Mintable CEO: There is a risk that NFTs are being regulated in the wrong way in the UK

By Tom Mitchelhill, Cointelegraph; Compiler: Song Xue, Golden Finance

Zach Burks, CEO and founder of Mintable, said the UK government is in danger of regulating non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in a way that doesn't align with the nature of emerging technologies.

Burks said in an interview that he believes a recent report by a UK parliamentary committee grossly exaggerated the role NFTs play in copyright infringement and fails to recognise that they are more than just unstable digital images.

"NFTs are in a transition phase, they're moving away from the speculative boom of PFPs, and now they're moving into a variety of different areas to make NFTs a brand. ”**

In its Oct. 11 report, the Commission on Culture, Media and Sports urged the government to take action to protect artists and content creators from copyright infringement related to NFTs.

NFT marketplace needs to do more to address copyright infringement on its platform.

We published a report on "NFTs and Blockchain: Risks to Sports and Culture".

Learn more:

Read our report: pic.twitter.com/GTbtOJCM8m

– Committee on Culture, Media and Sport (@CommonsCMS) 11 October 2023

Berks acknowledged that copyright protection and intellectual property rights for artists are critical, noting that Mintable's own intellectual property protection algorithms can be used to prevent plagiarism on its platform.

However, he explained that while these issues should be a top priority for all NFT platforms, they are not exactly NFT-specific issues.

"These are problems inherent to the internet, not NFTs. ”**

"The regulator says, 'Right now, NFTs are being used to infringe copyright.'" Yes, the same goes for WordPress. The same goes for YouTube. The same goes for Spotify," he said. "So how do you deal with it? Well, some of the biggest, most advanced companies in the world, like Google, are working on this. ”

"They have hundreds of billions of dollars, but they can't solve the problem of cracking down on copyrighted content on YouTube. This question didn't come out of nowhere, as NFTs were created. ”

Berks, who personally corresponds with UK government officials on the issue of NFTs on a weekly basis, said that while NFT platforms should do their best to protect artists, regulators have a responsibility to take a more nuanced view of NFTs as a whole.

It was amazing to speak at the 40th International Symposium on Economic Crime at the University of Cambridge, UK!

learned a lot, met some amazing people, and hopefully will be able to shed some light on those who listened to my many panel discussions about NFTs and the blockchain space! pic.twitter.com/txExSVqTIb

– Zach Burks (@ZachSpaded) September 14, 2023

"You can leverage NFTs in a variety of ways, whether it's car records, property records, bank settlement documents, backup layers, complete supply chain systems, or biofuel companies," he said.

"It's not just a piece of art or a financial instrument. [......] An NFT is actually a website. ”

"If my website is used to sell books, I will be governed by the laws used to sell books. He said with a smile.

In Berks' view, NFTs are an extremely broad range of technologies capable of enabling a number of different functions, and if there is a commission that announces that they will be regulated as digital works of art, it could be a major setback in revealing the true utility of the technology.

"[The Commission] said that the government should implement the EU 17 Copyright Decree for NFTs, which is a terrible regulation in the sense that it's a very broad umbrella," he said.

In the report, the commission said that the "most pressing issue" raised by NFTs is the risk to artists' intellectual property caused by the ease and speed of NFT minting. ** It suggested that they should be regulated by relatively narrow copyright directives, such as Article 17 of the EU Copyright Directive.

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The Commission's recommendations to the UK Government. Source: UK Parliament

"When you say that all NFTs need to have this regulatory element, it's the equivalent of saying, 'We need a piece of legislation that covers this technology,' which probably started with the Edison light bulb, but now we're dealing with Tesla," Berks said.

"So when it comes to the overarching regulatory framework for NFTs as a system application, we have to be very careful not to look at NFTs for what they really are."

Ultimately, Berks believes that the UK government could get some records from the Singapore regulator, which judges NFTs based on specific use cases.

He explained: "Regulators in Singapore first look at what exactly NFTs are before making regulations. For example, if you own an NFT of Tesla stock, then that is a security. ”