Complexfication ...

Photo-Illustration: Wired Staff; Getty Images

Complexification, you know, the ability to bamboozle and confuse the great unwashed, like me, is everywhere. From needlessly complex software interfaces hindering one to do something simple like saving a file to a specific location to encountering blister packs requiring the use of industrial strength scissors to gain access to some gizmo residing inside while avoiding the possibility of getting badly cut in the process makes one crazy to a fault. 

As a designer, yours truly knows, from experience, to never let a coder design a front end to anything.

With this notion in mind, the interesting Wired article , Should art be regulated by the SEC: NFT Artists' New Lawsuit Seeks Answers. brings complexification to a whole new level.

Note, Click here to see BRT's take on NFTs if you dare. :)

In 1946, a US Supreme Court ruling about the Howey Company, which sold citrus groves to buyers who shared in their profits, cemented the test for determining what a security is. The “Howey Test” defines securities as “an investment of money in a common enterprise with the expectation of profits from the efforts of others.”

In other words, Gottlieb says, it makes an investment contract a security. That can be tricky to apply to art, analog or NFT-affiliated. “When you sell a certificate, what you're really doing is essentially selling art collectors an interest in your art,” Frye says. That means buyers are investing in the expectation “that you're going to get more famous.” That fame, in turn, makes the art more valuable.

If you look at it that way and apply the Howey Test, Gottlieb says, it can look very much like art buyers are investing in a common enterprise and expecting to benefit from the artist’s efforts. The difference, Gottlieb says, is that “artists don’t owe you anything.” You may hope that your purchase of an autographed Brat album will go up in value as Charli XCX keeps selling out concert venues, but that wasn’t promised with the record’s sale. Same, the suit argues, goes for a digital cat cartoon tied to some blockchain-based code.

Sounds rather specious to me.

Complexification (Lie group) writ large. :)