> so they are just a token that gives the owner to a claim to a movie via some external system.
Yes, but that's exactly what you don't get with a central database. There is no way to use your Sony-database-entry to access the movie from whoever holds the rights right now. Companies also go out of business or change plans, so that central database will cease to exist in the future anyway.
With an NFTs you have a proof of ownership. You still would need a service to honor your NFT token, but NFT usage would be the very thing that makes those services possible to exist in the first place.
We have seen with MP3 that this can work, just in that case the MP3 itself was used as the ownership token to move content to other services. With movies that doesn't work, as companies don't even give you a raw file of a movie, but they might be willing giving you NFTs, as those don't circumvent the DRM measures they have in place.
Either way, NFT are of course only a small piece of the puzzle here, there is a lot of supporting infrastructure that would need to be build and that nobody is building right now. And given the energy usage and cost of blockchains, it's not really usable for your $3 movie anyway. So it's not a workable solution at the moment. But even with all it's faults, it's still the closest thing to a possible solution for digital ownership that we have.
> We have seen with MP3 that this can work, just in that case the MP3 itself was used as the ownership token to move content to other services.
In the early 2010s or so, companies like Amazon, Google Play Music, etc briefly offered the ability to scan your MP3 collection to instantly get access to your music via their library as a way to suck you into your ecosystem.
It was neat, but all of these services have since switched off because it was just a means to get you hooked on their platform. It all went away because there was no on-going business case to support it . Now all that remains are a few scattered "digital locker" services where you are just streaming your own files back to yourself instead of using them to unlock a music library. Otherwise, you are locked into replacement streaming platforms with the same limitations as before.
The point is that NFTs solve a problem that already has other solutions - keeping track of who paid for something is relatively easy. The hard part is actually providing the product that was purchased in perpetuity. NFTs don't yet have an answer to the harder part of the problem that is profitable for a business.
The beauty of NFTs is that that doesn't matter. You just go to another provider that still accepts your NFTs. NFTs are a proof of ownership, not a right for getting free downloads from Sony forever.
The only thing you have to be careful about is what ownership the NFT grands you in the first place. An NFT to a public link to a monkey picture is of courses quite useless, just as an NFT for items in MMORPG that will stop functioning when the servers are switched off. But with static data like books, movies or single-player games, you can very much make an NFT that gives you the rights to that digital thing.
"Yeah, we can see that you paid someone else for this content, so we'll pay the bandwidth and any licensing fees needed for you to stream/download it from us.".
You pay for the bandwidth, either directly via a subscription fee to the service (Prime, iCloud, etc.) or indirectly by using the service, e.g. Steam lets you import CD-keys for free too, since they value you more as customer than they care about the money lost for downloading games for free.
Also there would be no licensing fees. People paid those when they bought the games. Companies providing those games after an NFT-check would just be a digital storage lockers, not a movie/game/book seller. Content companies don't get to double dip:
The only reason why they get away with that right now is because there is no concept of "digital ownership". Everything in that space operates in a legal gray area. NFTs have the potential to change that and put digital goods an a solid legal ground, as most of the same rules we have for physical goods could be applied to digital ones.
Yes, but that's exactly what you don't get with a central database. There is no way to use your Sony-database-entry to access the movie from whoever holds the rights right now. Companies also go out of business or change plans, so that central database will cease to exist in the future anyway.
With an NFTs you have a proof of ownership. You still would need a service to honor your NFT token, but NFT usage would be the very thing that makes those services possible to exist in the first place.
We have seen with MP3 that this can work, just in that case the MP3 itself was used as the ownership token to move content to other services. With movies that doesn't work, as companies don't even give you a raw file of a movie, but they might be willing giving you NFTs, as those don't circumvent the DRM measures they have in place.
Either way, NFT are of course only a small piece of the puzzle here, there is a lot of supporting infrastructure that would need to be build and that nobody is building right now. And given the energy usage and cost of blockchains, it's not really usable for your $3 movie anyway. So it's not a workable solution at the moment. But even with all it's faults, it's still the closest thing to a possible solution for digital ownership that we have.