Consider: Is an NFT that points to another NFT stolen?
The thing is, NFT folks can't have it both ways. The advocates say it's not a URL - it's the art you're buying, that it's going to support artists, that everyone can share in the rewards.
As soon as something goes wrong, well it's actually a URL so take it up with Google, a centralized service, and file a DMCA take-down.
No matter what these grifters are taking advantage of the artist and the buyer.
I'm loving this web3 thing.
I've found that most NFT advocates will agree that you are only paying for a receipt on the blockchain that some central service like OpenSeas equates to you 'owning' a piece of art, and maybe the original artist too, but only conceptually and not legally (services that include signing over copyright notwithstanding).
That this is mostly a status symbol for the wealthy to dump cash into, like digital diamonds, is also a not uncommon view - but the difference is that they think that is a valuable end unto itself, and people like myself don't.
Read the spec. Jeez (not aimed at you, just generalized exasperation).
https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/standards/tokens/erc...
This early phase where NFTs contain URLs to images hosted off-chain is just a situation where an example used to explain the concept ("it's like art") blew up in a completely hilarious way.
buying from the imposter artist obviously doesnt provide patronage to the original artist. that applies to both the NFT world and any other part of commerce in the world.
people arguing here are conflating three or four arguments to create a disingenuous point. the "cant have it both ways" quip stems from a false dichotomy.
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you are buying a url not a picture. correct
buying a url from the original artist supports the original artist. correct
buying a url from the wrong artist does not support the original artist. correct
there is no logical inconsistency or contradiction.
advocates can claim you are buying the picture at the end of the url all the want, but unless the sales contract includes exclusive reproduction rights, that claim is incorrect and has nothing to do with patronage itself.
Openseas looks to be serving up the images, and according to that thread they aren't respecting DMCA requests ("apparently the only way to get them removed is by writing individual emails for each listing"), that's illegal, intentionally doing that is criminal. The people uploading the art without a license are breaking the law regardless of whether or not the site respects the DMCA. The people fraudulently representing themselves as the original artist when they aren't are breaking the law.
I'd also emphasize the fraud part more here, it's not just copyright infringement, it's lying about authorship for financial gain, that's a separate (and in my mind much more serious) crime.
The interesting problem here is that they have started giving artists and their takedown requests the runaround. Like they're running out the clock and trying to placate the bots for as long as possible without taking things down. The intent and actions here is what may get them in trouble.
Artists can go to their host directly (Google) but that doesn't mean that OpenSeas isn't liable the same way torrent sites might be for their users' content.
You've used my creation without my license in a way that certainly violates current law - just because I had eschewed merchandising myself and just because your impact on my sales was positive and not negative - doesn't negate that you took my creative work and profited off of it without any meaningful fair use exception (like making a transformative work).
The NFT you could create to my photo has value because it's to my photo - additionally it prevents me from releasing an NFT and profiting similarly whether or not I ever chose to do so.
Go ahead and create a Mickey Mouse NFT and see just how many seconds it takes for Disney to crush you into the ground - then realize that the only reason most NFTs of unlicensed material go unchallenged is because there isn't a clear precedent yet established that makes it a knock out case - but there absolutely will be.
You serve a PNG of your comic character at https://images.munk-a.com/character.png. (1) I create a website with some HTML including <img src="https://images.munk-a.com/character.png"/>. Did I break a law? (2) I create a JSON document with the text {"url":"https://images.munk-a.com/character.png"}. Did I break a law? (3) I create an NFT transaction on a blockchain conforming the ERC-721 specification that contains an optional URL of "https://images.munk-a.com/character.png". Did I break a law?
As the site operator for images.munk-a.com, do you not have complete control of what is served at path /character.png?
I'd briefly clarify that IANAL so take everything with a grain of salt but I suspect that if you publish my email address in a manner to invite harassment without me being a public figure you could be served a take down notice to force its removal - similar things have happened with people publishing the addresses of private individuals.
I suspect that if you linked to my favorite picture of me relaxing on the beach in the middle of you describing some truly offensive opinions I'd have a right to disassociate my image from your content.
Lastly there's a classic "loophole" (which isn't it's illegal) to get around requiring a liquor license by selling maps to a location where booze can be freely required - I think that's a pretty good mark of precedent that references to things can be equated with the things themselves in the view of the law.
If I printed some t-shirts with some notable trademarks on them and didn't offer to sell you one - but did sell you some instructions so that you could pick it up by getting a key out of such-and-such postbox and then opening a safe in the alley behind the parking lot - I'm pretty sure that carries the exact same legal implications as directly selling you a shirt I'd printed without a license.
If that's the case, then yes, I would agree that using a URL would require permission from the site operator. That would basically bring to a halt the Internet, but yes.
In the context of NFTs, it presents a real problem because they are immutable. If the NFT contains a URL that is not authorized or if the authorization is subsequently withdrawn for any reason, then the NFT is tainted but cannot be destroyed.
There's probably a start up idea around creating a catalog of tainted and untainted NFTs where regulated entities like Coinbase, OpenSea would pay to determine whether there are any claims against an NFT by a rightsholder. But, if OpenSea isn't implementing a proper DMCA process right now, they're probably an unlikely partner and there's not really a deep moat around that idea anyway.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_aspects_of_hyperlink...
[1] https://www.thompsoncoburn.com/insights/blogs/internet-law-t...
[2] https://btlj.org/data/articles2015/vol16/16_3/16-berkeley-te...
[3] https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/201...
I'd also mention that I find the current level to which trademarks and creative works gain protection to be excessive - so I don't really morally agree with how everything works today - but I do think that these parallels likely would cross over to the NFT domain in a pretty predictable way with laws as they currently are.
It's like if I gave you the opportunity to buy the words "The Empire State Building" written on a napkin with a promise to never write those words on any other napkin. You might buy that if, say, I was famous. That's an NFT. You're not the new owner of the Empire State building.
So the analogy would be that some third party took a copy of your photograph of the building and sold the rights to it despite them not having the ability to do so?
An NFT could include the rights to the actual art itself, but most likely youre buying a sole reproduction. Similar to how going and buying a copy of a photograph at the store doesnt necessarily give you the explicit right to reproduce it for profit. Copyright is different from possession. NFTs are possession, unless they spell out that the purchase also transfers the copyright.
[1] https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11478
In other words, the complaint is that when you curl e.g. https://images.opensea.com/some-pixel-artwork it returns a PNG of the pixel art without adequate license metadata, and there's no one to talk to that will fix the issue.
Correct. The victims here are both the buyer (who bought thinking they purchased from the creator) and the creator (who would have earned that revenue if they created the NFT).
The solution is really just better moderation and UX- OpenSea needs to make it easy to determine whether the creator is actually the creator, or just someone who re-uploaded the content.
Personally I think information should be free.
How do you feel about DMCA being used to takedown NFTs via Google and Cloudflare, in some cases against the original artist?
I feel bad about DMCA being used at all.
I don’t want anyone prosecuted for sharing information. I’m just mentioning that the “it’s just links” defense might not hold up, based on prior events.
> Federal courts are split, and recent rulings found that embedding social media posts on third-party websites could be copyright infringement.
> Some decisions have even stated that while social media sites “clearly foresee the possibility of entities…using web embeds to share other users’ content, none of them expressly grants a sublicense to those who embed publicly posted content.” The courts rejected motions to dismiss for fair use, stating that sharing such content is not a transformative use.
A seller who embeds a copyrighted image into an NFT marketplace listing without the necessary publishing rights and then sells the NFT would be more likely to be liable for copyright infringement than the social media embedder. This is because commercial use of copyrighted content is less likely to satisfy the fair use criteria:[2]
> Purpose and character of the use, including whether the use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes: Courts look at how the party claiming fair use is using the copyrighted work, and are more likely to find that nonprofit educational and noncommercial uses are fair. This does not mean, however, that all nonprofit education and noncommercial uses are fair and all commercial uses are not fair; instead, courts will balance the purpose and character of the use against the other factors below. Additionally, “transformative” uses are more likely to be considered fair. Transformative uses are those that add something new, with a further purpose or different character, and do not substitute for the original use of the work.
Someone who sells an NFT without publishing rights is harming the market for NFTs derived from the copyrighted work. This also reduces the chance that a fair use defense would be accepted in court:[2]
> Effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work: Here, courts review whether, and to what extent, the unlicensed use harms the existing or future market for the copyright owner’s original work. In assessing this factor, courts consider whether the use is hurting the current market for the original work (for example, by displacing sales of the original) and/or whether the use could cause substantial harm if it were to become widespread.
[1] https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/is-embedding-socia...
What law(s) are you claiming that OpenSea is breaking?
It isn't legal to knowingly facilitate sales of stolen goods, is it?
[1] https://support.opensea.io/hc/articles/4412092785043-What-ca...
TLDR: Links are being sold, not art. Not stolen art. You can't steal art and put it into an NFT because NFTs don't carry image data (as currently defined in ERC-721).
You may be familiar with JSON. Can you imagine a JSON document with a URL attribute? Now can you imagine selling that JSON document to someone else? That's an NFT (sans some crypto that makes duplicating that document impossible).
You may be familiar with HTML. Imagine selling a hyperlink to someone else. Literally the string '<a href="...">' tag. That's an NFT (sans some crypto that makes duplicating that string impossible).
Nothing is being sold other than the ownership of one unique JSON document or one unique HTML string.
If people want to believe that a picture of the Empire State building makes them the new owners of the Empire State building, I don't know what to say.
Other than that one employee that was caught front running and was then terminated I see nothing illegal or even close to illegal. There is no difference between opensee and ebay other than that only NFTs are sold.
1. Hackers acquiring private keys and stealing an actual NFT (the token) and moving it into an account they control. Aside from the base-level cryptocurrency malware/phishing, this doesn't seem prevalent, and is really the only thing in this list I'd describe as actual theft.
2. Non-artist creates an NFT using someone else's art, without their knowledge or permission. This might be a copyright violation, depending on the terms set by the original artist when publishing their work. Maybe it's a derived work... is "this jpeg but as an NFT" art in and of itself? I don't think so, but what do I know. This seems like what you're referring to here.
3. Artist creates an NFT of a jpeg of their own art, and then either sells or keeps the NFT. Later, someone views the corresponding jpeg in their web browser, right-click -> save-as, now they have a digital print of art that they paid nothing for. I've seen NFT cryptobros sensationally refer to this as "right click fraud," but it really just sounds like crocodile tears. I mean, really. Everybody knows how browsers work. This is one of the many examples of why NFTs are utterly stupid, but this also seems like it would be a copyright violation, at best.
4. Various combinations of 2. and 3. Maybe you right-click "stole" some images from one NFT, and then mint your own NFT of bit-identical images on a different chain. Or maybe you modified the image encoding so that the images are pixel-identical but not bit-identical, and minted NFTs on the same chain. This is all still just "maybe a copyright violation" until you try to pass it off as something it isn't, and then it's "maybe fraud" as well.