Like most of us know, the Blockchain can be used to ensure the scarcity of digital content. In this case, the content is a Digital Artwork limited to 100 copies (10 have been sold so far!).
I don't see how you can limit the number of actual copies to 100. Don't you limit the number of
registered copies?
you guys dont get it. Think of a lithograph or silkscreen or woodcut print. Artists make these type of things and then create an edition of X numer of prints to protect the value of their work. If they start making more copies after the run is finished, they dilute the value of the work. It is as simple as that. Most print makers destroy the original woodblock or plates or whatever they used to make the print to help ensure that no extra copies are made, but there are legions of cheaters who make fake copies to sell to suckers. Salvidor Dali apparently spent the last few years of his life doing nothing other than putting his signiture on blank peices of paper to be lithographed at a later point in time. For years after his death you could buy "limited edition" prints of all sorts of his work for ~1000$ they used to sell them through ads in the New Yorker magazine. you'd be lucky to get 90$ for one of those now, and that includes the frame.
anyways, forgeries are always a problem, and especially with digital art. This ascribe.io service is a pretty good safeguard against this. The artists submits the desired number of editions to be sold and that is put into the blockchain, also as a digital "watermark" embedded in the digital copy. Its a pretty good solution, because even if artist makes more copies, that is seen publicly in the blockchain as well, just as any fake might be too.
That said, I believe this service is best suited to work that exists in digital form only. Scans of work in other mediums have an entire other layer of security to consider. If I make 100 copies of a scan of a drawing, who is to say that if I scan the same drawing again, that that second scan does not constitute an entirely different work all on its own?
I make art, drawings and collage, and I am quite interested in the ascribe service, but I wouldn't buy an edition of a scanned drawing so I wont be using ascribe just yet to sell editions. However, here is another use-case... Say Joe Blow has a blog that he wants me to submit artwork to, he will pay on publication, I send him a scan, he posts it then does not pay me. If I scanned my drawing and made exactly one copy of it on ascribe I can be guaranteed to be able to prove that I sent this scan to him and add that I expect X in payment.
Also, I have many friends in the arts, many who make digital artwork. Some are simple games, interactive websites, digital looping movies, screensavers, you name it. They are always trying to sell these things, usually on a DVD, but they are pretty much powerless to limit how much they are copied afterwards. Mostly they end up selling a handful of DVDs and then posting their work online for free. This ascribe service opens a new door for these guys to actually protect the ownership of their work and maybe make a little money from it.
Its a great idea, maybe not well suited for art that is not digital...I for one am looking into the possibilities surrounding this. That said, you might just do ok selling copies of your painting based on novelty alone. good luck and happy painting!
