So what's stopping me from taking a digital photo of a wall painting I own, and sell it as NFT art?
Nothing.
Under current ownership law, the purchaser of my NFT digital "painting" would receive nothing of value, and I would still retain ownership rights to my physical painting. I could create as many digital copies online as I want, keep selling them over and over again, and not lose ownership of the original painting. If it ever went to court, I could just claim that someone took the digital photo of the painting without my permission.
That's precisely why NFT is a scam.
"The Emperor has no clothes!"
You seem not to understand the idea of artistic ownership.
Maybe your painting is worth $10 or , say, $100, but Van Gogh's is worth $100 mil.
Go ahead, make those copies, then try to sell.
Unique pieces of art are valuable. NFT allows an artist to sign their creation, establishing the link between a piece and it's creator.
Most of the works are digital to begin with, they're not photos of actual paintings.
If the artist will make 10 more copies, his/her name would be tarnished and value of his/her works diminished.
A photo of Mona Lisa is not the same as Mona Lisa not any more or less than the copy of my public address is the indication of my bitcoin ownership.
Exactly my issue with NFTs. There could be a use for them, such as tracking actual physical assets: imagine owning an NFT for (part of) the Mona Lisa or something like that, and earning profit each time someone buys a ticket for the Louvre, or every time the work is loaned for an exhibition.
Same with the songs: I own the NFT, are the song rights now mine? Who gets the royalties on its uses - me or the person who sold me the NFT? If it isn't me, what exactly have I bought? The right to listen to the song? I've got my mp3 for that.
Not sure what the confusion is with. There should be a description of what NFT entitles you to, like with ANY contract.
NFTs will allow for partial ownership of valuable real estate, that's for sure, after the concept goes through a couple of iterations.
I am not buying any art NFTs since I am not knowledgeable enough to know the value, but I did buy some Decentraland parcels several years ago just for funzies.
Those were the early NFTs. No big deal if it zeroes out, but I did it since "Snow crash" is one of my most favorite books and I thought that it would be fun to own some.