> a lot of the art on the site is straight up stolen and artist have very little recourse in what they can do
It isn't legal to knowingly facilitate sales of stolen goods, is it?
It isn't legal to knowingly facilitate sales of stolen goods, is it?
TLDR: Links are being sold, not art. Not stolen art. You can't steal art and put it into an NFT because NFTs don't carry image data (as currently defined in ERC-721).
You may be familiar with JSON. Can you imagine a JSON document with a URL attribute? Now can you imagine selling that JSON document to someone else? That's an NFT (sans some crypto that makes duplicating that document impossible).
You may be familiar with HTML. Imagine selling a hyperlink to someone else. Literally the string '<a href="...">' tag. That's an NFT (sans some crypto that makes duplicating that string impossible).
Nothing is being sold other than the ownership of one unique JSON document or one unique HTML string.
If people want to believe that a picture of the Empire State building makes them the new owners of the Empire State building, I don't know what to say.
[1] https://support.opensea.io/hc/articles/4412092785043-What-ca...