'Charlie Bit My Finger' Is Leaving YouTube After $760,999 NFT Sale (nytimes.com) 125
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: The original 2007 video "Charlie Bit My Finger," a standard-bearer of viral internet fascination, has sold as a nonfungible token for $760,999, and the family who created it will take down the original from YouTube for good. The original video, which has close to 900 million views, features Charlie Davies-Carr, an infant in England, biting the finger of his big brother, Harry Davies-Carr, and then laughing after Harry yells "OWWWW." The owner will also be able to create their own parody of the video featuring Charlie and Harry Davies-Carr.
Many duplicates of the video remain online, including one apparently rebranded by the family itself in anticipation of the auction. But the auction allowed bidders to "own the soon-to-be-deleted YouTube phenomenon" and be the "sole owner of this lovable piece of internet history." The market for ownership rights to digital art, ephemera and media, known as NFTs, continues to grow and bring attention to widely viewed videos and memes that many people have long forgotten. NFT buyers are not usually acquiring copyrights, trademarks or the sole ownership of whatever they purchase. They're mostly bought with the idea that their copy is authentic.
During anNFT sale, computers are connected to a cryptocurrency network. They record the transaction on a shared ledger and store it on a blockchain, sealing it as part of a permanent public record and serving as a sort of certification of authenticity that cannot be altered or erased. There were 11 active bidders in the war for the NFT that was driven mainly between two bidders named 3fmusic and mememaster, who ultimately was outbid by 3fmusic by $45,444. The bidding closed on Sunday.
Many duplicates of the video remain online, including one apparently rebranded by the family itself in anticipation of the auction. But the auction allowed bidders to "own the soon-to-be-deleted YouTube phenomenon" and be the "sole owner of this lovable piece of internet history." The market for ownership rights to digital art, ephemera and media, known as NFTs, continues to grow and bring attention to widely viewed videos and memes that many people have long forgotten. NFT buyers are not usually acquiring copyrights, trademarks or the sole ownership of whatever they purchase. They're mostly bought with the idea that their copy is authentic.
During anNFT sale, computers are connected to a cryptocurrency network. They record the transaction on a shared ledger and store it on a blockchain, sealing it as part of a permanent public record and serving as a sort of certification of authenticity that cannot be altered or erased. There were 11 active bidders in the war for the NFT that was driven mainly between two bidders named 3fmusic and mememaster, who ultimately was outbid by 3fmusic by $45,444. The bidding closed on Sunday.
Everyone has a scam but me (Score:1)
Everyone has a scam but me. I've simply GOT to come up with some dumbass thing that people will pay a lot of money for. Somehow....some way.
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Re:Everyone has a scam but me (Score:4, Insightful)
Why? What is money worth if thousands of dollars buy you one non-fungus thingy? This only erodes the value of money.
From baseball cards to instruments to cars to jewelry to paintings...let me know when NFT catches up to that multi-trillion dollar fungus.
If people paying stupid prices for shit on this planet was going to erode the value of money, every currency would have been deemed worthless long ago.
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From baseball cards to instruments to cars to jewelry to paintings...let me know when NFT catches up to that multi-trillion dollar fungus.
I would say that NFTs have already caught up to baseball card, instruments, cars, paintings and jewelry. Maybe not in raw dollar terms but all of those items you listed are actual physical items that you can touch and that are hard to reproduce. NFTs are just pointers to digital items that are super easy to reproduce virtually infinite copies of (the item that the NTF is pointing at not the NTF itself). People are paying multi-millions of dollars for some of these glorified hyperlinks.
If people paying stupid prices for shit on this planet was going to erode the value of money, every currency would have been deemed worthless long ago.
I will highly agree wi
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From baseball cards to instruments to cars to jewelry to paintings...let me know when NFT catches up to that multi-trillion dollar fungus.
I would say that NFTs have already caught up to baseball card, instruments, cars, paintings and jewelry. Maybe not in raw dollar terms but all of those items you listed are actual physical items that you can touch and that are hard to reproduce.
Hard to reproduce? Never in the history of collectible items have we ever had a larger problem with counterfeiting. I read some years ago there was even someone brave enough to fake a rare Ferrari. Problem was, it is a bit too rare. (When only three exist in the world, it's kind of easy to play spot the fake.)
NFTs are just pointers to digital items that are super easy to reproduce virtually infinite copies of (the item that the NTF is pointing at not the NTF itself). People are paying multi-millions of dollars for some of these glorified hyperlinks.
That old baseball with the worn out scribble, probably isn't worth much.
But if you add a nice pointer to a Certificate of Authenticity that says that scribble belonged to "Babe" Ruth, well then you
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But if you add a nice pointer to a Certificate of Authenticity that says that scribble belonged to "Babe" Ruth
But that "Certificate of Authority" can not identify any particular scribble with the one
supposedly signed by Babe Ruth, so once again the NFT is utterly worthless.
There are thousands of copies and prints that have been made over decades, but there is only one original Mona Lisa.
But no NFT can identify which is the real one, so there is no comparison.
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This only erodes the value of money.
No, this erodes any hope that there is a worthwhile future for humanity.
Idiocracy is now.
Re: Everyone has a scam but me (Score:2)
Re: Everyone has a scam but me (Score:2)
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All you need to do is become internet famous. That's not as easy as you think. There literally thousands upon thousands of videos of people doing stupid shit on the internet. Only the tiniest handful of them turn into memes.
So no, not everyone has a scam, a few people have a scam. In this case a few people who have monetised the scam in the past are attempting to get one last paycheck.
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Well I'll say this for you, you have a very rich fantasy life.
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If only...
https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]
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Your fantasy life appears to extend to things you read too. Nothing in there about cereal bowls or houseplants.
As long as they leave David after Dentist (Score:2)
Meanwhile children are starving. (Score:5, Insightful)
I honestly can't imagine having this much stupid money to burn and knowing that there are children around the world going to bed hungry every night (even in my own city) and saying "I know what I'll do with my stupid-burning money! I'll drop nearly a million dollars to buy a digital representation of an online video I saw once."
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Re: Meanwhile children are starving. (Score:2)
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There's about 50 years left of oil, nat. gas and coal, less than a human lifetime. It's Game Over after that.
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There's about 50 years left of oil, nat. gas and coal,
You're wrong and you're missing the point; there are more than enough [accessible] hydrocarbons to sustain this death race for longer than that (you obviously don't know about all the oil shale - not to be confiused with shale oil - in eastern Utah) and that's precisely the problem: as long as fossil fuels remain cheap, it'll be an uphill battle to develop viable alternatives.
Re: Meanwhile children are starving. (Score:2)
That doesn't help with the massive problem of plastic waste, but it means that Mad Max is less likely.
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There's about 50 years left of oil, nat. gas and coal,
You're wrong and you're missing the point; there are more than enough [accessible] hydrocarbons to sustain this death race for longer than that (you obviously don't know about all the oil shale - not to be confiused with shale oil - in eastern Utah) and that's precisely the problem: as long as fossil fuels remain cheap, it'll be an uphill battle to develop viable alternatives.
Pretty much this. More likely than not, hydrocarbons will continue indefinitely, actually getting cheaper. [juliansimon.com]
This uncontroversial observation (to economists) works as long as people are economically free to respond to shortages via new findings, techniques, inventions, substitutions.
Anyway, electrical and solar and whatever will take over...when the price is good and ready, ironically dropping the price of oil even further as nobody wants it for fuel anymore.
For the cynical, this theory destroyed hyperventill
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And not even a good video either (Score:2)
Its amusing for 10 seconds and thats it, its hardly a ground breaking film or music video that actually has monetisable worth, no one is going to pay to watch this again.
I don't see the logic in paying for it unless the person who did so is so narcissistic that just them owning it and now removing it from the public domain makes them feel important somehow. Or they think an even bigger mug will come along and pay even more for it. Good luck with that!
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Just sold for $760,999, making that statement axiomatically incorrect. You may think it has no more intrinsic worth than a Jackson Pollock painting (and I would agree) but those too sell for $$.
Re: Meanwhile children are starving. (Score:2)
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Re:Meanwhile children are starving. (Score:5, Insightful)
I get what you are saying but I think you are over estimating the harm. The good news with these NFTs is its not like cost of production, distribution, transfer of title etc is high. So almost all the money is simply being transferred. Hopefully the recipient will do something with it of slightly greater social value - even if that is just spend it into the local economy.
Ordinarily I would say that isnt better than RICHGUY just holding on to it at some bank. However we arrived at a point where the investor guys have so much capital (or at least cash) they can't find things to invest it in that make any sense. 1 million dollars in the hands of a typical family might actually do more for the national economy as whole if it gets spread around Main Street in another million in the hands of JPM/Citi/Wells/Goldman and their like or even a Venture-Cap guy.
So when we compare the 'stupidity' of these compared to the sort of alternative activities those wealthy enough to just drop a million on nonsense engage it, the harm may actually be a lot less. Consider the guy could have spend that money to go kill some endangered species for a trophy, burned thousands of pounds of petroleum products fuel on his private jet because "I have not had luch in Paris this year yet", or heck I could build a giant castle full of rooms I'll never enter on land I'll clear that while private property was formerly open to some low impact public use like hiking.
My first thought with this NFT stuff is humanity has found a new low but after I consider the consequences vs the other pure vanity exercises of money people engage in, well I think this actually aint so bad.
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I like to think of it as similar to the decadent 1920's, the last hoorah before a great depression and a world war. Party on.
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The biggest difference is that the "decadent 1920's" is a bit of a myth. The Stock Market crashed in 1929 and has historically been blamed for starting the Great Depression, but obviously the market didn't crash in a vacuum without causes. The stock market crashed because farming families across the nation were defaulting on loans the took out to purchased expensive tractors and other farming upgrades to increase yield. This increased production decreased the value of the labor and annihilated the value of
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Consider that it may not be be "RICHGUY". It may be "DEBTGUY".
I wasn't really a fan of The Osbournes, but I did watch one episode where this young fan of Sharon won a day with the family by donating $20k to a Ugandan children's charity. Over the episode, it becomes clear that she got the funds by way of her credit cards. No harm in that, right? On the one side, a Ugandan charity gets some money. Great! And an American Osbournes fan is $20k in the red. Even better! But $20k was added to the global money su
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If the young lady defaults on her debt the money will be 'removed' from the global money supply.
The reality is at some point people have 'enough' that they spend some of their money on frivolity. Does it really matter if Joe Sixpack spends $20 on an NFT vs a hardcover edition of a book, he will read once maybe twice and keep on the shelf there after? I really don't think so.
As to folks spending money on things they can't afford, they have plenty of opportunity to do that already. How many people dose big to
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If the young lady defaults on her debt the money will be 'removed' from the global money supply.
Not really. She spent the money on something, so it's still out there somewhere - just transferred from the credit card company to someone else.
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If she defaults the credit card company will have to write off the debt. He liability was their asset. Ultimately it comes off the issuing banks balance sheet. Its money they haven't got to lend to someone else.
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Unlike physical stuff, or even an NFT, her wonderful day with the Osbornes can't be taken back.
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Good points.
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The owner will also be able to create their own parody of the video featuring Charlie and Harry Davies-Carr.
The reason he has/had that much money is probably that he works for a living,
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I support the transfer of this money... (Score:2)
...to someone more intelligent. Leaving $760,999 in the hands of someone who thinks buying the "authentic" copy of the YouTube video would be irresponsible. If the buyer is in possession of more funds, I recommend offering them more purchases forthwith. Perhaps we could finally have a tax on stupidity: government would tax holding any NFT created for a purely ephemeral entity... every year that you own it, you pay some substantial number of dollars until you either wise up and sell it to the next idiot or y
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Perhaps we could finally have a tax on stupidity
You never heard of a lottery?
Re: I support the transfer of this money... (Score:2)
Lottery is an insufficiently scaled tax. :-)
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Perhaps we could finally have a tax on stupidity
You never heard of a lottery?
Or passing a collection plate.
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Lotteries aren't a tax. They sell fantasy.
It's cheaper than heroin and less likely to kill you.
Gee, I paid much less (Score:5, Informative)
youtube-dl 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ O B l g S z 8 s S M '
Slashdot thinks this looks like ASCII art, so I had to add spaces in the video identifier, jeez.
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There were nut cases posting some nazi imagery in every thread. Such a pain to scroll past it. It is indiscriminate wanton vandalism. It is painful for friends and foes alike.
Just a few morons are enough to make the entire population to invest in moron-proofing things.
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The buyer's video is bit-for-bit identical to the copy of the video I have. All the buyer gets is a blockchain ledger entry saying he or she "owns" the original copy of the same bits I have. Whoop. De. Doo.
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I agree, whoop de do. Point remains the same. The buyer did not at any point buy a video. You didn't get for free something someone else bought.
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It'd be more honest to claim that the NFT buyer bought credit for being the work's executive producer.
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That's actually the most accurate description of an NFT I've heard :-)
Missing The Real Story (Score:2)
"During an NFT sale, computers are connected to a cryptocurrency network. They record the transaction on a shared ledger and store it on a blockchain, sealing it as part of a permanent public record and serving as a sort of certification of authenticity that cannot be altered or erased."
Looks as though the left hand is distracting folks with stupid stuff while the right hand is testing ways to create something that can(will) be used for tracking and privacy information that can't be deleted.
Or maybe I hav
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There's no distraction here... what you're concerned about is one of the selling points of blockchain. It was amply discussed news a decade ago when people went nuts over blockchain tech. The news today is the NFTs -- the idea that somehow that indelible ledger can enable the transfer of unreal assets. The blockchain tech is definitely not news today.
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...the idea that somehow that indelible ledger can enable the transfer of unreal assets...
I mean, people already do that, buying and selling intellectual property rights and royalties to all kinds of things.
All using NFTs as the ledger does is make it harder to fake ownership credentials or claim rights you don't have.
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"During an NFT sale, computers are connected to a cryptocurrency network. They record the transaction on a shared ledger and store it on a blockchain, sealing it as part of a permanent public record and serving as a sort of certification of authenticity that cannot be altered or erased."
Looks as though the left hand is distracting folks with stupid stuff while the right hand is testing ways to create something that can(will) be used for tracking and privacy information that can't be deleted.
Or maybe I haven't put on my tin fedora yet this morning.
So, we're going to start tying the receipts and essentially the validity of NFTs to a blockchain ledger?
Sure as hell hope all these ledgers remain intact and protected. Can't imagine the harm in being able to manipulate the system where you take an entire shared ledger hostage. That's certainly one way to attack potentially many valuable transactions.
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Looks as though the left hand is distracting folks with stupid stuff while the right hand is testing ways to create something that can(will) be used for tracking and privacy information that can't be deleted.
A few weeks ago Disney registered a patent about a method of distributing movies via blockchain as an anti-piracy measure. The method is such that the video can only be decrypted and played by the device its targeted, and even so only during the time-window allotted, for only so many times. And it comes with watermark, to help identify the leaker who used the analog method to pirate it.
I also remember that a list of blockchain-based NFT features listed "enforced scarcity" as one of its main "advantages".
So,
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Then I call upon the combined power of all the the life-less nerds of Slashdot: How do we go about altering this unalterable register, just to screw things up?
Can we maybe crate a million new versions of the video differing by a single pixel and release those as NFTs, devaluing the 'real' one?
Money Laundering? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Keynes stated “The stock market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.”
I don't see this NFT bubble as being very different from any other bubble.
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Re: Money Laundering? (Score:2)
The way it works for art and taxes is basically:
1) buy for a lot of money
2) die
3) pass down as inheritance at arbitrary low value
4) heirs sell it as needed, but it's skipped the estate tax
-or-
1) buy
2) sell for less (take capital gains hit)
3) purchaser can sell it for more later
This bypasses gift taxes.
You can also launder money (that is pay taxes on illegitimate earnings) by being an art investor. Basically buy a lot of art from young people when it's cheap, and if someone owes you a large sum for something
One big one you're missing (Score:2)
2. Suddenly there's a market and it's worth $1 mil.
3. Donate art to "museum". Write $1 mil off taxes for a $100k investment.
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If I'm not mistaken, you don't get to write off the million donation of you don't take the appreciation of 100k to 1 million though, right?
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Congratulations to the moron who bought it (Score:2)
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It's early and I haven't had my coffee yet so someone will have to explain this too me. Type slowly because I'm reading slowly.
Some, fool, has bought what they think is an "original" up load of a video and it is completely theirs?
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How is this any different than me buying the legal copyrights to something? Like when The Mouse bought Star Wars for $4B. Disney legal in a court of law say they own Star Wars. Does this process have any legal backing? I suspect I know the answer but I'm clueless on this thing.
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Does this process have any legal backing?
I doubt it. At the very least Google probably retains any distribution rights granted when the video was uploaded. The main thing the NFT grants you is your name in the ledger and the ability to sell/transfer your token in that specific ledger. I doubt it would hold any weight in court, although the copyright holder did sell that space in the ledger so who knows.
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The NFT itself is more like a receipt. The data in the NFT is not a legal contract.
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Your NFT is worthless symbol of nothing.
Oh, you mean like those Bitcoins they were practically giving away a decade ago?
Yes, tell me more about your ability to predict the internet future..
Weird bid (Score:2)
Re: Weird bid (Score:2)
So is it "I have no idea about auctions but luckily I have more money than sense", or is it "I have no idea about auctions but let's try create a market for nonexistent things by having fake bidders"?
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Making a bid like $760,999 would seem to indicate that you've reached your limit.
Yes. $760,999 basically says "$761,000 is too fucking expensive for this crap"
Isn't that in breach of You Tubes terms? (Score:2, Interesting)
"access, reproduce, download, distribute, transmit, broadcast, display, sell, license, alter, modify or otherwise use any part of the Service or any Content except: (a) as specifically permitted by the Service; (b) with prior written permission from YouTube and, if applicable, the respective rights holders; or (c) as permitted by applicable law;"
Use of bold mine.
YouTubes terms [youtube.com]
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The sellers own the original video that was uploaded, so the terms you reference are not relevant. The relevant terms are listed under "Your Content and Conduct" in the "Rights you Grant" section (bolding by me):
You retain ownership rights in your Content. However, we do require you to grant certain rights to YouTube and other users of the Service, as described below.
Following the sale, the "Removing Your Content" section also becomes relevant (bolding by me):
You may remove your Content from the Service at any time. You also have the option to make a copy of your Content before removing it. You must remove your Content if you no longer have the rights required by these terms.
Supid people (Score:2)
Dang (Score:2)
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moved millions of people over thousands of years
You believe in invisible ancient jetliners?
How much does Youtube pay? (Score:2)
How much does Youtube pay, and how (by view, length, etc.)? Anyone have a reasonable estimate of how much has already been earned from all those views? If the new owner reposts it to Youtube, how many views needed to break even?
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rule of thumb: a buck a thou
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I'm waiting ... (Score:2)
And I recorded it (Score:2)
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Actually, I'm the sole owner of it on my blockchain ledger, all other ledgers are inauthentic. I'll let you have 25% ownership though.
I'm perfectly happy to allow... (Score:2)
... one group of rich idiots to pay another group of rich idiots, to remove annoying content from the web permanently.
Can we get someone to buy that stupid dancing baby now? Or maybe the meme with the women pointing at a cat?
Can someone buy those NFTs, like now? I'd LOVE to see them scrubbed from the interwebs as well...
What is actually "owned"? (Score:3)
The owner will also be able to create their own parody of the video featuring Charlie and Harry Davies-Carr.
At least in the US, parody is almost always a fair use that anyone can pursue, so that's obviously not a benefit from owning the NFT.
Ownership is of the token, the checkmark in the blockchain. Nothing else.
NFT buyers are not usually acquiring copyrights, trademarks or the sole ownership of whatever they purchase. They're mostly bought with the idea that their copy is authentic.
What does a "copy" mean? There's nothing physical. So, we're just talking about electronic bits. If the file containing the bits are copied, are there now two copies?
Of course, I shouldn't criticize NFT ownership too much. For most individual corporate stock owners, there is also essentially nothing owned, no tangible benefit to the "ownership" of the stock other than dividends. The real perceived benefit is future price appreciation due to a future purchase by someone who believes they can sell that stock at an even high price to a third party. Just like with an NFT.
Kickbacks (Score:1)
A Møøse once bit my sister (Score:2)
Where's my money?
Do they have to take it down? (Score:2)
Is this even legal? (Score:2)
I'm questioning the legalities here, they're clearly trying to use NFTs as a financial derivative, but without all the regulations attached to derivatives. The regulation of financial derivatives in the US is handled by both the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The parties to financial derivative contracts are regulated by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). Something just feels sketchy AF here.
NFTs and Cyber Currency (Score:2)
are just names and numbers in a ledger.
Remember the International Star Registry ? And how stupid that was... well, everyone is buying their star now, but calling it a Bitcoin or a NFT.
I don't get it... (Score:2)
I really don't get it, why would you ever pay so much money for something as stupid as a video which was posted online and anybody could rip it without paying a dime.. You really must way too much money to pay almost $800K for such a boring stupid video..