image courtesy of Getty Images The original source code for the internet was sold as a non-fungible token for $5.4 million (£3.9 million). NFTs are ownership certificates for digital things that don’t have a physical equivalent. They do not often include copyright protection, and some claim they are environmentally harmful get-rich-quick schemes. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, sold the NFT to an undisclosed buyer through auction house Sotheby’s. For most of the last day of the auction, the highest price was $3.5 million, but there was a frenzy of bids in the final 15 minutes. The auction began on June 23 with a $1,000 opening bid. What are NFTs, and why are some of them worth millions of dollars? It was a nightmare to find a pink NFT kitty. Sotheby’s said the proceeds would go to causes chosen by Sir Tim and his wife. As part of a single NFT, four different goods were sold: source code files that have been timestamped a video of the code being created in animation Sir Tim writes a letter Sir Tim developed a digital poster of the code. The price was higher than the $2.9 million (£2 million) paid for Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s first tweet, but it was less than the $69 million paid for digital artwork by Beeple at Christie’s auction house in March. Sir Tim invented the World Wide Web in 1989 by using hyperlinks to connect different kinds of information on the early internet. He created the first web browser and server and refused to patent it. Cern, the research organization where Sir Tim worked at the time, renounced all rights to the technology in 1993 and released it into the public domain. “The essential codes and protocols on the web are royalty free, exactly as they have always been,” Sir Tim told the Guardian when the NFT auction was announced. I’m not trying to sell you the internet; you won’t have to start paying to click on links.“ “I’m selling an image that I made with a Python program that I wrote myself of what the source code would look like if it were stuck on the wall and signed by me,” says the seller. Sotheby’s described the lot as “the only signed copy of the code for the first web browser in existence,” equating its sale to the sale of a historical figure’s handwritten documents. NFTs have been chastised for their environmental impact, as the blockchain – which stores ownership data on a digital ledger – consumes enormous amounts of electricity to operate. For the “minting and transaction costs of the sale,” Sotheby’s claimed it would pay for a carbon offset. AuctionsArtInternet/n
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