Aja Trier, a well-known artist, has had her work stolen before, but this time the theft was far more extensive. 86K NFTs of the artist’s viral “Vincent Van Gogh-style paintings” were in her mailbox when she woke up one morning.
Artwork Stolen and Sold for 86K NFTs by an Artist
NFT theft was not a new occurrence for Trier as reported by The Verge, but it was shocking to see a work of art being taken in such a large-scale manner. In addition, she observed that other people had also stated that they had never before seen stolen artwork of this magnitude
Trier’s art had been listed on OpenSea without her consent, and she had no idea. Artists have been protesting about having their work stolen by criminals and put on the blockchain since the introduction of NFTs. At a $13.3 billion valuation, OpenSea’s Stolen Collection has raised $300 million, the company announced today.
Artists, on the other hand, claim that the entire problem is getting worse as the platform makes billions of dollars. A New York Times report stated that OpenSea had raised “$300 million at a staggering $13.3 billion valuation” when Trier discovered that her work had been stolen.
Bots that scan artists’ online galleries or even Google Image keyword searches and then create collections along with auto-generated captions are now being used to advertise OpenSea items for sale. The Verge says that the situation has reportedly worsened.
OpenSea: A Scammer’s and Art Thief’s Tool for Selling NFTs
Even while OpenSea’s “lazy minting” permits users to display NFTs for sale even without writing them to the blockchain, the incident was no accident, as per NFTTheft.
Scammers can advertise as many stolen products as they want because OpenSea doesn’t charge vendors until the NFT is actually sold. About address this, Protect, a “image identification programme,” was implemented by DeviantArt earlier this year, which alerts select users to NFT marketplace copyright violations, resulting in “a deluge of matches.”
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However, it is up to the artists to delete the ads as soon as they learn of the thievery. After receiving alerts at the beginning of the year, Trier submitted “takedown requests under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act,” or DMCA.
OpenSea’s “complete a separate request for each of tens of thousands of false listings” requirement, on the other hand, would take Trier weeks to complete.
While artists have begun to voice their concerns about OpenSea’s lack of responsiveness since Protect was implemented, NFTTheft found that OpenSea has gotten less responsive.