Saturday March 12th: Let's Talk About Art Theft
And other things I saw in the space this week
March 11, 2022: Twitter user bobaepicure.eth takes an L for the NFT community and, despite an already-existing thread calling out Swapstr.io as a scam NFT trading platform, tests out if it’s really a scam trading platform.
A true martyr.
As of time of writing, OpenSea has frozen the scammed NFTs, which total 1 Cool Cat, 2 Doodles, and 1 BAYC. Coming on the heels of Yuga Labs acquiring Crypto Punks and Meebits, which jumped the floor price of BAYC up by 84%, the grand theft NFT total value clocks in at a minimum 190 ETH. That one stings.
*Update: March 7, 2022, Twitter user AnasAbdin.eth recounts his experience with Ash.
March 10, 2022: Twitter user Krist0ph posts receipts of conversations between himself and ashrobin.eth (@ashrobinqt) detailing how Ash allegedly stole Krist0ph’s art for his alpha pass.
The whole thing, Twitter thread included, is worth a read, but here’s the overview: the docs and screenshots initially show Krist0ph and Ash discussing concepts and refining thumbnails - then the question of a contract arises. Krist0ph requests the contract be negotiated, stating he had less than 8 hours (overnight) to review a 6 page document that explicitly recommended legal review, and Ash declines, saying he had a lawyer draft the document and under legal advisement will not be negotiating terms.
Ash then announces in his Discord that, because the artist he hired to develop the art for the alpha pass is refusing to agree to reasonable terms, the alpha pass will have to be delayed. Krist0ph replies in the Discord that this is a mischaracterization of the entire situation and is subsequently timed out, apparently by Ash’s girlfriend, alxxandrea.eth. The rest of the screenshots show conversations between Krist0ph and Alxxandrea, and Alxxandrea’s comments on the situation in the Discord.
Krist0ph concludes by reiterating that he has not been paid and that no formal contract was signed. Further, both Ash and Alxxandrea blocked him on Twitter and banned him from the Discord.
Part of this is a much stickier question of concept theft rather than the more commonly understood form of art theft that is outright copying or tracing. Anyone who looks at the 2 banner images and gifs can see that they were created by different artists with different styles, but that they were also given the same or very similar direction with regards to design. That is, they’re both gifs of a car driving on a bridge over water towards a city, with mountains and a sunset fading to nighttime as the background.
Something I wanted to clarify because Krist0ph does state that Ash stole his design by using it without paying for it - not that the other artist Ash worked with simply copied the art. The distinction may seem small but is absolutely critical in the art community, and will likely make it more complicated for Krist0ph to seek any true legal damages, despite filing for the copyright on his design.
Another thing that is worth very brief discussion is DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) takedowns. To extremely oversimplify things, websites themselves are not legally liable for copyright infringing material uploaded to their site, unless a user has reported it as infringing material. The long and short of it is that it is in the site’s best interests to automatically remove/delist/etc. any content that has been reported as infringing, even if it does ultimately fall within fair use.
Basically, I’m not surprised OpenSea delisted the Ash Pass almost immediately following Krist0ph’s reporting of it for infringement. BUT: delisting does not mean the Ash Pass will stay delisted. Something to keep in mind and keep an eye on for the future, especially considering the anecdotes I’ve heard about OpenSea typically ignoring much more blatant cases of art theft/NFT minting without artist permission, and the enormous proliferation of copycat (scam) collections on the site.
To close this out: Ash himself is claiming defamation and that things have “been completely misconstrued and is not true[.]” He has made the difficult decision to refund holders of the Ash Pass as of a Tweet timestamped 8:36PM March 11, 2022.
It will be interesting to see if this situation moves the needle on art/design theft in the space, or at the very least drives more discussion about fair artist compensation. Only time will tell.
Stay safe, stay smart, stay healthy. See you around.