Property rights revolution? Take you to explore the world of NFT
On March 18, 2021, a tweet by Elon Musk was sold on the website as an NFT, and the highest price reached $1.12 million in just 2 days.
This news sensationalized the entire Internet like a bomb, and it also attracted more people’s attention to our protagonist “NFT”.
Here, let’s give a simple science popularize to our friends who are in contact with NFT for the first time. What is NFT?
NFT, the full name is Non-Fungible Token, refers to the only cryptocurrency token used to represent digital assets. What distinguishes it from traditional digital currencies is that NFTs are recognized by everyone because of their indivisible, irreplaceable, and unique characteristics, and NFTs can be traded just like other assets. If you compare cryptocurrency to paper currency, then NFT is the unique code on the paper currency, which is the identity information of this paper currency. It is unique and there is only this one in the world. NFT can be a picture, a song or even a tweet. Each NFT is unique and exclusive, so NFT holders cannot replace it with another NFT assets. As an investor’s collection, every NFT cannot be copied and is scarce. In essence, NFT is actually a proof of authenticity.
For more detailed introduction of NFT, you can also refer to our previous article “NFT from 0 to 1: Will 2021 be the “NFT Year?”.
After understanding NFT, let’s take a look at what is intellectual property.
The term “intellectual property” appeared after the establishment of the World Intellectual Property Organization in 1967. Intellectual Property refers to the exclusive rights that people enjoy in accordance with the law on the results of their intellectual labor, usually grant by the state for creators of exclusive rights to their intellectual achievements for a certain period of time
Intellectual property rights are essentially an intangible property right. Its object is an intellectual achievement or product, and the result of creative intellectual work. Like tangible properties such as houses and automobiles, it has value and use value with protection by national laws.
In recent years, intellectual property issues have plagued many people, so what can the emergence of NFT bring to the field of property rights?
With the advent of the Internet era, the efficiency of information dissemination is getting higher while the cost is reducing, and because the Internet has a strong sense of anonymity and a huge user group of nearly 4 billion worldwide, making the society struggle to protect our intellectual property rights. Pirated videos, music, novels and other works of art fill the entire network and become a paradise for pirates. Various infringements can be seen everywhere, which not only damages the rights of creators according to law, but also brings bad effects to the entire society. Although in recent years, with the increase in the level of education of contemporary young people comes the awakening of legal awareness, voice of anti-piracy, anti-infringement and anti-counterfeiting has become higher and higher, and the efforts of various countries to combat piracy have gradually increased, but the particularity of artistic creation still makes it impossible to effectively cut off infringements.
In this severe situation, NFT has become the new focus of the art creation community, and it provides a new alternative to intellectual property protection for art creators.
Take the current field of traditional art creation, it is almost impossible for creators to get a share in the secondary circulation of works. But under the specific mode of NFT, creators can permanently enjoy the different proportions of each circulation of works. For example, a singer composes a song and generates an NFT token through the blockchain network, and then sets the rules to stipulate that every time the token is transferred, the creator himself can get a 5% share. Assuming that the collector buys at a price of 500U and sells 2000U to the next collector, the creator will get a 100U of commission, following the third, fourth and all subsequent people will transfer 5% share from their transaction to the creator, and this rule will never change.
This model is extremely beneficial to creators, and the NFT itself is traceable, for every transfer will be recorded on the block and cannot be changed. The content published by the creator can also be kept forever, which can almost cut off the possibility of being false. The holders of NFT tokens can publicly claim that they are the only genuine one, which greatly satisfies investors’ collection preferences.
In the field of art, NFT has been recognized by many creators as the most powerful weapon for protecting intellectual property rights and an important symbol of the revival of art. Although the current NFT model is still not so comprehensible for the general population, but for many artists, musicians, and Internet veterans, NFT has brought new changes in the creative circle. Many investors have spent huge sums of money in the hope of owning a NFT of certain digital assets.
In this anti-piracy, anti-infringement, and anti-counterfeiting ideological trend, the post-90s have become enlighteners, the post-95s have become supporters, and the post-00s have become executors. We hope that one day NFT can create a more open, transparent, reasonable and harmonious society for us.
