28/12/2021 Messy NFT drop angers infosec pioneers with unauthorized portraits
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Illustration by Alex Castro / The VergeAn unauthorized NFT drop celebrating infosec pioneers has collapsed into a mess of conflicting takedowns and piracy.
Released on Christmas Dayby a group called āItsBlockchain,ā the āCipher Punksā NFT package included portraits of 46 distinct figures, with ten copies of each token. Taken at their opening price, the full value of the drop was roughly $4,000. But almost immediately, the infosec community began to raise objections ā including some from the portrait subjects themselves.
The portrait images misspelled several names ā including EFF speech activist Jillian York and OpenPGP creator Jon Callas ā and based at least one drawing on a copyright-protected photograph. More controversially, the list included some figures who have been ostracized for harmful personal behavior, includingJacob AppelbaumandRichard Stallman.
Responding on Twitter, York tweeted a link to her own portrait and said simply, āI donāt approve of this whatsoever and would like it removed.ā
Removing the NFTs has been more complicated than it might seem. The ItsBlockchain team apologized on Twitter for not obtaining likeness rights in advance and said it has removed 28 NFTs from the group and burned two others. But thereās no clear procedure for removing tokens that have already been sold, and ItsBlockchain is mostly counting on the central OpenSea platform to remove the tokens and resolve the issue. ItsBlockchain has appealed to the platform for guidance, but so far it has received little guidance. (OpenSea did not respond to a request for comment.)
āWe have been trying to resolve this issue ... we want to take it down,ā the group said in an email toThe Verge. āOpenSea involvement would make the job easy at this stage.ā
The incident is a reminder of the potentially thorny legal issues around NFTs, wherenorms of permissionless innovationoften clash with likeness rights and intellectual property law. Typically, US laws around publicity rights hold that a personās name and identity canāt be used for promotion without their consent ā although itās unclear how such a lawsuit would work in practice when applied to NFTs.
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https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/27/22855644/cipher-punk-nft-drop-jillian-york-opensea-tokens
