The three “rules” of sovereign territory are that a territory should identify ownership and control of personal spaces and assets, clarify social roles and regulate interaction in order to minimize conflict, and contribute to one’s sense of place, identity, and belonging. Today, let’s apply these three rules to NFTs.

Territory Identifies Ownership, Control Of Personal Spaces & Assets – Do NFTs?

The artist Attribution created by a copyright does well serve in identifying ownership and control of personal spaces and assets. For creators, attribution is everything, “attribution is currency”, as stated by Melvin Gibbs at the Copyright Office’s Moral Rights Symposium in 2016: “For us, attribution—that is our currency. I don’t exist if people don’t know who I am. I mean that in the most literal sense of “I don’t eat.” Every time something goes out that I’ve participated in that I don’t get attribution for, it affects my family.” Attribution, the action of ascribing a work to a particular creator, is of vital importance to creators – recognition for one’s unadulterated work leads to a positive reputation, which leads to more work, as well as an increase in the valuation of extant works. The very act of attributing a work to its creator can serve as a form of advertising.

Territory Clarifies Social Roles, Regulates Interaction To Minimize Conflict – Do NFTs?

Moral Rights do regulate interaction, minimize conflict, and clarify social roles. A creator is said to have the “moral right” to control his/her work. These moral rights protect the personal and reputational, rather than purely monetary, value of a work to its creator, and are both inalienable and perpetual. Moral rights take precedence over the enforcement of contracts – even if a creator has conveyed away a work or his/her copyright in it, he/she retains the moral rights to the work. Both the Moral Rights of Paternity and Integrity have been taken up in Article 6bis of the Berne Convention, which states: “Independently of the author’s economic rights, and even after the transfer of the said rights, the author shall have the right to claim authorship of the work and to object to any distortion, mutilation, or other modification of, or other derogatory action in relation to, the said work, which would be prejudicial to his honor or reputation.” Creators may, however, waive their moral rights. This freedom to include or exclude moral rights from an agreement is a key element of US copyright law. Further detailed the rights of Moral Rights are The Right Of Divulgation, The Right Of Withdrawal, The Right Of Paternity, and The Right Of Integrity.

Territory Contributes To Place, Identity & Belonging – Do NFTs?

The Free Speech enforced by a copyright does contribute to a sense of place, identity, and belonging. The First Amendment is a fundamental constitutional protection guaranteeing the right of free speech. Copyright law works in concert with the First Amendment to further the goals of protecting and promoting free speech and original expression. As the Supreme Court said in 1985, “The Framers intended copyright itself to be the engine of free expression.” If copyright is the “engine of free expression”, then free expression is the engine’s fuel. Justice Thurgood Marshall advanced the individual fulfillment theory of freedom of speech in his concurring opinion in the prisoner rights case Procunier v. Martinez(416 U.S. 396, 1974) in which he wrote: “The First Amendment serves not only the needs of the polity, but also those of the human spirit – a spirit that demands self-expression. Such expression is an integral part of the development of ideas and a sense of identity. To suppress expression is to reject the basic human desire for recognition and affront the individual’s worth and dignity… It is the role of the First Amendment to protect those precious personal rights by which we satisfy such basic yearnings of the human spirit.” It is clear that free speech, protected by copyright, evolves territorial sovereignty by contributing to one’s sense of place, identity, and belonging, growing one’s recognition in a community, inspiring personal pride and self-respect, and preserving one’s dignity.

Final Thoughts

The application of territorial sovereignty’s three fundamental rules to NFTs reveals that copyright—not the NFT itself—fulfills these sovereign functions in the digital realm. While NFTs serve as proof of ownership for digital assets, it is the underlying copyright framework that truly establishes the territorial markers we seek.

Thanks for reading!