Partner and Art Law Group co-chair Megan Noh and Artnet discussed NFT privacy concerns related to recent 'sleepminting' actions taken by Monsieur Personne. According to Artnet, "an artist operating under the pseudonym Monsieur Personne ("Mr. Nobody") tried to short-circuit the NFT hype machine by unleashing "sleepminting," a process that complicates, if not corrodes, one of the value propositions underlying non-fungible tokens." The next natural question is 'Does sleepminting violate any U.S. laws?'
See Noh's response as quoted by Artnet below:
In short, it's possible a court could find him liable to be "in violation of Beeple's exclusive right to publicly display his work," according to Megan Noh, co-chair of art law at Pryor Cashman.
Personne may also be running afoul of what's known as the Lanham Act, specifically a clause known as "false designation of origin." Remember, the entire point of sleepminting is that its unauthorized attribution to Beeple appears legitimate on the blockchain. These claims are reasserted in the details of the sleepminted token on the NFTheft website ("Creator: Beeple (b. 1981)") as well as the listings on Rarible and Opensea.
"The 'statements' on the website and/or created by the intentionally-manipulated metadata feel a lot like 'false designations of origin,' which could give rise to liability," Noh said. "But there's also an interesting question about whether an NFT can be considered a 'good or service,' which it would need to be for this area of the law to apply."
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