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“Should art be regulated by the SEC?” NFT artists file lawsuit
(arstechnica.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I thought the whole point of crypto/blockchain technologies was to avoid government regulations?
EDIT: Never mind, they're suing because the SEC declared them as securities, which the artists don't want.
"artists"
No worse than any other form of modern "art"
Except that the whole reason these "artists" made the "art" to begin with was to make an end-run around regulations.
These people were not driven to art because they liked making art. They liked that they could make a profit from art like the paper handed bitches they are.
That also applies to a lot of meatspace modern art.
Yep, and that needs better regulation as well. Most of the "high-art" of the world is stupid shit literally used for money laundering, and NFTs just want a piece of that money-laundering pie.
Doesn't make either of them ethical things.
As someone else pointed out here in this thread, you can support an artist with a direct donation or by buying the art with cash. I personally feel like buying it through an NFT is an outright admission that you only buy art to make money off of it.
It looks like they're suing because the SEC declared them as a security, and the artists don't want them to be classed as one.
I see.
I believe NFTs are actually a good idea on paper for this use case. Our implementation of the idea is weird though.
I don’t know why the SEC though. NFTs are not “money”. It’s a contract that shows ownership. It’s a legal issue in my opinion
The SEC also regulates trading in stocks, which are contracts that show ownership, just of a portion of a corporation instead of a piece of art. They're both classified as securities because they can be bought, sold and traded as investments where people can stand to gain or lose large sums of money in said trades. They work in very similar, if not identical, ways. If the NFT did not function so much like a stock investment and was just something you could buy or sell as a regular good, then the implementation would not be so weird.
But can’t that same argument be used for a Picasso or Van Gogh painting? Are those also regulated by the SEC for ownership? NFTs are trade-able when it comes to art. It’s just a contract in the form of a deed of ownership at a digital layer being transferred.
If regular art which is often considered an investment and hogged by the ultra rich is also regulated by the SEC then you’re right. If it’s not then I don’t get why we treat the “art” which is owned by a NFT contract differently based on the type of contract we’d like to consider binding.
Guess what the SEC enforces? You guessed it, laws!