Many NFTs have a big problem these days Which one? It’s very simple, anyone can copy them.
The problem of duplicate content has existed on the internet for a long time. Here the huge problem is that there is no legal framework to fight against those people who “violate the copyright of NFTs”.
Everyone has been talking about non-fungible tokens for a long time and all the benefits that come with it. Yet no one talks about issue with NFTs and in this article, we have decided to enlighten you a bit more regarding a harsh reality for anyone who decides to collect NFTs.
Table of Contents
What are NFTs?
Non-fungible tokens are an asset class that exist only in digital form. In the same way as cryptocurrency, to which it is closely related, the record of ownership remains on a blockchain and digital ledger.
But the big difference with cryptocurrencies is that NFTs are unique. Non-expendable means that they are not tradeable with each other. This makes all NFTs unique, something very different from cryptocurrencies, where each unit or coin can be exchanged for another of the same value.
Considering that an NFT is unique, the exchange mode is poor. The power of coins lies in the sense that anyone can exchange them for anyone of the same type. Let’s pretend we have about 10 dollar bills in our pocket and we want to buy a piece of candy that costs $1, we can pay for it with any of those bills, it’s not like the store clerk is going to reject one and accept another.
On the other hand, precisely what makes NFTs uninteresting as coins makes them appealing to collectors. After all, we are talking about something that is one of a kind, someone must want to own it. Actually, it doesn’t even matter what it is, its rarity makes many people want it.
The problem of “Owning” an NFT
But NFTs have a pretty weird quirk, they’re not actually outright property. Let’s give an example of something: let’s pretend that we invested $8 million in a strange stamp, we would own this piece of paper. It would be in a temperature-controlled cabinet in a massive library in a mansion we assume to be the property of millionaire collectors.
This is something that is quite in contrast to NFTs; they are not owned. For example, Malaysian businessman Sina Estavi bought Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s first tweet for almost $3 million and here we can see a copy of that tweet.
In this case, it is not as if Islabit had a large enough budget to be able to acquire the tweet in question. All we do is right click, Save As and that’s it. We can even take a screenshot and own a misspelled tweet. The craziest thing of all is that we wouldn’t be breaking any laws either.
Half certified?
This is because Mr. Estavi does not actually own the tweet, but instead has a certificate of authenticity that says he owns the tweet. However, in the real world, it is as if we bought the deed to a house, but not the house itself. Do you understand?
Technically speaking, NFTs are protected by copyright. Harry Richt, is a New York attorney who commented: By default, the author of an NFT has all exclusive rights, including the ability to create copies of it, the buyer of the NFT has the right to display or sell that specific NFT. From what Richt says, the author can also prosecute people who infringe those rights.
On the other hand, we met another lawyer, Max Dilendort, also from New York, who said something similar. Although in this case he focused a little more on the fact that the intellectual property of NFTs is a contractual matter and depends on the platform on which it is acquired. Platforms have different rules regarding copyright.
These problems can also be found in the EU and in several countries around the world.
Lawsuits for using copy an NFT?
As for the issue of copyright lawsuits, they are too few and too sporadic. From Slate we can see an article where they carefully analyze what people were doing with these tokens and so far, not one person has been sued.
Currently, there is nothing stopping us from taking and copying an image of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, an NFT owners club that features celebrities like Jimmy Fallon. Actually, we are not going to be part of this exclusive club, although we can make fun of them a little.
The situation is strange, because the only thing they can do is just complain about it through Twitter, nothing more than that.
We can even find a kind of The Pirate Bay, but from NFT where we can download and load all the NFT we want, this “service” is called “NFT Bay”. Of course, we are aware that non-fungible token holders will not be happy with these kinds of sites. However, lacking a legal framework, we doubt that they can do anything about it.
