The Treachery of Ownership
This is not a pipe; this is not a painting of a pipe. This a not photograph of a painting of a pipe. This isn’t the digitally scanned image of a painting of a pipe embedded in the header of a written article about ownership in the digital age — nor is it even said article. This is a single embodiment of that article, published on Medium, an “American online publishing platform,” for which the URL thereof I intend to create a non-fungible token (NFT) to be sold to the highest bidder at auction.
Art history can be neatly divided into two epochs: the time before the first public showing of René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images, and the time after. Art has thenceforth been intertwined with philosophy, bringing to the fore the idea that the word is not the thing itself; the map is not the territory. In the digital age of perfect and unfettered copying and distribution, ontological explorations such as these now encompass the role of not just the word for or image of a thing, but the actual thing as it pertains to a digital work of art. These musings have been in the public discourse for as long as digital media formats and electronic distribution have existed, but they are in the spotlight again with the current craze around NFTs.
One of the biggest sources of confusion around NFTs is that, despite what one would understandably assume at first, they don’t protect a digital work from being copied or used in an unlicensed manner. This is not what they are about. In fact, NFTs have only a tenuous connection to their underlying digital assets; in the case of file-based works such as images, videos or 3D models, the very same assets embedded in an NFT might already available in myriad places online, or, once unlocked by the owner of an NFT, could be copied and distributed without limitation to be enjoyed by everyone, not just the owner. So while the tokens may be non-fungible, the assets themselves can, in many if not most cases, be funged till the cows come home.
Which would make the whole thing seem pointless, wouldn’t it? If the purported use of NFTs is to protect the ownership of a work, wouldn’t a more direct approach to controlling copying and distribution such as digital rights management (DRM) be more effective? Admittedly, DRM has had a rocky history, and at this point I think many people have simply assumed the horse has left the barn in terms of preventing copying of digital assets. Most of the Web was built via unrestricted copy and paste, view source, and blatant copyright infringement via file sharing services… so one could argue that the point was settled long ago. And yet, here we are: pesky creators still want to get paid for their creations, and purveyors of new NFT platforms are now offering a way to do just that. Even though it doesn’t really do just that; but we’ll come back to this later.
A Truly Non-Fungible Piece of Art
As for my NFT, you may be wondering what is for sale. Well, it’s not the header image… though I think I could make a case for it under fair use. And to be totally transparent, I thought about doing so, but I have already seen more than one auction of an NFT of The Treachery of Images. So that ship has sailed. I’m not a visual artist, so I would also not attempt to alter the classic or try to come up with something original inspired by it. No, Magritte worked in oils; I deal in words. So I am instead selling ownership of a URL pointing to this Medium article. I would like to think that someday, as art critics and philosophers have had the opportunity to ponder these deep topics, somebody will find significant and enduring value in the thoughts I have jotted down here. But ultimately that will be for time, critics, and the market to decide.
To be specific, I am selling the URL to the Medium version of this post, which URL being
https://tonyparisi.medium.com/the-treachery-of-ownership-d51004a1e4fc
In the spirit of full disclosure, please be advised that while the URL itself is non-fungible, i.e. because it is and always will be a unique ASCII string, the content of this article is subject to change. I could completely rewrite it. I could hit command-A and then backspace, deleting the entire contents. I could post questionable material. These would all be within my right as its author. Additionally, in case this part isn’t clear, as the copyright holder I can also freely distribute the text, layout and contained image of this article in any other fashion that I so choose, such as a PDF or Word file. The URL is what you, prospective owner, will be buying. Nothing more, nothing less.
That said, I give you my word as an artist and a gentleman that I would never substantively change the contents herein, beyond simple edits. But in case you’re not fully comfortable with my personal assurances, you can always click on the image at the top and save it, and copy/paste the text. You know, just in case.
No, dear prospective owner, you and you alone will own this unique and non-fungible pointer to a piece of writing for the rest of time… or at least as long as computers, web servers, URLs, the Medium publishing platform, text files and JPEG reader technology exist. Which should be longer than the lifetime of, say, a physical painting. Right?
Whither Ownership?
But you may still be asking yourself, what exactly am I purchasing? When I buy an NFT, what do I get? In all seriousness, exactly what?
Here is where we step off the ontology bus and hop aboard the economy locomotive. There is a whole lot of energy going into the creation of NFTs (figuratively and literally, but that’s another story). An entirely new speculative art market has emerged. You’ve doubtless seen the articles on digital creator Beeple’s mind-boggling financial success, a watershed that has the collector world licking its collective chops. We are in the midst of a boom around NFTs, with the usual Silicon Valley suspects circling, purveying marketplace platforms that make it simple to create and sell them. And all for the buyers to procure what, exactly? The best way to describe it that I have heard thus far is “bragging rights.” Though venture capitalist Ben Horowitz put it in another way: “You’re buying a feeling.” However troubling you may find that statement, accept it for what it is: a sign of things to come.
De rigueur, this whole endeavor is being marketed by the platform providers as a new way to finally remunerate artists for their hard work. I, like many others, am skeptical. If history is any indication, I think there will indeed be big winners here — but probably not the artists.
Regardless, I have decided to have my first foray into the wonderful world of NFTs. In selling this article I am offering a straightforward value exchange: I get cold, hard, processor-guzzling ETH, and you get a token: a token certifying ownership of this incredibly important but still eminently fungible piece of writing; a token that tells you where to find these awesome words and pictures on your computer machine; a token of my gratitude and esteem. You also get the knowledge that you were brilliant enough to understand the significance of this piece. And let’s not forget those bragging rights. And the feeling. So, what do you get? Really, it’s a lot of things.
But there is one thing that it is definitely not: a pipe.
