The Nightmare Copyright Scenarios of NFTs Are Coming Fast

“The digital terrain should be a place where women can share their likeness as they choose, controlling the usage of their image and receiving whatever potential capital attached. Instead, the internet has more frequently served as a space where others exploit and distribute images of women’s bodies without their consent and for another’s profit.”

What if the models featured in images had legal rights to share in the profit those images generate? This is just one of the questions that the sale of a new NFT from model Emily Ratajkowski is raising, and there don’t seem to be any good answers. In the NFT, she seems to be trolling an art troll himself by posing in front of his “painting” which is itself featuring an image that neither he nor Ratajkowski owns, and a comment made by a random Instagram user. Who owns any of it? And who should profit?

These are centuries old questions when it comes to art. As Ratajkowski points out: “works of unnamed muses sell for millions of dollars and build careers of traditionally male artists, while the subjects of these works receive nothing.” Will it be NFTs that break the cycle and give power back to these unnamed muses? That certainly seems like it is starting to happen.