Digitally stolen artist’s work
Illustrator Josh Kirby passes by Squeaksy and boasts nearly 25,000 Instagram followers. He recently discovered that someone is selling a digital version of his work on the NFT Marketplace.
new york ―――― Josh Kirby has built his business around tattoos and illustrations of all kinds of art. His favorites are Looney Tunes characters, Mickey Mouse, and even Spider-Man.Josh passes by Mr. Squeeksy It boasts about 25,000 Instagram followers.
NFT Marketplace is a non-fungible token digital marketplace where artists can sell their work digitally and pass it on to interested buyers. Josh’s business was booming online until one day he ran into a bunch of messages from his army of followers.
“I woke up and is this your artwork? I didn’t have an NFT. I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Josh said. “So I went and found out that this person has 5 different websites that impersonate me and talk to my friends. He talks to my customers as I.”
It turns out that his own illustration was stolen and resold to an unsuspecting NFT buyer. The scammers visited Josh’s Instagram account, took screenshots of his dozens of works, and suggested trading on OpenSea, one of the largest NFT platforms.
“It was very shocking to see 30 of my works completely stolen and sold,” Josh said.
Josh is just one of the growing numbers of artists whose online images have been stolen. The increase in NFT theft has led to a surge in the non-fungible token market over the past year. Fraud against these hard-working artists has urged some to seek change.
Dylan Aiello is a prominent artist who has launched an online petition to crack down on theft at OpenSea.
“The idea is to impose some verification steps or penalties on OpenSea when we discover stolen art,” Dylan said. “So if you’re an artist and you realize that art has been stolen, that shouldn’t happen, and OpenSea should come up with a way to stop it.”
Dylan asked the site to fine. The fine is to repay the original artist when the stolen art is discovered.
OpenSea told FOX5NY that its policy prohibits plagiarism. Plagiarism is regularly carried out in a variety of ways, including delisting and, in some cases, banning accounts. OpenSea also recently announced image recognition technology for chasing scammers.
..
