NFT and the Future of Digital Content

Ascania

Mark_e593e0a5 said:

watchdog79 said:

Daz Jack Tomalin said:

watchdog79 said:

Alright, could someone, please, explain in plain English, what exactly will introducing this mess to DAZ shop mean to us hobby artists who buy and use the products sold here, when the timer runs out?

I'm just gonna chime in and say that the sky isn't falling.. content is still going to be sold at Daz like normal.. nothing is changing.  It's one event.. if you like that sort of thing, great.. if you don't, then that's cool too..! 

Thank you, but maybe I should rephrase the question. Does the introduction of NFT to DAZ bring a threat that we may have to pay extra for each use of a product that is sold under the NFT terms? If so, will this be clearly marked in the DAZ shop? How will the licence change?

In my opinion, the license must change. With NFT, you own what you have bought, like with a physical painting. If you own a vanGogh or Picasso, you can legally sell that piece again, to whomever you choose. Or destroy it, if that is waht you like to do. NFT's claim to be the same thing in digital art. You no longer have a license to a digital product, you literally own that special copy of it, including all the rights. This needs to be reflected in the terms of use, otherwise it is just an overpriced license.

With NFT you own a link. An expensive link. Nothing more.

SnowSultan

Maybe this is much more simple; could be that Diigitals will be selling renders of their models as NFTs and the hope is that as they grow and become more recognized, the NFTs will increase in value. At face value, that isn't a terrible idea, it's just the environmental impact, proving your copy is the real one, etc. that isn't so great.

Like Richard says, we really just have to wait and see.

Torquinox

It's a nihilistic artworld joke that makes the art auction houses rich along with the occasional lucky artist. 

 

NFT does not confer any copyright ownership of the work. If I understand correctly, it gives ownership of that one copy of the digital art file and its associated NFT. Say you spent the $500k for the Nyan Cat NFT. You don't own Nyan Cat or the copyright to Nyan Cat or anything else. You only own that copy of the Nyan Cat meme with the attached blockchain code. And all you can really do with it is tell people you own it or maybe sell it to someone else. But the rest of the world can still enjoy Nyan Cat on the internet for free.

 

At the low end, I've read people are paying as little as 75 cents for their NFT-linked art files. I wonder if 75 cents even covers the electricity and equipment wear required to generate the code, but that's the low end of anything. So, whatever Daz is doing will likely be an attempt to cash in on the nihilistic scam, with all the negative ecological impacts and equipment procurement problems that go along with it. And the daz-jessica post is part of the sales push to overcome our resistance.

Torquinox

Ascania said:

With NFT you own a link. An expensive link. Nothing more.

And that will only be fun until it gets hacked, stolen or lost.

Richard Haseltine

Would, say, a lmited edition NFTed render account for more emissions than our renders? Or even just the most meretricious, hyer-boobed, wannabe-erotic renders made this month? Until we know where this lies between a single NFT and a tool to soak up every cycle on our GPUs that isn't devoted to rendering to the production of NFTs we really can't pass any kind of judgement, even if there were universal agreement on the impact of the process (which seems to be lacking, given the summary of the paper linked earlier in the thread).

Sevrin

Richard Haseltine said:

Would, say, a lmited edition NFTed render account for more emissions than our renders? Or even just the most meretricious, hyer-boobed, wannabe-erotic renders made this month? Until we know where this lies between a single NFT and a tool to soak up every cycle on our GPUs that isn't devoted to rendering to the production of NFTs we really can't pass any kind of judgement, even if there were universal agreement on the impact of the process (which seems to be lacking, given the summary of the paper linked earlier in the thread).

Universal agreement?  If anyone can point to universal agreement on anything, including water being wet, please share it with the group. 

Also, in NFT news

NYC man sells fart for $85, cashing in on NFT craze (nypost.com)

Matt_Castle

Richard Haseltine said:

Would, say, a lmited edition NFTed render account for more emissions than our renders?

A reasonable estimate for my systems power draw when rendering would be 300 watts. A fairly long render might take my 3060 three hours (although many are less than an hour). So a reasonable estimation puts a single render in the kWh range. Possibly more with the set up and testing, but it's that overall order of magnitude - closest to 1 kWh, rather than 100 Wh, or 10 kWh.

A single Ethereum transaction is estimated to consume around 64 kWh. (And a Bitcoin transaction is more like ten times that). I can do tens of renders for the same energy/CO2 costs as a single transaction.

And our renders, beyond some compromises on noise quality and whether we use denoisers have to consume teraflops of computing power for minutes or hours to actually be realised, because accurately simulating billions of light rays bouncing around an environment isn't computationally cheap.

But Proof of Work as a system was designed to be inefficient. The whole concept was to counter denial of service attacks by requiring some processing to be done that would be trivial to a single user using the system legitimately, but which massively bogged down any system that was excessively accessing the system. (Of course, distributed denial of service, and bot nets kind of changed that, but it seriously limited a single-source attack). The entire function is to waste energy and processing power; it's a horrible way to design a system.

(When I originally heard about bitmining as a concept, I assumed the calculations were doing something useful or at least interesting, like finding really big prime numbers or folding proteins or something... but no, the calculations are useless for any purpose other than the block chain itself).

sausagemix_d9e00246a7

When faced with a new system of selling digital content with KNOWN negative repercussions on energy consumption, hence the environment, OF COURSE people full steam ahead. I mean why not just add to crappy systems of persuing profit. I DESERVE to make thousands in currency for my clay doll surrounded by flowers and neon lights... cause blah blah blah fine art is elitist!. Who cares if this all being directed and the systems for sales are all promoted by people who are already millionaires in order to inflate their portoflios! Who cares that we keep using empty revolutionary language while ignoring ideas basic healthcare, education, housing and nutrition.This is disgusting.

background

So will it be possible to sell/ give away items I create with a "cannot be used to create NFT's . Any NFT created from this work is null and void" in the same way you can mark things "not for commercial use"? I hope so.

Matt_Castle

background said:

So will it be possible to sell/ give away items I create with a "cannot be used to create NFT's . Any NFT created from this work is null and void" in the same way you can mark things "not for commercial use"? I hope so.

In theory, yes. (And arguably it's already covered by saying "non-commercial").

But, in practice, a lot of people creating/buying the NFTs have no interest whatsoever in the actual usage/ownership rights; the token creators often have no legitimacy whatsoever.

SnowSultan

OK, how about this for a NFT-alternative method?...partly satirical, but if people really want one-of-a-kind digital art, this works.  :)

 

* I will create a new, original render and purchase whatever 3D assets are necessary to best represent the client/buyer's vision.
* Progress will either be shown to the client/buyer through Skype or Discord shared screen option, or through small, watermarked thumbnails.
* The final image will be rendered directly to file on a flash drive. It will not be viewed, copied, or moved from this location. I will use printscreen to capture the non-rendered scene to prove that I was the original creator, then the 3D scene file will be deleted. I will retain no rendered copy, nor the means to exactly recreate the scene again.
* Flash drive with the only existing copy of the image will be mailed to client/buyer. The owner may do whatever they like with the image *except* claim to be the original creator.

Prices start at $2500 and include the flash drive and shipping. Tell your friends.   ;)

xyer0

Wall-Streetifying art? Yet, we can't get a useful store search function.

Torquinox

SnowSultan said:

OK, how about this for a NFT-alternative method?...partly satirical, but if people really want one-of-a-kind digital art, this works.  :)

 

* I will create a new, original render and purchase whatever 3D assets are necessary to best represent the client/buyer's vision.
* Progress will either be shown to the client/buyer through Skype or Discord shared screen option, or through small, watermarked thumbnails.
* The final image will be rendered directly to file on a flash drive. It will not be viewed, copied, or moved from this location. I will use printscreen to capture the non-rendered scene to prove that I was the original creator, then the 3D scene file will be deleted. I will retain no rendered copy, nor the means to exactly recreate the scene again.
* Flash drive with the only existing copy of the image will be mailed to client/buyer. The owner may do whatever they like with the image *except* claim to be the original creator.

Prices start at $2500 and include the flash drive and shipping. Tell your friends.   ;)

I think you need an extra zero on your starting price 

Richard Haseltine

Matt_Castle said:

Richard Haseltine said:

Would, say, a lmited edition NFTed render account for more emissions than our renders?

A reasonable estimate for my systems power draw when rendering would be 300 watts. A fairly long render might take my 3060 three hours (although many are less than an hour). So a reasonable estimation puts a single render in the kWh range. Possibly more with the set up and testing, but it's that overall order of magnitude - closest to 1 kWh, rather than 100 Wh, or 10 kWh.

A single Ethereum transaction is estimated to consume around 64 kWh. (And a Bitcoin transaction is more like ten times that). I can do tens of renders for the same energy/CO2 costs as a single transaction.

And our renders, beyond some compromises on noise quality and whether we use denoisers have to consume teraflops of computing power for minutes or hours to actually be realised, because accurately simulating billions of light rays bouncing around an environment isn't computationally cheap.

But Proof of Work as a system was designed to be inefficient. The whole concept was to counter denial of service attacks by requiring some processing to be done that would be trivial to a single user using the system legitimately, but which massively bogged down any system that was excessively accessing the system. (Of course, distributed denial of service, and bot nets kind of changed that, but it seriously limited a single-source attack). The entire function is to waste energy and processing power; it's a horrible way to design a system.

(When I originally heard about bitmining as a concept, I assumed the calculations were doing something useful or at least interesting, like finding really big prime numbers or folding proteins or something... but no, the calculations are useless for any purpose other than the block chain itself).

I was conmparing a single block-chain entity with the cumulative total of renders - we have no real idea whether what is on offer is going to be a tool, an NFT each, or a limited number (possibly one) of pre-made NFTs. In the absence of any idea of what is going to be offered pretty much any non-general comment seems pointless.

Ascania

SMBC did a cartoon on the topic. I hope it helps people understand what's going on through the power of graphical representation.

kyoto kid

Sevrin said:

Richard Haseltine said:

Would, say, a lmited edition NFTed render account for more emissions than our renders? Or even just the most meretricious, hyer-boobed, wannabe-erotic renders made this month? Until we know where this lies between a single NFT and a tool to soak up every cycle on our GPUs that isn't devoted to rendering to the production of NFTs we really can't pass any kind of judgement, even if there were universal agreement on the impact of the process (which seems to be lacking, given the summary of the paper linked earlier in the thread).

Universal agreement?  If anyone can point to universal agreement on anything, including water being wet, please share it with the group. 

Also, in NFT news

NYC man sells fart for $85, cashing in on NFT craze (nypost.com)

...makes the Pet Rock and Dehydrated Water look like a sensible purchase.

Will you walk away from a fool and his money?
If you want it, here it is, come and get it
But you'd better hurry 'cause it's goin' fast
--Badfinger

Matt_Castle

Richard Haseltine said:

I was conmparing a single block-chain entity with the cumulative total of renders.

With respect, "the bomb they dropped on Hiroshima didn't kill nearly as many people as all the billions of knives out there have" is not an argument in favour of dropping more atomic bombs.

Torquinox

Ascania said:

SMBC did a cartoon on the topic. I hope it helps people understand what's going on through the power of graphical representation.

Indeed! 

Sera

Matt_Castle said:

Richard Haseltine said:

I was conmparing a single block-chain entity with the cumulative total of renders.

With respect, "the bomb they dropped on Hiroshima didn't kill nearly as many people as all the billions of knives out there have" is not an argument in favour of dropping more atomic bombs.

I hope you don't eat beef. That's bad for the environment too. 

daveso

this is some seriously out to lunch stuff. Seems like smoke and mirrors, heebe jeebe magic wand. I don;t understand it . 
What does this all mean for me, and those just wanting to make 3D art? 

RangerRick

daveso said:

this is some seriously out to lunch stuff. Seems like smoke and mirrors, heebe jeebe magic wand. I don;t understand it . 
What does this all mean for me, and those just wanting to make 3D art?

I believe that's going to depend on how the various legislative bodies "fix" this problem.

 

Matt_Castle

certaintree38 said:

I hope you don't eat beef. That's bad for the environment too. 

I don't, as it happens.

But my general point is that comparing a few NFTs to the entirety of all rendering is a false equivalence. Am I concerned about the idea of throwing power and carbon at the idea of just rendering some pixels? Yes, but saying that "Rendering isn't good for the environment, so we don't have to worry about NFTs" is whataboutism.

 

SnowSultan

Torquinox said:

SnowSultan said:

OK, how about this for a NFT-alternative method?...partly satirical, but if people really want one-of-a-kind digital art, this works.  :)

 

* I will create a new, original render and purchase whatever 3D assets are necessary to best represent the client/buyer's vision.
* Progress will either be shown to the client/buyer through Skype or Discord shared screen option, or through small, watermarked thumbnails.
* The final image will be rendered directly to file on a flash drive. It will not be viewed, copied, or moved from this location. I will use printscreen to capture the non-rendered scene to prove that I was the original creator, then the 3D scene file will be deleted. I will retain no rendered copy, nor the means to exactly recreate the scene again.
* Flash drive with the only existing copy of the image will be mailed to client/buyer. The owner may do whatever they like with the image *except* claim to be the original creator.

Prices start at $2500 and include the flash drive and shipping. Tell your friends.   ;)

I think you need an extra zero on your starting price 

 

Nah, I work cheap.    

Sera

Matt_Castle said:

certaintree38 said:

I hope you don't eat beef. That's bad for the environment too. 

I don't, as it happens.

But my general point is that comparing a few NFTs to the entirety of all rendering is a false equivalence. Am I concerned about the idea of throwing power and carbon at the idea of just rendering some pixels? Yes, but saying that "Rendering isn't good for the environment, so we don't have to worry about NFTs" is whataboutism.

Most people already engage in LOTS of behavior that is bad for the environment, and this one is on the small side (NFTs only account for a small percent of cryptocurrency activity). So shaming them for using a straw once in a while, or in this case, having an NFT, doesn't make sense to me. It's also easier for other people to accept criticism when you aren't comparing them to a nazi... or in this case the dropper of an atomic bomb. Just my perspective on it. 

 

 

 

 

Richard Haseltine

Matt_Castle said:

certaintree38 said:

I hope you don't eat beef. That's bad for the environment too. 

I don't, as it happens.

But my general point is that comparing a few NFTs to the entirety of all rendering is a false equivalence. Am I concerned about the idea of throwing power and carbon at the idea of just rendering some pixels? Yes, but saying that "Rendering isn't good for the environment, so we don't have to worry about NFTs" is whataboutism.

I clearly made the point that we do not know what this is going to involve - that a single, or small number, of NFTs offered as a limited edition for the whole market to pick from would have a lower ttoal emission footprint than rendering, while soemthing that had everyone (who wanted to) generating NFTs might very well have a much bigger footprint. Until we have more information generalisations about how great an issue these NFTs may be are premature.

Sevrin

Richard Haseltine said:

Matt_Castle said:

certaintree38 said:

I hope you don't eat beef. That's bad for the environment too. 

I don't, as it happens.

But my general point is that comparing a few NFTs to the entirety of all rendering is a false equivalence. Am I concerned about the idea of throwing power and carbon at the idea of just rendering some pixels? Yes, but saying that "Rendering isn't good for the environment, so we don't have to worry about NFTs" is whataboutism.

I clearly made the point that we do not know what this is going to involve - that a single, or small number, of NFTs offered as a limited edition for the whole market to pick from would have a lower ttoal emission footprint than rendering, while soemthing that had everyone (who wanted to) generating NFTs might very well have a much bigger footprint. Until we have more information generalisations about how great an issue these NFTs may be are premature.

So, in other words, it would be very bad if all of, let's say, Daz's customer base joined in on "the Future of Digital Content" and securitized their render output, but it's cool and fun if Daz does this thing with Shudu just this one time pinkie swear?

SnowSultan

You want to do something NFT-y and support artists, how about offering prints of renders like deviantArt does? We could order them through DAZ, you get a cut, and the artist gets direct support without any shady cryptononsense.

Anyway, the 1st should be fun.

RangerRick

I'm still not certain I understand what people are paying for and what (rights) they get when they buy an  NFT.  As I understand it when you buy an NFT you get a token that proves you bought the token.  My mind waffles between (1) that scene in Iron Man 3 when Ben Kingsley responds "it's complicated. Hey! It's complicated" and (2) the king's new regal attire that can only be seen by him and the person selling it to him.

My concern is that some legislative body will conflate ownership of the token and controlling ownership of the rights to the digital content and/or reproductions thereof. I'm often reminded of the quote:  "No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session."

I'd like Daz to commit to never adding NFT support into Daz Studio and to indemnify us against any financial obligation which may arise from someone else obtaining an NFT for an asset we've purchased then trying to get additional fees out of us for using it.

Wolfwood

Richard Haseltine said:

Matt_Castle said:

certaintree38 said:

I hope you don't eat beef. That's bad for the environment too. 

I don't, as it happens.

But my general point is that comparing a few NFTs to the entirety of all rendering is a false equivalence. Am I concerned about the idea of throwing power and carbon at the idea of just rendering some pixels? Yes, but saying that "Rendering isn't good for the environment, so we don't have to worry about NFTs" is whataboutism.

I clearly made the point that we do not know what this is going to involve - that a single, or small number, of NFTs offered as a limited edition for the whole market to pick from would have a lower ttoal emission footprint than rendering, while soemthing that had everyone (who wanted to) generating NFTs might very well have a much bigger footprint. Until we have more information generalisations about how great an issue these NFTs may be are premature.

Bad
Awful
Terrible
Dreadful
Abysmal

No matter what it ends up being, it is going to be at least BAD as long as NFT is involved. So the sooner people express how they feel about it, the better.

At this point were everyone has access to the information, if you are going to support it even a  little bit, you are responsible. You can't launch XXXXX today and next week say "Oh sorry, we didn't know" because all the issues with NFTs have been pointed out for some time.

And let's not forget the environment aspect is only one of the issues. Let's say "you"(you, as in someone in a similar position as daz) don't care or don't belive in global waming, fine. Do you care about the tools required to make use of your products? Because cryptoX is the responsible for the shortage and artificial price increase of of the main resource to render iray.

And of course the whole futility of it all in the sense that for the moment it achieves nothing. Maybe this part some would consider more controversial, but i think .com bubble is going to look rock solid compared to this.

MeneerWolfman

The vibe I get from this thread is Daz is going to do something next week with NFT's, and so far the customer base is basically telling Daz in advance "We have no interest in NFT's, please don't do this."

 

And somehow the hill that is Daz and NFT's is one that Richard is willing to die on for Daz