Artists divided on NFTs, OpenSea works to prevent cases of Fraud and Theft

Late last year, Lois van Baarle searched the world’s largest NFT marketplaces and found over 100 pieces of her art for sale. However, none of these pieces were put up by her.

Van Baarle is a renowned digital artist with millions of followers on social media. She is also part of a growing group of artists who’ve had their online art stolen and minted as unique digital assets on a blockchain.

As NFTs and their marketplaces have grown at a dizzying rate, so too has the theft of digital art. In total, the NFT market is valued at around $25 billion while OpenSea, the world’s largest NFT marketplace, is now valued at $13 billion.

In response to the recent accusations of fraud and theft, OpenSea released a statement saying “It is against our policy to sell NFTs using plagiarized content.”
The company then added that is working to build new image recognition and other tools that will determine if an art piece was stolen content or an original. Furthermore, they have announced that some of these systems will be active in the first half of this year.

Blockchain technology, in theory, is meant to help creators sell their pieces without having to worry about theft. New York-based artist Kenny Schachter has embraced NFTs and claims to have made hundreds of thousands in the past year.

“We’re in an incredible mushrooming of opportunity for digital artists,” said Schachter. “It’s 1,000% better than a year ago, two years ago, when there was no marketplace for any of this art.”

However, other artists may not share this sentiment as supposedly anyone can “mint” a digital file as an NFT, regardless of their true ownership.

“It is much easier to make forgeries in the blockchain space than in the traditional art world. It’s as simple as right-click, save,” said Tina Rivers Ryan, a curator, and expert in digital art at the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, New York. “It’s also harder to fight forgers. How do you sue the anonymous holder of a crypto wallet? In which jurisdiction?”

Source: The Guardian