What To Do If Someone Is Screenshoting NFT?

With NFTs getting increasingly popular, there are many new questions arise. Some people get tempted by the price of the digital art presented as NFTs, and others want to know what benefits you get from NFT ownership. But some tricky internet users are interested in what would happen if you screenshot NFT under someone else’s verify ownership.

Well, we will try to answer that crazy question in this article.

What is NFT, and how digital art differs from physical art?

But before diving into the question itself, it would be best if we defined what NFT projects are. Imagine that you are an artist that lives in the 21 century. You really want to produce digital artwork, but how will you secure your digital art from fraud and people who want to steal it?

Leonardo Da Vinci was not facing any of these problems with his original painting of the Mona Lisa, as the only way for criminals to get it was to rob Leo. But the digital artwork’s piece is very different from what was ages ago.

Luckily, with the development of web3, digital assets in the form of tokens and blockchain technology, the first NFT was released in 2012. Almost any form of digital art can be presented as NFTs. But what does it mean for a creation to be NFT?

Well, it sets a special online signature for your artwork stored inside a blockchain. The signature is publically available to anyone, and it contains details about the rightful owner of the NFT, everyone who had ownership previously (buyers), and the time when it was sold (transferred). NFT without a signature is not inherently valuable, and just being an internet picture is a print of NFT.

What will happen if someone takes NFT screenshots?

Creators of the NFTs concept and the web3 community are geniuses regarding internet technologies. And, of course, they know what is happening on the net and about the number of fraudsters and other people who would like to get some easy money. Of course, NFT developers were creating their projects thinking about how criminals would want to steal them, so they came up with a unique NFT signature.

As you might remember from the previous paragraph, all the valuable data about NFT is inside a signature. If somebody will screenshot an NFT, he will not get access to the signature. It will just be a regular image of the artwork that he can share, look at and admire.

Can a person who made a shot sell it as a digital asset?

One simple rule in our world applies to sales: you can’t sell anything you do not own. And the same concept is applied to NFTs and other digital assets. Screenshotting NFTs does not give you any verified ownership, so you can’t sell the original copy of the NFT without authenticity.

But a person with a screenshot can try to conduct a type of fraudulent scheme. He can deceive other users who don’t have enough knowledge about NFT platforms or just starting. By doing that, criminals can sell plenty of NFT screenshots that have no value without a signature. That is why each new NFT user should carefully examine the topic before becoming an NFT buyer.

What to do if my NFT art piece got screenshotted?

Based on the example we just gave, you can come to a conclusion there is no screenshot issue. Therefore, your NFT ownership rights can never be violated with just someone will take a screenshot of your NFT.

Even more interesting is that thousands of NFT screenshots are taken daily. They are used for reviewing NFTS and just showing them. So if somebody will take a screenshot of your original piece of art, you can say thanks to them for the potential advertisement.

Can you sue a person that screenshots your NFT?

As you know how NFTs work, it should be obvious to you that artists can’t sue anybody who is screenshotting an NFT. Even though the theft of NFT is regulated by the law, as it is a full-fledged digital asset, the picture of the NFT itself can’t be an occasion for a court appeal.

Let’s get back to the Mona Lisa again. Right now, she is proudly hanging in the halls of the famous Louvre museum. And try to answer the question, can someone sue a person for making a photo of Leonardo’s creation? The answer is obviously, no! There are hundreds of tourists taking countless pictures of the famous painting, but none of them violates ownership rights and authenticity. And the same rule is applied to NFTs.

Can you screenshot non-NFT digital art?

NFTs are unique pieces of art that can be found within a blockchain network and can’t be simply copied. But what if an artist creates a piece of digital paint that is not registered as a token?

NFT signature is used to make it more comfortable, basically keeping and transferring rights of ownership. And if your art does not have a signature like most NFTs, the difference is that it can be copied and stolen. For example, if you have created a poster image you want to use for your blog project. If somebody steals a file with that artwork, he can make somebody pay for it and get a profit off your work.

In such cases, you can try to sue a criminal as you have all the legal rights to do that. You just need to ensure that you have enough evidence of owning a certain artwork.

How can somebody steal an NFT?

Even though NFTs are very secure as they are located inside a blockchain technology which is immensely hard to hack, some hacker groups can do that. To do that, they have to find a flaw in the system that will allow them to access valuable data. With that, criminals can access your wallet app and get the NFTs.

Sometimes blockchain services might fail, resulting in the NFT getting the wrong owner. But such cases are quickly solved with a support system.

Conclusion

So as you can see, stealing and screenshotting NFTs is a common misconception popularized by people who don’t know enough about web3 features and blockchain at the early stages of NFT development. If somebody screenshots the NFT that you own, it shouldn’t matter much to you, and the only thing you can do is accept it. Remember that all the NFT’s valuable data is inside a signature that can’t be easily stolen.

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