You may not sell your friend’s art as an NFT

I understand – despite all the warnings about climate change, you or someone you know big Duckling-sized dollar signs in your eyes after realizing that a hint of blockchain is all you need to turn a JPG image into cash, and now you’re looking for something – anything – to turn into an NFT while gold initial rush lasts.

Then, you identify: something that does not exactly belong to you. You will not sell what, right? And yet, this is what indie game developer Jason Rohrer is trying to do, according to Kotaku: sell NFT copies of 155 digital paintings that he originally ordered for his game The Castle Doctrine as individual works of art online. What … I mean Can be does he have the rights legally, even though the NFTs did not exist at that time?

Except that Rohrer isn’t even trying to pretend they are his – he gives each artist credit on his new cryptography gallery page, calling them “personal friends” and says he is willing to “share” with them if they ” bring in a lot of money from the auction and back-end royalties. ”

Some of his “friends” were not particularly happy with this level of generosity, according to Kotaku, and you should read their biting responses in full. Here’s one to start:

Canabalt and Overland developer Adam Saltsman described the NFT auction as a “lose-lose bid for me in the short term”. “Either Jason does rude public things using my art, or else I have to like … talking to Jason and spending a little bit of my life doing it, which also sucks,” Saltsman told Kotaku via email .

So far, it is unclear whether Rohrer perceives the irony in continuing to use the phrase “PROTECT WHAT IS YOURS” as your site’s header image. (He removed some pieces from the website at the artist’s request, however.)

I have to admit, I’m curious: would you buy an NFT from someone who no produce art? Since an NFT is effectively a digital autograph, I prefer to have one from the original artist.

Maybe that’s why no one has yet bought this famous photo from a famous anonymous 4Chan post about how “literally anything can be art”. Then again, a framed copy of that post was once sold for almost $ 100,000.