×
  • remind me tomorrow
  • remind me next week
  • never remind me
Subscribe to the ANN Newsletter • Wake up every Sunday to a curated list of ANN's most interesting posts of the week. read more

Interest
CEO of Japanese Art Commission Platform Skeb Warns of Misinformation Around NFTs

posted on by Kim Morrissy
Kazunari Kida expressed concern that artists may be misunderstanding NFTs as a form of art ownership

The NFT (Non-Fungible Token) boom has been picking up steam in the anime and manga industries in recent months, but the practice of attaching art to NFTs has also attracted concern in art communities around potential scams, money laundering, and their environmental impact.

Kazunari Kida, CEO of the Japanese art commission platform Skeb, wrote a popular Twitter thread on Monday detailing the potential downsides of NFTs and the reasons why Skeb currently has no plans to implement them. Firstly, he explained that while an NFT can prove ownership of the token itself, it is not proof of ownership of the related artwork, nor is it equivalent to copyright. NFTs do not contain any DRM function, and do not have any means of preventing the artwork from being copied. A token displays a URL to the artwork, which, generally speaking, anyone is capable of accessing.

"It is possible to make a token out of another person's work without permission. There is no function to prove that the creator of the related artwork has generated the token through legitimate means," he cautioned, adding that if a token were generated without permission, there is no automated process in getting it removed; creators need to take matters into their own hands by filing a copyright violation claim or DMCA directly to the service provider.

On a practical level, he also noted that it is not easy to implement NFTs for art commissions because they are not equipped with a "smart contract"-like function that would generate a token automatically after a commission has been completed. The tax status of NFT sales income is also fuzzy at the moment because Japan's National Tax Agency has not yet determined whether they should be considered business earnings or as miscellaneous income. If, like trading cryptocurrency, they were to be considered miscellaneous income, then they cannot be calculated as part of a business's net profit or loss. Furthermore, if NFTs were to be considered intangible fixed assets, then there is a possibility that they will become subject to consumption tax.

Kida said that he was concerned that because the concept of token ownership was entirely new, there could be many creators using it who have confused it with art ownership or intellectual priority. He said that he was not rejecting the concept of NFTs as a whole, and thinks that it is perfectly fine to trade them as long as everyone involved understands what they are. As it is, however, he is worried because he has been seeing people attempt to explain NFTs as a form of art ownership.

"I've been seeing artists around me attach their work to NFTs while still in a state of confusion about what they are, and that, more than anything, is what has me worried," he wrote.

He said that the aforementioned reasons are why Skeb will not be adding an NFT-related function in the foreseeable future. He added that he has been getting bombarded with comments on his social media accounts about adding this feature, which has been making him feel fed up.

He concluded the thread by stating that on a personal level, he feels positively about crypto as a whole, but that he feels that the possible downsides in this particular case have not been sufficiently explained. He also clarified in a reply that he is not necessarily saying that NFTs are a scam, and that he encourages others to consider the positives and negatives as they do their own research.

Skeb is used by thousands of Japanese artists, including prominent manga creators and animators. Popular users include SUPER HXEROS manga creator Ryōma Kitada and Hana-Saku Iroha character designer Mel Kishida.

Source: Kazunari Kida's Twitter account


discuss this in the forum (17 posts) |
bookmark/share with: short url

Interest homepage / archives