The whole thing feels like some kind of postmodernist performance art about property and ownership.
Actually, come to think of it, maybe that's a great idea. If people ask questions about NFTs, they might start asking more questions about intellectual property as well, and ultimately about property rights in general. In a sense, NFT is the ultimate absentee property - it's impossible to use or occupy. It's a title to itself.
I'm slightly afraid of the asking because of what answers parties might arrive to.
Someone pushing for intellectual property maximalism might see in NFTs a technical counterpart to the legal monopoly on the ownership of digital information. Why not encode the ownership of a copy of the newest game as a NFT, and then have the console check at startup? And similarlines of thought that I don't have the imagination to consider.
I mean, that's basically just DRM, and we already have it - the blockchain adds nothing to the picture.
Well, such validation would continue working for as long as the blockchain on which the tokens are checked is still running, as opposed to when the manufacturer takes down their DRM servers. But that's added convenience to the user; the manufacturer actually loses a degree of control, so I don't see why they'd go for it?
Actually, come to think of it, maybe that's a great idea. If people ask questions about NFTs, they might start asking more questions about intellectual property as well, and ultimately about property rights in general. In a sense, NFT is the ultimate absentee property - it's impossible to use or occupy. It's a title to itself.