8 ms·

OpenSea is a great example of break the law until you get caught and then pay a small fine. They just haven't reached the "get caught" part yet. Putting utter r

OpenSea is a great example of break the law until you get caught and then pay a small fine. They just haven't reached the "get caught" part yet. Putting utter ridiculousness of NFTs aside, a lot of the art on the site is straight up stolen and artist have very little recourse in what they can do. Here is a good Twitter thread from Loish summarizing the state of affairs for artist https://nitter.net/loishh/status/1470340143970230277 https://nitter.net/loishh/status/1470340143970230277

politician 5y ago
Art can't be stolen by NFTs because NFTs don't contain content, only links to content. When you buy an NFT, you're buying some metadata containing a URL of some art -- a pointer. Artists that are upset about hyperlinks to copyrighted images should go after the hosting servers with DMCA claims or the equivalent. Consider: Is an NFT that points to another NFT stolen?
- verdverm 5y ago
  Consider, is OpenSea displaying copyrighted images, what is their legal liability?
  - politician 5y ago
    Forget OpenSea. If Wikipedia willfully displays unlicensed images taken from Getty Images, Getty Images could get them taken down using existing legal tools.
    - verdverm 5y ago
      Also consider copyright holders are free to choose who they enforce their rights against. Same applies to licenses.
- noodle 5y ago
  Isn't the NFT selling the premise that the owner of the NFT owns the art being pointed to? Maybe it isn't theft but it does seem to be fraud? Or if the argument is that NFTs don't convey some sort of ownership over the thing it points to, what's even the point of NFTs?
  - politician 5y ago
    No, what's being sold is ownership of a unique set of metadata stored in a blockchain. There's nothing connecting a NFT to an underlying asset. 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.
    - edmundsauto 5y ago
      I admit I don't understand NFTs much, but would a reasonable analogy be a photograph? I could take a picture of the Empire State Building, sell you the rights to the picture? Except, with an NFT, it's a blockchain identified bit of numbers rather than a picture?
      - politician 5y ago
        Yes, that's a reasonable analogy. Now extend it with some crypto-magic that makes duplicating that picture impossible, that's an NFT.
        noodle 5y ago
        But the complaint is that people are selling the rights to pictures via NFTs that they don't have the rights to sell in the first place, isn't it? 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?
        5y ago
- arcticbull 5y ago
  Sure if we pretend really hard. 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.
  - anonymousab 5y ago
    > The advocates say it's not a URL - it's the art you're buying 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.
  - politician 5y ago
    I mean, at some point isn't it reasonable to expect people to do some basic due diligence before dropping 10k on some metadata. If they don't, who's fault is that really? Read the spec. Jeez (not aimed at you, just generalized exasperation). https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/standards/tokens/erc-721 https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/standards/tokens/erc...
    - Gigachad 5y ago
      If people did due diligence, there would be no such thing as an NFT.
      - politician 5y ago
        I wouldn't go that far. I think there's legitimate value in a digital product that is one-of-a-kind for which the creator is cryptographically prevented from duplicating in an undetectable way. I think there's also value in the idea of some attributes of the instance not being settled or known until the initial transaction completes. 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.
- gpm 5y ago
  Art can't be stolen by NFTs, it can be stolen (for a slightly loose definition of steal, including copyright infringement and wire fraud) by people selling NFTs though. 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.
  - politician 5y ago
    That's a good clarification. My point is that there's nothing special happening here legally just because cryptocurrency is involved. It's illegal to distribute copyrighted content without appropriate licenses.
    - gpm 5y ago
      I don't believe anyone ever said it was illegal because cryptocurrency is involved... Indeed this thread started with the comment "[...] Putting utter ridiculousness of NFTs aside [...] 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.
- anonymousab 5y ago
  They're hosting copyrighted material (images, perhaps just cached?) without permission. They had a takedown process that they've now eschewed in favor of making artists give up more personal details to get something taken down. 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.
- lewispollard 5y ago
  I work with a pixel artist whose work was sold on OpenSea. The "owners" of the NFTs certainly didn't seem to understand the nuances you've commented in this thread with - they (and all their buddies) straight up harassed him on every online channel they could find him demanding to talk about "ownership" or otherwise spamming obnoxious and obscene things. So it's not just potential IP theft and fraud, it's also harassment from an army of crypto cultists who don't even understand what it is they're rallying around.
  - politician 5y ago
    I agree that people can be both stupid and cruel.
- atom_arranger 5y ago
  Torrent websites tried to use the same defense and it didn’t work, unfortunately IMO. Personally I think information should be free.
  - aspenmayer 5y ago
    What do you mean? Torrents are legal in many jurisdictions around the world. How do you feel about DMCA being used to takedown NFTs via Google and Cloudflare, in some cases against the original artist?
    - atom_arranger 5y ago
      I mean in many countries torrent search/website operators were prosecuted despite only hosting links/metadata. e.g. People involved with The Pirate Bay. 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.
- munk-a 5y ago
  Consider for a moment that I am comic book artist and have made a wonderful popular series. I consider myself a purist so I've decided to decline offers for merchandising and make plenty of cash just off of comic sales alone. You figure people would really want a t-shirt with my character on it and so you start printing some and selling them - it even turns into an overnight success and suddenly my comic sales are up because memes have caused the character to go mainstream. 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.
  - politician 5y ago
    I'm pretty sure your example doesn't apply to NFTs but am willing to think through it with you. Consider the following counter example: You serve a PNG of your comic character at https://images.munk-a.com/character.png 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"/> 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 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 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?
    - munk-a 5y ago
      I am pretty sure, legally speaking that for both 1, 2 and 3 The answer is Yes - but generally nobody cares. 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.
- commoner 5y ago
  Embedding copyrighted images into social media posts without the necessary publishing rights has already been found to be illegal in some cases:[1] > 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-social-media-content-legal-courts-disagree https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/is-embedding-socia... [2] https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/more-info.html https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/more-info.html
Ansil849 5y ago
> OpenSea is a great example of break the law until you get caught a What law(s) are you claiming that OpenSea is breaking?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- sschueller 5y ago
  Providing an interface to smart contractors on ethereum and other blockchains. /s 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.
- chias 5y ago
  > a lot of the art on the site is straight up stolen and artist have very little recourse in what they can do It isn't legal to knowingly facilitate sales of stolen goods, is it?
  - Ansil849 5y ago
    Where are you getting the 'knowingly' qualifier from? Are the operators of $random_auction_site also knowingly facilitating the sales of stolen goods?
    - BoysenberryPi 5y ago
      Let's give OpenSea the benefit of doubt and say they don't know their platform is being used to illegally sale things the distributor doesn't own. I see no reason they shouldn't be held to the same copyright rules that Youtube is after the Youtube vs Viacom judgement that says Youtube has to put forth a good faith effort to upholding copyright on their site. As far as I know OpenSea has no tools to do. If they are seeking a 13B valuation then they absolutely have the resources to implement tool for artist to more easily protect their work and seek compensation if their work is stolen and sold. Also people saying "I see no difference between OpenSea and eBay" are naive. The dose makes the poison and it is much easier for me to steal some artist work and sell it as an NFT than it is for me to steal my neighbor's phone and sell it on eBay. There is a huge risk in getting caught and both eBay as well as cell phone manufacturers have tools in place to reduce theft such as blacklisting the stolen phone's IMEI.
ohazi 5y ago
What do people generally mean when they talk about "stolen art" w.r.t. NFTs? 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.

politician 5y ago

Art can't be stolen by NFTs because NFTs don't contain content, only links to content. When you buy an NFT, you're buying some metadata containing a URL of some art -- a pointer. Artists that are upset about hyperlinks to copyrighted images should go after the hosting servers with DMCA claims or the equivalent. Consider: Is an NFT that points to another NFT stolen?

verdverm 5y ago
Consider, is OpenSea displaying copyrighted images, what is their legal liability?
- politician 5y ago
  Forget OpenSea. If Wikipedia willfully displays unlicensed images taken from Getty Images, Getty Images could get them taken down using existing legal tools.
  - verdverm 5y ago
    Also consider copyright holders are free to choose who they enforce their rights against. Same applies to licenses.
noodle 5y ago
Isn't the NFT selling the premise that the owner of the NFT owns the art being pointed to? Maybe it isn't theft but it does seem to be fraud? Or if the argument is that NFTs don't convey some sort of ownership over the thing it points to, what's even the point of NFTs?
- politician 5y ago
  No, what's being sold is ownership of a unique set of metadata stored in a blockchain. There's nothing connecting a NFT to an underlying asset. 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.
  - edmundsauto 5y ago
    I admit I don't understand NFTs much, but would a reasonable analogy be a photograph? I could take a picture of the Empire State Building, sell you the rights to the picture? Except, with an NFT, it's a blockchain identified bit of numbers rather than a picture?
    - politician 5y ago
      Yes, that's a reasonable analogy. Now extend it with some crypto-magic that makes duplicating that picture impossible, that's an NFT.
      - noodle 5y ago
        But the complaint is that people are selling the rights to pictures via NFTs that they don't have the rights to sell in the first place, isn't it? 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?
        5y ago
arcticbull 5y ago
Sure if we pretend really hard. 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.
- anonymousab 5y ago
  > The advocates say it's not a URL - it's the art you're buying 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.
- politician 5y ago
  I mean, at some point isn't it reasonable to expect people to do some basic due diligence before dropping 10k on some metadata. If they don't, who's fault is that really? Read the spec. Jeez (not aimed at you, just generalized exasperation). https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/standards/tokens/erc-721 https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/standards/tokens/erc...
  - Gigachad 5y ago
    If people did due diligence, there would be no such thing as an NFT.
    - politician 5y ago
      I wouldn't go that far. I think there's legitimate value in a digital product that is one-of-a-kind for which the creator is cryptographically prevented from duplicating in an undetectable way. I think there's also value in the idea of some attributes of the instance not being settled or known until the initial transaction completes. 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.
gpm 5y ago
Art can't be stolen by NFTs, it can be stolen (for a slightly loose definition of steal, including copyright infringement and wire fraud) by people selling NFTs though. 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.
- politician 5y ago
  That's a good clarification. My point is that there's nothing special happening here legally just because cryptocurrency is involved. It's illegal to distribute copyrighted content without appropriate licenses.
  - gpm 5y ago
    I don't believe anyone ever said it was illegal because cryptocurrency is involved... Indeed this thread started with the comment "[...] Putting utter ridiculousness of NFTs aside [...] 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.
anonymousab 5y ago
They're hosting copyrighted material (images, perhaps just cached?) without permission. They had a takedown process that they've now eschewed in favor of making artists give up more personal details to get something taken down. 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.
lewispollard 5y ago
I work with a pixel artist whose work was sold on OpenSea. The "owners" of the NFTs certainly didn't seem to understand the nuances you've commented in this thread with - they (and all their buddies) straight up harassed him on every online channel they could find him demanding to talk about "ownership" or otherwise spamming obnoxious and obscene things. So it's not just potential IP theft and fraud, it's also harassment from an army of crypto cultists who don't even understand what it is they're rallying around.
- politician 5y ago
  I agree that people can be both stupid and cruel.
atom_arranger 5y ago
Torrent websites tried to use the same defense and it didn’t work, unfortunately IMO. Personally I think information should be free.
- aspenmayer 5y ago
  What do you mean? Torrents are legal in many jurisdictions around the world. How do you feel about DMCA being used to takedown NFTs via Google and Cloudflare, in some cases against the original artist?
  - atom_arranger 5y ago
    I mean in many countries torrent search/website operators were prosecuted despite only hosting links/metadata. e.g. People involved with The Pirate Bay. 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.
munk-a 5y ago
Consider for a moment that I am comic book artist and have made a wonderful popular series. I consider myself a purist so I've decided to decline offers for merchandising and make plenty of cash just off of comic sales alone. You figure people would really want a t-shirt with my character on it and so you start printing some and selling them - it even turns into an overnight success and suddenly my comic sales are up because memes have caused the character to go mainstream. 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.
- politician 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure your example doesn't apply to NFTs but am willing to think through it with you. Consider the following counter example: You serve a PNG of your comic character at https://images.munk-a.com/character.png 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"/> 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 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 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?
  - munk-a 5y ago
    I am pretty sure, legally speaking that for both 1, 2 and 3 The answer is Yes - but generally nobody cares. 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.
commoner 5y ago
Embedding copyrighted images into social media posts without the necessary publishing rights has already been found to be illegal in some cases:[1] > 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-social-media-content-legal-courts-disagree https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/is-embedding-socia... [2] https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/more-info.html https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/more-info.html

Ansil849 5y ago

> OpenSea is a great example of break the law until you get caught a What law(s) are you claiming that OpenSea is breaking?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
sschueller 5y ago
Providing an interface to smart contractors on ethereum and other blockchains. /s 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.
chias 5y ago
> a lot of the art on the site is straight up stolen and artist have very little recourse in what they can do It isn't legal to knowingly facilitate sales of stolen goods, is it?
- Ansil849 5y ago
  Where are you getting the 'knowingly' qualifier from? Are the operators of $random_auction_site also knowingly facilitating the sales of stolen goods?
  - BoysenberryPi 5y ago
    Let's give OpenSea the benefit of doubt and say they don't know their platform is being used to illegally sale things the distributor doesn't own. I see no reason they shouldn't be held to the same copyright rules that Youtube is after the Youtube vs Viacom judgement that says Youtube has to put forth a good faith effort to upholding copyright on their site. As far as I know OpenSea has no tools to do. If they are seeking a 13B valuation then they absolutely have the resources to implement tool for artist to more easily protect their work and seek compensation if their work is stolen and sold. Also people saying "I see no difference between OpenSea and eBay" are naive. The dose makes the poison and it is much easier for me to steal some artist work and sell it as an NFT than it is for me to steal my neighbor's phone and sell it on eBay. There is a huge risk in getting caught and both eBay as well as cell phone manufacturers have tools in place to reduce theft such as blacklisting the stolen phone's IMEI.

ohazi 5y ago

What do people generally mean when they talk about "stolen art" w.r.t. NFTs? 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.