When NFTs first made a public appearance, the core idea behind it was the protection of intellectual assets. The word non-fungible means something that cannot be duplicated. As a natural progression from that idea, people view NFT as an encryption technology primarily. However, NFTs are not completely immune from scams, frauds, and counterfeits. We saw the beginning of this when the UK tax department confiscated NFTs for the first time in relation to fraud. Now NFT marketplace Cent is facing similar issues, this time for copyright infringement.
To understand what we mean by counterfeit NFTs, we need to separate the tech from the content. The content of NFTs can indeed be counterfeit. Cent got into trouble when someone made an NFT of Jack Dorsey’s famous first tweet. While the NFT itself was not a counterfeit, the content within it does not respect privacy laws.
According to experts, most people do not have any idea about how NFTs work. They also lack the necessary awareness to distinguish authentic NFTs from counterfeit ones. According to the CEO of Kryptomon Umberto Canessa Cerchi, people falling for NFT scams will be the first ones to call the entire ecosystem fake. Similar sentiments are already peaking and many NFT owners now feel that they have been scammed. However, the problem does not lie with the technology itself. The issue is with counterfeit content that does not respect privacy rights. The market has recently flooded with NFTs of this nature. We can expect laws around NFTs that can help prevent this from worsening.
