gbulmash's Journal: Thought Experiment: Selling The Digital Original

Recently I used my limited artistic skills to produce a cartoon of a giraffe's failed suicide attempt. In a flight of fancy, I thought about how I might sell it as fine art rather than mass merchandising it. AFAIK, one of the selling points for certain works of art is that you're buying the original.

But with digitally created pieces, how can you sell the original? How could you certify one digital file as an original vs. a copy? Would you sell the hard drive you stored it on while creating it? Would you buy a computer for each digital work and sell the computer? Do you sell the copyright with the piece, so you surrender the right to make copies?

Part of the value of art sold to collectors is in its scarcity, either through never copying it or allowing only a very few copies in a limited edition. How would you create that sense of uniqueness so that you can add that scarcity premium when selling a digital work?