“The thief would take many works by artists, hoping not to get caught. He was doing heavy work. My work was auctioned on OpenSea as it is, there was even my signature ”, says an artist, victim of copyminter. An Internet user who steals an image and transforms it into an NFT [la mint, comme on dit dans le jargon] to resell it on marketplaces. As a reminder, non-fungible tokens [jeton non fongible en VF] are digital objects or works (photos, videos, tweet, gifs, etc.) with indisputable and inviolable identity, authenticity and traceability thanks to a certificate listed in a blockchain, most often ethereum, including virtual currency (ether) is also known as the second most important after bitcoin.
“People who follow my work warned me that I was on the platform OpenSea (one of the main marketplaces for NFTs). There were around 900 works transformed into NFT which did not belong to her, ”continues the young woman. And the phenomenon is unfortunately not uncommon in the world of NFT. “There are a lot of copyminters,” confirms Cabline *, curator for the
Objkt platform hosted on Tezos, another blockchain that allows you to create NFTs. So how can artists protect themselves?
Anonymity at issue
The platforms are taking measures to fight against these counterfeiters, but their room for maneuver is limited. “On Objkt, these people are automatically blocked when they have already been detected for the first time,” points out Cabline. Often, it is the same people who copy images several times ”. Most of the time, the copyminter does it again by creating new accounts and if they are linked to an old deleted account, they are detected by the platform. Detection takes longer if the individual spoofs for the first time or if the stolen work belongs to a more confidential artist.
“Personally, I spot a number of them,” continues the curator specializing in NFT. We know that some artists are copymintes very regularly, like
Polygon 1993 Where
Matthew Braccini which are very popular ”. If the counterfeiter had time to sell the digital token, the damage is done. There is no longer a way to retroactively remove the NFT from the blockchain. “The acquirer continues to see the NFT in his digital wallet [wallet], but if he looks at his collection on the Objkt platform, he sees an exclamation mark on the NFT in question. It says “restricted account”, “says Cabline. Ideally, the buyer should remove it, but there is no obligation.
“If I see a new suspicious account, I contact him to tell him to verify his account [l’associer à Twitter, par exemple]. Otherwise, the most important collectors will not buy. And I do a Google image search, with Reverse image search to see if the image is from another site, ”explains Cabline. The priority is to educate buyers. Regular collectors know, but those who land in the crypto world can be fooled.
“You have to tell beginners not to buy anything because it’s pretty, insists Benjamin spark**, artist behind the podcast The art of NFT. We have to look at who is selling this work? Is the seller the creator? If you type the seller’s wallet number in
etherscan, you immediately see everything he has sold ”. For its part, the crypto community is doing a lot of alert work. “All our followers on social networks can report a theft to us and especially the NFT community itself, is very vigilant”, continues the painter who started with NFT last January.
A powerful ally
For the victim, this usurpation is not trivial. “The person who creates an NFT from a stolen work of art infringes the reproduction rights because he makes a digital copy of the artist without asking his agreement and the performance rights because he makes a provision of the artist. public ”, emphasizes Bérénice Ferrand, specialist in intellectual property law and lawyer at Avocap 2.2. In addition to that, it infringes the artist’s resale rights, the percentage that the artist receives on the resales of his work.
However, Benjamin Spark is not distraught. According to him, this is no different from the phenomenon of sites which take back illustrations without permission to make clothes. “Many artists have found their works on t-shirts, sometimes even sold by major brands. The NFT only replicates real life, ”he observes. The only significant difference is anonymity. “With NFT, you don’t have the ability to trace back to the account holder. Against whom are you bringing an infringement action? “, Nuance Bérénice Ferrand. The European Mica Directive, expected in 2022, could put some order in this jungle: force the platforms to lift the anonymity of the copyminter and, perhaps, allow content to be removed retroactively. It must still be technically possible. For now, the vagueness benefits the counterfeiter.
In reality, the artist’s only lever is to take the initiative and protect his works by minting itself on the blockchain. “In the past, authors were advised to send each other registered letters with their works inside to have a date, a judicial proof in case of dispute of the date of creation of the work. From now on, we advise customers to encrypt them directly in the blockchain, ”explains Bérénice Ferrand. NFTs can be a powerful ally. “It is the paradox, for the moment, it is a counterfeit tool when it could become a tool for securing rights,” continues the lawyer. Thanks to this technology, the artist has the means to defend himself, to obtain a certain date of his creation and to be paid in royalties via the blockchain ”. It is not said that the most resistant to hear it that way.
* Cabline does not speak on behalf of the Objkt platform.
** Benjamin Spark participates in Fauve Paris meetup this Wednesday which looks at the NFT revolution.