over a century.
How is this any different from traditional copyright ownership? Assigning the rights for a piece of IP has been commonplace for well over a century.
This goes down the rabbit hole of crypto enthusiasm, which HN as a collective despises.
But blockchain allows the asset to be verified quickly, impossible to counterfeit (the asset itself, not the NFT image), and immediately makes it available to the entire ecosystem of dapps running on the blockchain rails. I believe NFTs will become a larger component of DeFi, enabling their use as collateral.
But a large number of games will also integrate with NFTs and enable a larger ecosystem of assets to move freely between them.
But blockchain allows the asset to be verified quickly, impossible to counterfeit (the asset itself, not the NFT image), and immediately makes it available to the entire ecosystem of dapps running on the blockchain rails. I believe NFTs will become a larger component of DeFi, enabling their use as collateral.
But a large number of games will also integrate with NFTs and enable a larger ecosystem of assets to move freely between them.
> This goes down the rabbit hole of crypto enthusiasm, which HN as a collective despises.
Count me among the naysayers. I've worked in a field (publishing) with IP as its lifeblood, and I simply don't see the business value NFTs provide over traditional contracts.
Count me among the naysayers. I've worked in a field (publishing) with IP as its lifeblood, and I simply don't see the business value NFTs provide over traditional contracts.
But when I make a second NFT based on the same image, it has those same properties. It still can be traced back to the same image. If NFTs are meant to establish ownership over some asset, there is nothing that connects the NFT to the asset itself.
To be fair there is also nothing that really connects this piece of paper which is the title of my car to my car.
This application of blockchain seems to be only creating a chain of ownership. Which we already sort of have now with many things. It does not seem to bring many better properties with it other than one I can think of. That property is that it makes it harder to forge ownership.
The weird thing is coming from people creating NFT's for things that are basically not worth tracking who owns it. Then others buying that thing at a wildly overinflated price (which many digital easily copied goods fall into).
This application of blockchain seems to be only creating a chain of ownership. Which we already sort of have now with many things. It does not seem to bring many better properties with it other than one I can think of. That property is that it makes it harder to forge ownership.
The weird thing is coming from people creating NFT's for things that are basically not worth tracking who owns it. Then others buying that thing at a wildly overinflated price (which many digital easily copied goods fall into).
The domain name is a human-readable address to digital content. It also has some added value in that purpose if it's shorter, easier to remember, etc. An NFT is not an address, any link is purely abstract. The NFT could go away and not impact anything it's supposed to be linked to. In fact sometimes people make a point to purposely destroy the thing abstractly linked to the NFT.
Those seem very different to me. In fact even if you wanted to use an NFT to be the address of a piece of digital content, you couldn't easily do that: You would need to build something like DNS on top of NFT's in order to make them human usable in that way.
Those seem very different to me. In fact even if you wanted to use an NFT to be the address of a piece of digital content, you couldn't easily do that: You would need to build something like DNS on top of NFT's in order to make them human usable in that way.
DNS can be thought of as an early form of NFT - something that is purely digital and has a unique owner.
I think this is an interesting metaphor that goes even further than that. Much like the global DNS system, NFTs only work if people trust and adhere to which (single) system has been used to trade a work/define a domain name. Because I could easily create my own separate DNS and sell "microsoft.com" on it for $100 to anyone, but no-one uses or trusts my DNS.
I think this is an interesting metaphor that goes even further than that. Much like the global DNS system, NFTs only work if people trust and adhere to which (single) system has been used to trade a work/define a domain name. Because I could easily create my own separate DNS and sell "microsoft.com" on it for $100 to anyone, but no-one uses or trusts my DNS.
You need applications to integrate with the blockchain rails and start using it as a source of truth. As the ecosystem develops and more applications to do, it organically occurs.
For example, Ethereum Name Service (ENS) is a name service on Ethereum https://ens.domains/ Brave Browser has natively integrated with it, and .eth domains are tied into it. As more browsers and tools integrate with it, the value of it continues organically.
There is no top-down government or organization making this happen - it all happens organically.
For example, Ethereum Name Service (ENS) is a name service on Ethereum https://ens.domains/ Brave Browser has natively integrated with it, and .eth domains are tied into it. As more browsers and tools integrate with it, the value of it continues organically.
There is no top-down government or organization making this happen - it all happens organically.
But, it's at best an source of alternative truth, to the one that's recognised by the courts.
There is no authoritative source of truth for the courts. When a property dispute goes before courts, they are allowed to look at many different forms of evidence and make a ruling based on that, even if said ruling disagrees with an official government database.
And if somebody has an entry in a blockchain saying they own Star Wars, how much weight would you expect the courts to give that?
Regarding Unique owner: is this the same as with other crypto? That is, you are the owner when you know the crypto key. But if you unwittingly leak you keys (or use a proxy holder - an exchange) then the uniqueness becomes problematic?
I don't think baseball cards are a good investment either.
Paying for university up front can be the difference between paying ~£45k today or £100k+ over 30 years. It can actually save you quite a lot of money. I'm debating paying off my student loan, or at least paying a chunk of it because I did the maths and I could save myself £60k by the time I'm 50.
Similarly to a mortgage, the value of money now is not the same as the money in 30 years.
Depending on the interest % it may make more sense to invest that money.
That said, pre-brexit, I would have considered sending the kids to uni somewhere in Europe for free and save the university fees.
I paid 10k€ for a 3 years degree which is as close as free as it gets for me (it could have been zero if my family made less money or if I lived by myself and were unemployed). I don't think I would pay more than that for a degree, they're mostly overrated.
That said, pre-brexit, I would have considered sending the kids to uni somewhere in Europe for free and save the university fees.
I paid 10k€ for a 3 years degree which is as close as free as it gets for me (it could have been zero if my family made less money or if I lived by myself and were unemployed). I don't think I would pay more than that for a degree, they're mostly overrated.
Remember to factor in opportunity cost and the cost of inflation. Particularly with rates as low as they are now, debt makes plenty of sense. I refinanced my mortgage for another 30 years at 3.1%. Not only can the market beat that on average, the real purchasing power of the "extra" money in a few decades may be less than those dollars now. To be honest, at those rates I'm almost kicking myself for not pulling more equity out.
As a real example, what will increase in value more in those 30 years: the principal on your loans (which in effect costs you double), an Index fund tied to the S&P 500, or a down payment on a house?
As a real example, what will increase in value more in those 30 years: the principal on your loans (which in effect costs you double), an Index fund tied to the S&P 500, or a down payment on a house?
But you could take the loan and invest the same money and get back more. It's a very cheap, unsecured loan.
Yes, the stupid part isn't that the brothers sell the NFT for £500,000. I'd do the same.
But why would you buy it? Are you hoping that it's going to become more valuable in the future? I suppose people collect all sorts of weird stuff, but at least they're normally able to display it or enjoy it in some form.
But why would you buy it? Are you hoping that it's going to become more valuable in the future? I suppose people collect all sorts of weird stuff, but at least they're normally able to display it or enjoy it in some form.
AIUI rich people have a lot of spare money with nowhere to go at the moment, leading to the emergence of weird markets like this.
If you're broadly invested in NFTs and their ecosystem, you can think of this as a marketing expense. This one sale generated how many newspaper headlines and facebook posts?
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I am a part of the engineering team at Origin Protocol, who built and ran this auction. AMA.
Fun fact: within a few days of the auction we beat an hour long DDOS attack peaking at 4.7 million page per minute.
Fun fact: within a few days of the auction we beat an hour long DDOS attack peaking at 4.7 million page per minute.
How much fake bidding / shill bidding do you see on your platform?
It seems that many "high value" auctions are just grifters paying inflated prices for their own works to try and drive up the popularity of the NFT market.
Do you do anything to combat this sort of fraud?
It seems that many "high value" auctions are just grifters paying inflated prices for their own works to try and drive up the popularity of the NFT market.
Do you do anything to combat this sort of fraud?
I've not seen any on our platform, yet. Winners have been big, well known collectors.
At Origin Protocol, we are currently doing white-glove auctions for celebrities and top-tier NFTs. The Charlie Bit Me video is a perfect example. This means that the pool of bidders that can pay the prices that these go for is fairly small. I would think that the problems you mention would be much more prevalent among NFT artists who are looking to make a career out of this.
At Origin Protocol, we are currently doing white-glove auctions for celebrities and top-tier NFTs. The Charlie Bit Me video is a perfect example. This means that the pool of bidders that can pay the prices that these go for is fairly small. I would think that the problems you mention would be much more prevalent among NFT artists who are looking to make a career out of this.
Would love to see a write up of this defense.
Pretty stock response:
- Identify the characteristics of the attack.
- Block as much as possible, as far forward as possible.
- Cache as much as possible to minimize load.
- Scale the parts of the backend that are the bottlenecks.
Of course it was a lot more exciting than that during the actual event. :)
DDOS attacks for ransoms are a part of life in crypto, so this wasn't our first time dealing with things. We also load test copies of our sites in peacetime until they break in fun ways, to know what and where the failure modes are.
- Identify the characteristics of the attack.
- Block as much as possible, as far forward as possible.
- Cache as much as possible to minimize load.
- Scale the parts of the backend that are the bottlenecks.
Of course it was a lot more exciting than that during the actual event. :)
DDOS attacks for ransoms are a part of life in crypto, so this wasn't our first time dealing with things. We also load test copies of our sites in peacetime until they break in fun ways, to know what and where the failure modes are.
So in this context, is this anything more then a sale of copyright over the video? Does youtube let you transfer videos from one owner to another while preserving the link?
It's actually not a sale of copyright - that remains with the family. It's purely the sale of the NFT. You can see the terms of the sale here: https://www.charliebitme.com/#/auction-terms
That is what makes this so absurd to me. You are buying... nothing. A right to say you "own" something while the family still clearly owns it. You cannot do anything with it, they can do everything. It is like the companies that sell you stars or acres on the moon. I just don't see any sense to this.
It's a digital autograph. I'm not sure why it would be worth that much though.
When you say "the NFT" - there isn't actually any legal or technical reason the family can't sell more NFTs of the video, is there? Or anybody else for that matter, unless they count as derived works I guess.
If you made a hundred atom-exact replicas of the Mona Lisa, it wouldn't dent the value of the "real" Mona Lisa very much, if at all, outside of the difficulty in telling them apart - and the nature of NFT's mean that it's absolutely clear which one is the "real" one.
Technically, of course someone could clone it. No value there though, since the clones would lack scarcity, and wouldn't be "authentic".
Legally, no one else can clone this particular NFT, since that would be directly copying someone else's copyrighted work. The family, the owners of the copyright could, but the odds of clones selling for anything would be minimal.
Technically, of course someone could clone it. No value there though, since the clones would lack scarcity, and wouldn't be "authentic".
Legally, no one else can clone this particular NFT, since that would be directly copying someone else's copyrighted work. The family, the owners of the copyright could, but the odds of clones selling for anything would be minimal.
But if you sold a hundred notes saying "the bearer of this paper owns the Mona Lisa", they're going to lose value pretty quickly once people catch on. That seems more like the right metaphor to me.
I don't know about cloning an NFT, but creating an NFT is just putting a link, or hash etc, on a blockchain, isn't it? Or thereabouts. Anybody can do that, without owning the copyright. I think it's pretty well established that a link is not copyright infringement. I'm not sure about a hash, but I very much doubt it.
I don't know about cloning an NFT, but creating an NFT is just putting a link, or hash etc, on a blockchain, isn't it? Or thereabouts. Anybody can do that, without owning the copyright. I think it's pretty well established that a link is not copyright infringement. I'm not sure about a hash, but I very much doubt it.
It’s common for NFTs to link to a URL or IPFS address. But there are NFTs that are completely on-chain (https://www.larvalabs.com/autoglyphs) and some that are mostly on-chain with off-chain dependencies (https://artblocks.io/)
If Damien Hirst sold 1000 more sharks they would also lose value quickly, right?
I guess so? Not sure where you're going with that.
I suppose I am asking why people are concerned about this with NFTs then.
Because, as I understand it, the idea of an NFT is to demonstrate some sort of "ownership" of a work of art. The issue I have is that they don't do that. An ownership document that can legally be duplicated and distributed ad-infinitum by anybody at zero cost is not an effective ownership document. Even for the novel and legally meaningless version of "ownership" conferred by NFTs.
If Damien Hirst sells 1000 sharks, the buyers get the physical sharks themselves, I guess along with some falsifiable and legally meaningful documentation. They really do own the sharks, physically and legally.
If Damien Hirst sells 1000 sharks, the buyers get the physical sharks themselves, I guess along with some falsifiable and legally meaningful documentation. They really do own the sharks, physically and legally.
But you can't duplicate the ownership document that is the NFT, at least not anymore than I can duplicate the ownership documentation of a physical piece. The situation is even legally the same - it would be fraud if I pretended it's the original, but legal otherwise.
The difference is in the copyability of the work itself.
The difference is in the copyability of the work itself.
There's nothing technical stopping you creating further NFTs for the same work, and there's nothing legal stopping you selling them, unless you enter into a separate legal agreement that makes the NFT irrelevant.
It occurs to me that selling an NFT is like entering an artwork into a copyright registry, then selling the paperwork (without the actual copyright). To be fair I can imagine the original copyright registration docs for eg. Gone With the Wind being worth something to collectors.
It occurs to me that selling an NFT is like entering an artwork into a copyright registry, then selling the paperwork (without the actual copyright). To be fair I can imagine the original copyright registration docs for eg. Gone With the Wind being worth something to collectors.
To the extent that the courts recognize that possession of the NFT key represents sole ownership of or license to the copyright.
Assuming for the sake of argument the simplest case:
* It is not in dispute that Alice created a digital work * It is not in dispute that Alice owned the full copyright at the time of creation * It is not in dispute that Alice only sold/licensed the copyright once * It is not in dispute that said one time happened in the same transaction that the corresponding NFT was transferred, nor that Alice and the recipient intended for the NFT to represent ownership. * The NFT is transferd on-chain several additional times.
Most of these assumptions can easily become the central area of a copyright dispute. However, even assuming these assumptions are accurate, there are more problems:
* Suppose that at some point in time Bob owned the NFT. Charlie claims that Bob either licenced the work to him, or sold him all rights, however the NFT was not transfered. Since Bob owned the copyright, doing so was within his rights. The NFT subsequently gets transferred multiple times, which has no effect on what rights Charlie has. The current owner of the NFT sues Charlie for copyright infringement for using the NFT. * Suppose that at some point in time Bob owned the NFT. It is subsequently transferred several more times. Bob claims that he never sold it, and said transfers are the result of a hack.
To work around these issues, you cannot sell the copyright to the NFT owner, but must license it under fairly restrictive terms, such as:
* All rights under this license are provided exclusivly to any entity that demonstrates current ownership of the NFT, and are revoke when such an entity loses the ability to do so. * Any rights holder under this license may not grant rights to others [0] * The original copyright holder revokes all further rights from themselves.
Additionally, you need this license to track the work (not difficult, many digital works ship with a license nowadays). Further, you need the courts to recognize the terms of the license as valid and interpret them the way you intended.
[0] Any desired ability to grant rights could still be encoded into the NFT system, in which case the license should clarify that
Assuming for the sake of argument the simplest case:
* It is not in dispute that Alice created a digital work * It is not in dispute that Alice owned the full copyright at the time of creation * It is not in dispute that Alice only sold/licensed the copyright once * It is not in dispute that said one time happened in the same transaction that the corresponding NFT was transferred, nor that Alice and the recipient intended for the NFT to represent ownership. * The NFT is transferd on-chain several additional times.
Most of these assumptions can easily become the central area of a copyright dispute. However, even assuming these assumptions are accurate, there are more problems:
* Suppose that at some point in time Bob owned the NFT. Charlie claims that Bob either licenced the work to him, or sold him all rights, however the NFT was not transfered. Since Bob owned the copyright, doing so was within his rights. The NFT subsequently gets transferred multiple times, which has no effect on what rights Charlie has. The current owner of the NFT sues Charlie for copyright infringement for using the NFT. * Suppose that at some point in time Bob owned the NFT. It is subsequently transferred several more times. Bob claims that he never sold it, and said transfers are the result of a hack.
To work around these issues, you cannot sell the copyright to the NFT owner, but must license it under fairly restrictive terms, such as:
* All rights under this license are provided exclusivly to any entity that demonstrates current ownership of the NFT, and are revoke when such an entity loses the ability to do so. * Any rights holder under this license may not grant rights to others [0] * The original copyright holder revokes all further rights from themselves.
Additionally, you need this license to track the work (not difficult, many digital works ship with a license nowadays). Further, you need the courts to recognize the terms of the license as valid and interpret them the way you intended.
[0] Any desired ability to grant rights could still be encoded into the NFT system, in which case the license should clarify that
> the odds of clones selling for anything would be minimal.
Why do you think so? If you call it ${NFT_NAME}_2, don't you think people who couldn't get ${NFT_NAME} would be at least slightly interested?
Why do you think so? If you call it ${NFT_NAME}_2, don't you think people who couldn't get ${NFT_NAME} would be at least slightly interested?
This NFT in particular is the first one for that video and the one going famous on social media therefore it's the "valuable" one, I wish I was joking.
> Howard says the family, who live in Buckinghamshire, has now made an estimated £1,000,000 off the video over the years
What are the pre-NFT means by which one makes £1 million off of a home movie on youtube? Surely not(?) just youtube ad revenue sharing?
What are the pre-NFT means by which one makes £1 million off of a home movie on youtube? Surely not(?) just youtube ad revenue sharing?
Probably licencing the video to both online people and traditional places like (I'm guessing) the daily mail
https://www.pri.org/stories/2012-04-01/charlie-bit-my-finger...
> Once the video reached 50 million views, the family began earning cash from YouTube ads and television spots, Mashable wrote.
> Once the video reached 50 million views, the family began earning cash from YouTube ads and television spots, Mashable wrote.
Pre YouTube you would make money off funny home videos by sending a VHS copy in to America's Funniest Home Videos for a chance to win $10,000 or the $100,000 grand prize.
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For a reason I can't quite explain, this story just hits the spot for me. Such fond memories of that video! Good on them!
Not sure I'd spend it on university fees though (fees operate differently here in the UK), seems like a waste.