4 ms·

you are right: it is trivially easy to publish any media file and assign an NFT to it and then list it for sale, and there is a lot of copyright infringement as

by web4 4y ago

you are right: it is trivially easy to publish any media file and assign an NFT to it and then list it for sale, and there is a lot of copyright infringement as a result. all of these articles claim widespread theft and stolen work, but a surprising lack of data on how much of that is actually sold considering all of those payments should be publicly traceable on the blockchain. imagine putting a Damien Hirst image on OpenSea only for nobody to purchase it. is this a complex form of art forgery and art theft? in some cases this process is automated by bot-scripts scraping DeviantArt, and the end result is like spam mail. maybe there is a buyer naive enough to purchase your Hirst image thinking it is authentically from the artist, and in that case I sympathize just as I do when an unsuspecting user falls for an email scam. it is also trivially easy to look at these scam tokens and realize they are not from the authentic collection they claim to be, or that the minter does not match the artist's public address, or that the artist is not even claiming to make nfts and therefore a nft of their work is unlikely to be authentic. if you look at art forgery in traditional media, not only is it rampant but it actually accounts for millions of dollars per year, and many high value paintings do not have a clear provenance and authenticity as this information is easily lost and altered over the course of history. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/fake-art-france-culture-spd https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/fake-art-...

dmitriid 4y ago
> all of these articles claim widespread theft and stolen work, but a surprising lack of data on how much of that is actually sold considering all of those payments should be publicly traceable on the blockchain. Payments, yes. But not provenance. Because you'd have to find all the artists, then all their work, then sift through all the listings at OpenSea, and cross-reference that. Because the following statement from you is a blatant lie: > it is also trivially easy to look at these scam tokens and realize they are not from the authentic collection they claim to be No. It's impossible to say whether something is from a legitimate artist or not. > if you look at art forgery in traditional media, not only is it rampant but it actually accounts for millions of dollars per year NFT scams are significantly more rampant because stealing a digital image trivial. As is pretending someone you're not. Quote: "DeviantArt has sent 90,000 alerts about possible fraud to thousands of their users since then, company executives said. It’s now scanning for fraud across 4m newly minted NFTs each week. The number of alerts doubled from October to November, and grew by 300% from November to mid-December." [1] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/global/2022/jan/29/huge-mess-of-theft-artists-sound-alarm-theft-nfts-proliferates https://www.theguardian.com/global/2022/jan/29/huge-mess-of-...
- web4 4y ago
  > Because the following statement from you is a blatant lie ... It's impossible to say whether something is from a legitimate artist or not. lol, have you ever looked at the chain? if an artist has been minting work for 1 year on the same public address and then suddenly somebody purchases a lookalike token from a different public address there is a high likelihood it is a copymint. you can avoid this by comparing the addresses, it does not take an art history expert to detect this form of copyminting. many platforms will show attribution based on address and username. so if the artwork is attributed to b33ple.eth instead of beeple.eth then it is likely a copymint. > DeviantArt has sent 90,000 alerts about possible fraud to thousands of their users since then, company executives said it’s clear copyright infringement, but easily detectable to the point that DeviantArt is able to automate their search, and not a sophisticated form of forgery. still you are not able to provide evidence of significant funds being consistently lost here despite it being so prevalent, especially when you compare to trad art forgery where you can easily find evidence of millions of dollars per year being mistakenly spent on forged artworks. it is like Nigerian prince email scams. part of the protocol that some unfortunate and naive users might fall for, but most users will learn to recognize and avoid this problem in time.
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    > lol, have you ever looked at the chain? Yes, I have > if an artist has been minting work for 1 year on the same public address No ifs. There artists right now whose work is sstolen and sold without their knowledge > many platforms will show attribution based on address and username. so if the artwork is attributed to b33ple.eth instead of beeple.eth then it is likely a copymint. Ah yes. And you know the exact addresses and the exact attribution for all hundreds of thoudands of digital artists, right. > it’s clear copyright infringement, but easily detectable to the point that DeviantArt is able to automate their search No. It's not "easily detectable". It's detectable because DeviantArt hosts some digital artists, and they still have to lookup, download and analyse 4 million OpenSea submissions a day, and match them against 350 million images in the DeviantArt database. And that is a tiny fraction of all the digital art in the world. Besides, if it was so easy, show me a single NFT marketplace that automatically takes down stolen art. > naive users might fall for, but most users will learn to recognize and avoid this problem in time. And how exactly are they going to recognize the problem? E.g. someone sells NFT of an image that you like. What are the exact steps to find out if it's legitimate? Keep in mind that there are hundreds of thousands of people producing millions of images across hundreds of thousands of websites and platforms.

by web4 4y ago

dmitriid 4y ago

> all of these articles claim widespread theft and stolen work, but a surprising lack of data on how much of that is actually sold considering all of those payments should be publicly traceable on the blockchain. Payments, yes. But not provenance. Because you'd have to find all the artists, then all their work, then sift through all the listings at OpenSea, and cross-reference that. Because the following statement from you is a blatant lie: > it is also trivially easy to look at these scam tokens and realize they are not from the authentic collection they claim to be No. It's impossible to say whether something is from a legitimate artist or not. > if you look at art forgery in traditional media, not only is it rampant but it actually accounts for millions of dollars per year NFT scams are significantly more rampant because stealing a digital image trivial. As is pretending someone you're not. Quote: "DeviantArt has sent 90,000 alerts about possible fraud to thousands of their users since then, company executives said. It’s now scanning for fraud across 4m newly minted NFTs each week. The number of alerts doubled from October to November, and grew by 300% from November to mid-December." [1] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/global/2022/jan/29/huge-mess-of-theft-artists-sound-alarm-theft-nfts-proliferates https://www.theguardian.com/global/2022/jan/29/huge-mess-of-...

web4 4y ago
> Because the following statement from you is a blatant lie ... It's impossible to say whether something is from a legitimate artist or not. lol, have you ever looked at the chain? if an artist has been minting work for 1 year on the same public address and then suddenly somebody purchases a lookalike token from a different public address there is a high likelihood it is a copymint. you can avoid this by comparing the addresses, it does not take an art history expert to detect this form of copyminting. many platforms will show attribution based on address and username. so if the artwork is attributed to b33ple.eth instead of beeple.eth then it is likely a copymint. > DeviantArt has sent 90,000 alerts about possible fraud to thousands of their users since then, company executives said it’s clear copyright infringement, but easily detectable to the point that DeviantArt is able to automate their search, and not a sophisticated form of forgery. still you are not able to provide evidence of significant funds being consistently lost here despite it being so prevalent, especially when you compare to trad art forgery where you can easily find evidence of millions of dollars per year being mistakenly spent on forged artworks. it is like Nigerian prince email scams. part of the protocol that some unfortunate and naive users might fall for, but most users will learn to recognize and avoid this problem in time.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  > lol, have you ever looked at the chain? Yes, I have > if an artist has been minting work for 1 year on the same public address No ifs. There artists right now whose work is sstolen and sold without their knowledge > many platforms will show attribution based on address and username. so if the artwork is attributed to b33ple.eth instead of beeple.eth then it is likely a copymint. Ah yes. And you know the exact addresses and the exact attribution for all hundreds of thoudands of digital artists, right. > it’s clear copyright infringement, but easily detectable to the point that DeviantArt is able to automate their search No. It's not "easily detectable". It's detectable because DeviantArt hosts some digital artists, and they still have to lookup, download and analyse 4 million OpenSea submissions a day, and match them against 350 million images in the DeviantArt database. And that is a tiny fraction of all the digital art in the world. Besides, if it was so easy, show me a single NFT marketplace that automatically takes down stolen art. > naive users might fall for, but most users will learn to recognize and avoid this problem in time. And how exactly are they going to recognize the problem? E.g. someone sells NFT of an image that you like. What are the exact steps to find out if it's legitimate? Keep in mind that there are hundreds of thousands of people producing millions of images across hundreds of thousands of websites and platforms.