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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 movin
by 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.