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This was great. Agree on all counts here. I must say, it's hard not to have a bit of schadenfreude about the big record labels facing doom from DSP generative music. 😅

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author

Thanks, this means so much coming from your good self! And yes, agreed. There's an argument that what we're seeing is the impact of innovation stagnation, artifically held in place by the Majors milking the cow for as long as possible. Historically this leads to market rupture eventually.

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My understanding is that Open Edition NFTs don‘t pass the Howey Test because of the Copyright/art involved.

(1) People are investing their money

(2) in a specific NFT community/market.

But since the NFT centers around copyright, they say: „I want to collect this art because it makes me feel something“ and this means they‘re buying it for its present value and not to obtain a future profit (3) through the efforts (4) of others.

Now, when you take the „Copyright“ or the „art“ out of those things, I think it changes the test significantly.

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author

This is conflating two things together; a token can be a security, according to the Howey test, with or without copyright.

Copyright adds in an additional attack vector in the inheret liability that it brings (e.g. future copyright infringment lawsuits, unknown collaborators etc.).

The sale of a token doesn't touch any actual copyright transfer, even in the "right to future royalties" models, this is purely a (centralised) re-routing of the subsiquant money flows rather than any legal copyright right.

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