Im somewhat neutral on crypto (I think its going to end in abject disaster, but so are all risk markets), but the one thing in the space that gives me fleeting joy is the pure savagery of someone going on twitter talking about how they got scammed out of their expensive NFT and immediately getting 8 comments about how they need to change their avatar of the NFT because they are not the rightful owners and are stealing. Its like the libertarian playground Lirva always dreamed about where everyone has to be a contract lawyer (and now a coder to boot) in order to function day to day gets a real life workout without the guns and flourishing free market in children. Fascinating to watch.
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What happens if he makes the show, which is presumably owned by some megacorp, and the ape is stolen and sold to someone in Germany?
I bet itâs pretty unclear in this case. If something is stolen, no has good title against the rightful owner, but if the seller has possession through fraud, then an honest buyer gets valid title, and the original owner is out of luck (at least under the UCC). Normally you canât âstealâ someoneâs copyright, so itâs not clear whatâs actually happening here.
In any case, this whole thing is probably a meta-fraud being orchestrated by the showrunners to drive interest in the show.
Yeah but the ape was clearly stolen in this case, right? In order for voidable title to be possible, Seth Green has to knowingly engage in a transaction where he agrees to voluntarily relinquish title. I donât think tricking him into coughing up the keys through some hack or phishing link and then stealing the ape leads to a voidable title. Do you have a different understanding of it?
As the multi-orgasm tantric great once said - âI donât subscribe to this point of viewâ. I do understand it fwiw.
Iâd have to look into this more, but I donât think this is right. My recollection is that for the most part the UCC codified the common law rules regarding stolen goods - with a few exceptions protecting buyers (1) a person with âvoidable titleâ can transfer good title to a good faith purchaser and (2) if you assign your goods to a merchant and then he improperly sells to a good faith buyer.
My quick research shows that this is all in UCC Section 2-403. That said, I havenât dealt with the UCC since law school, so could be wrong on this.
edit: re-reading, it looks like youâre referring to voidable title exception, which Iâm not sure applies here, since they just stole the ape. Had they tricked him into selling it to them for cheap, I think they would have voidable title, but not if they hack his account and then steal it.
I honestly have no clue how the apes are structured or how they purport to transfer ownership of IP, so I donât really have a guess.
EDIT: Maybe it comes down to whether the âtheftâ is equivalent to forging a signature (in which case no voidable title) or something else. If you tell the world that anyone who can produce cryptographic evidence of knowing your signature is authorized to transfer your ape, and someone produces that proof, it seems like youâre boned, even if he stole the secret key from you.
This is a good thread on the Seth Green thing.
https://twitter.com/akivamcohen/status/1529276073896296453?s=21&t=cgVjMV9ThulUVJ7xTRjpJw
Raises the question of why Green needs to do anything at all if he retains all of the rights associated with the NFT. Also raises the issue of how secure a blockchain is if the state can force them to undo a transaction recorded on the ledger.
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The state being able to force you to transfer has nothing to do with the security of the blockchain. It wouldnât undo the transaction, just create a new transaction sending it back to Green. Basically, itâs the same as the state being able to seize any asset - except here they would order you to send the NFT back to Greenâs account. If you refuse, they couldnât actually make you (unless they can access your account somehow), so I guess they could hold you in contempt and send you to jail.
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seems to lean heavily towards meta fraud to get interest in a tv show i never heard of until today, but iâm still a sucker
It actually shows (or would show) that the blockchain is indeed secure, since IRL the state could send some jackboot thugs to confiscate your property for whatever reason, but, barring any actual exploits, they canât do this with the blockchain. You either have to give them access to your account or you have to send it yourself. This is splitting hairs a bit, of course, since there isnât that much difference between the state confiscating your property versus the state threatening you with an expensive trial and jail time if you donât hand over your property, because both scenarios will almost always lead to the same outcome (you no longer having said property).
Edit: or what Jonny said in fewer words
i havenât read yet, but i assume the state can also confiscate any money you might make by selling it, right?
This is probably a more accurate way of looking at it - that the state would potentially force a new transaction that would also be recorded on the ledger. But there still seems something very funky about the idea that, as of right now, the ledger indicates that DarkWing possesses the NFT, but DarkWing does not own the Ape.
In many of these art theft cases, the good faith buyers have provenance papers from the dealer or gallery they bought from. There was a very recent case thatâs kind of wild. Abbott Labs in Illinois has an art collection at their corporate headquarters. One painting thatâs particularly valuable now (Maine Flowers by Marsden Hartley) was sent out to an art restoration service for work in 1986 and later returned. In 2016, it was discovered that the returned work was a forgery, and that the art ârestorationâ guy was running a forgery scame, hawking the stolen paintings to NYC art dealers. It changed hands several times but was eventually tracked to some rich ladyâs penthouse apartment in 2018, and of course she has âpapersâ showing that itâs clean and that she owns it. Court found that she (more aptly, her estate) did not, in fact, legally own it.
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For this case, I guess try to transport yourself back to 1987 and imagine it. No internet to instacheck everything, and itâs not like this particular piece was the Mona Lisa. Also, art dealers are notoriously shady as fuck. Would be shocked if many of them arenât thinking about plausible deniability and quick flips when they know itâs super sketch.
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you know those things on coinbase you can do for $3 worth of some shit coin
well instead of selling them and eating $1 fee or w/e that was instead I left them there
they all now range from just over one dollar to the lowest, which is 23 cents
rip
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I hadnât realized that the ape was held through OpenSea. That actually seems really good for DarkWing84. If you have securities held in a brokerage account and someone hacks into your account and sells them, you canât reverse the transaction against a good-faith purchaser. I think itâs an interesting case if you are managing your private key yourself and it gets stolen, but if you hold you NFTs through a broker and the broker mistakenly disposes of them, you should be out of luck as to subsequent purchasers.
The better art analogy is if you lend a painting to a gallery that regularly sells artwork, and they sell it without authorization. In that case, you clearly lose under the UCC rule (to a good-faith purchaser). UCC does not apply to apes, but the same answer should still hold.
Yeah OS is non-custodial. The first transfer (Green to scammer) was direct and didnât involve OS at all. I believe the second transfer (a sale from scammer to other guy) was executed via OS, but OS doesnât hold the assets at all, the smart contract facilitates a direct transfer simultaneous with the payment exchange.
To be clear, Green lost his apes (seemingly) like this:
- he clicked on some site that was a sham, probably purporting to sell a new kind of NFT
- on there he clicked âbuy nowâ or whatever
- the site popped up a crypto transaction for him to sign, but instead of the transaction being âbuy this new NFTâ, it was âhey, one specific guy can take all your apes out of your wallet whenever he wantsâ
- he apparently clicked âsureâ
- minutes or hours later, scammer submits his own transaction to take the apes from Sethâs wallet, which blockchain allows because he authorized it in previous step
Right. The apes werenât stolen. He consented and now has remorse over his consent.