Re: tracking ownership of digital products
>>"The way our society works, the "ownership" of the digital product is with the artist or their agent. As an end-user, at best what you have is ownership of a limited right-to-use."
You can own a product. You can own copyright on something. These are different things. If I own a car, I own it. Even though I don't own the patents that would allow me to manufacture copies. If I own a book, I own it. Even though I don't own the copyrights that would allow me to print copies. And I own a number of digital products. Even though I don't own the copyrights that would allow me to distribute copies. Again, there is nothing inherent to a product being digital that requires the model to be different. So hopefully my question can be answered rather than just have people pontificating on their views on copyright. Especially when even in your own post you concede that what I say is correct.
>>"Airlines could make airline tickets transferrable. They choose not to for the same reason."
Yes. And they did that when you had paper tickets as well. I own several products that I am free to sell on if I wish. So what I am interested in is whether this technology can be used to track ownership. It's a pretty simple question asked genuinely by someone interested in this technology for this purpose.
>>"Yes, such rights could be transferrable. This doesn't require a blockchain: it just requires that the real owners are happy to have transferrable rights, and any way to record that."
This is incorrect and why I am asking my question. With a digital product, reproduction is trivial. If we want to sell a digital product under the same model as a physical product, we need two further things to do that well. The first is to be able to prove legitimate ownership in a scenario where there could be two instances of the same thing (unlike physical goods where if B gains, A loses by an equal amount); and second is for a third party to be able to follow it in order to enforce copyright law. It seems to me that this technology could meet both of those needs very effectively, but I'm hoping that someone who knows about this will reply to me rather than a couple of soap-boxing freetards who conflate ownership of copyright (creation and distribution rights) with ownership of a product.