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> The stuff you describe about physical art is only valid within a jurisdiction that has legislated ownership of physical items.

I am not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure jurisdictions that don't have that legislation are vanishingly rare. Maybe North Korea?

NFTs piggy-back off the legislation of developed countries. All of those defend ownership of physical goods.



The point is that ownership is a made up concept, albeit a popular one.

Also, it’s very complex and definitely not a clear cut. For example, you can’t simply process the plastic disk you bought, called Music CD, and share the output with everyone, you can get into real trouble.

You can buy a plane ticket but whether you can give it back varies and you can almost never sell it, despite owning it.

You can own one aspect of something and not the other, for example you can own the right to make toys from a character but not the rights to make a movie.

You can own a Databese in Europe but can’t own it in US. You can own software patents in US but not on the Europe.

You can buy a very old house in central London but you can’t demolish it just like that and build something else.

In some places men can own women, in other places white colored people used to own dark colored people.

In some places you are allowed to rent your body for certain purposes or inject whatever you want to yourself, in other places you can’t do a lot of thing to yourself.

Also, the way you acquire your possessions is not a clear cut. Purchase is a common one but you can get things by participating or organizing mass murder, a common practice known as “war”.

You can also acquire things through inheritance, a popular option but not a clear cut too because the inheritance rules can change depending on your gender, age, race, nationality and the jurisdiction.

You can own a Gmail or HN account that you never bought and can be taken away at any time.

As you can see, ownership is a complicated concept. You can’t really pin down a property of ownership and say this is the test to determine if you own it or not.

NFT is just another complication but this time enabled through international computer networks(traditional communities would create registers and institutions to deal with ownership management).




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