In shocking news, an Australian influencer living in the United States claims that a photo of her was used without her permission to create an NFT with a trademarked porn logo.
Alanah Pearce is a writer for Sony Santa Monica Studio, a video game developer, as well as a media personality in the gaming industry. She revealed on Twitter on Sunday that she had been informed that a porn site had profited from a photo of her by creating an NFT with their trademarked logo. She was obviously never asked for permission.
In an interview with PEDESTRIAN.TV, she revealed that the photo was taken to promote her role as an award presenter at a prestigious gaming awards ceremony. It’s now available on OpenSea, an NFT marketplace, under the name Blacked.com.
A popular video game YouTuber and Twitch streamer, James Stephanie Sterling, was also targeted. Here’s a tweet they made about it earlier this week.
As evidence, a Twitter user has been documenting the nearly daily instances of artists discovering their content has been stolen and sold as an NFT. The majority of the issues on OpenSea, according to that account, are due to the fact that it is allegedly monitored by a robot rather than a human worker.
Pearce believes that more needs to be done to deter those who manufacture these types of NFTs.
Pearce clarified that, while she has no plans to pursue legal action in relation to this specific NFT, there is a real issue circulating online about digital currency theft and scams.
A spokesperson for OpenSea told PEDESTRIAN.TV that it is against their policy to sell NFTs that infringe on others’ publicity rights, and that they regularly enforce this policy in a variety of ways, including delisting and banning accounts when they are notified that the use of a likeness is not authorized.