LO: Societal Impacts of Digital Art

NFTs have always felt like an infringement on artists’ work in general, but “NFTs and Copyright” has given me a better understanding of why I feel that way. A good quote from the article to understand the initial hope for NFTs is “NFTs are an attempt for digital creators to try and capture some of the uniqueness and scarcity that producers of physical works have naturally”, although where an NFT fails is returning value to its original creator: the artist. I assumed that NFTs had to be created by the original seller, but that isn’t even the case: they can be sold by a buyer of the original artwork. This means that an artist can put their hardest work into a piece of artwork, just to have it resold by another person at minimal effort for potentially very high reward. Photographs can be made into NFTs, making even the likeness of another person something to capitalize off of. Although the artist is still noted with the original copyright, copyright is a tricky thing for artists in the NFT space. Maybe someone would buy an original work after having seen the NFT, but a copyright doesn’t pay for groceries.

“NFTs and Copyright”, https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2021/03/16/nfts-and-copyright/, 2021