"The NFT domain is a huge black hole that law enforcement is not aware of at all"

Entrepreneurs and NFT artists and lawyers who attended the conference of Pearl Cohen and Tel Aviv University believe that the NFT craze is not expected to subside soon, and that it raises weighty questions about copyright and the ban on money laundering.

"The NFT provides an opportunity to distribute content and sell it independently of Facebook"

David Rosenthal

06/01/2022

Thursday, 06 January 2022, 14:10 Updated: 14:29

• Share on Facebook

• Share on WhatsApp

• Share on Twitter

• Share on Email

• Share on general

• Comments

  Comments

Is the NFT an "opportunity to bring rights holders together with money" or is it "a huge black hole that anti-money laundering and terrorist financing authorities are not yet aware of at all"? These are some of the questions that arose at the first conference of its kind that dealt with NFT and its legal aspects, held by the law firm of Pearl Cohen in collaboration with Tel Aviv University, in memory of the late Adv. Yossi Barkai, a partner in the firm who passed away this year.

NFT is a unique digital token linked to creation in blockchain technology, and it testifies to being original. He was sometimes involved in works that are not otherwise found in public space - for example, director Quentin Tarantino suggested NFTs of unpublished excerpts from the script for cheap literature - and was sued for it.

Although the future of the NFT market is unknown, it excites not only the world of technology but also the worlds of art, film, music and culture.

NFT works, from unique digital art to the tweet of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, are offered for sale for millions of dollars at the highest possible price, and promise to change everything we know to date about art marketing and the relationship between creator and audience.

NFT is also gaining momentum in the digital gaming industry, in the P2E (Pay to Earn) model.

At the same time, the virtual currencies used to purchase NFT works are beginning to gain recognition among various regulators around the world.

After a long time, we were informed this week that the Bank of Israel intends to instruct the banks to avoid a sweeping denial of the provision of services to service providers in virtual currencies that have been licensed.

This means that companies trading in virtual currencies will not have to deal with sweeping refusals in crypto transactions, which is also expected to make it easier for NFT investors who trade through them.

More on Walla!

How to choose the right vehicle for your family?

In collaboration with Phoenix Smart

The New World.

NFT (Photo: ShutterStock)

Advocate Haim Rabia, a senior partner and head of the Internet, Cyber ​​and Copyright Group at Pearl Cohen, noted in response to the question of what a person acquiring an NFT receives, that the answer often looks like a Japanese Zen riddle - "A person purchasing an NFT receives an NFT." Succeeding at using NFT not only to raise funds but also to create a committed community of supporters and users. He cited as an example a successful animated series by Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis

. , "In most of the cases we see in the trading platforms, the rights of the NFT are non-exclusive and are created in relation to works or digital files in some limited series, where the smart contract allows them to be traded. "One of the problems that bothers people in the field is that the contract does not always appear together with the NFT, but appears on another website and we have to look for it in order to reach the rights that the NFT in question gives us."

The question of the rights to the works from an apartment also changed the eyes of the record companies and film studios. Iorek Ben-David, former CEO of ACUM and now a composer and entrepreneur in the field of NFT, addressed during the conference the possibility that the NFT will cut the chain of realtors, so that the creator can receive direct compensation for the use of his work. "I see the NFT as an opportunity to bring rights holders together with money, and my hope is that we open something new here that at the moment does not bite into organizations like ACUM or publishers but opens up a new field of rights." "NFT in music already has a global community of 400,000 people who already trade in NFT of musical works."

Mati Mariansky, an NFT artist and artificial intelligence entrepreneur commented on the scope of activity in the field: "A bit surprising but all the noise we hear about NFT today amounts to a few million people worldwide. Until recently there were less than a million people on OpenSea which is considered the largest site in the field. Does this mean that there is nothing here and it will soon disappear or is this an area that is in its infancy and will break out in a huge way? "

From the right, Iorek Ben-David, Lawyer Haim Rabia, Professor Niva Elkin Koren, Matti Mariansky (Photo: Yaara Levy)

In another session of the conference focusing on the phenomenon of cryptocurrencies, the moderator, Adv. Guy Lachman, a senior partner in the high-tech group of the Pearl Cohen firm, referred to the draft directive issued this week by the Supervisor of Banks. Accept it only because it is crypto. According to Adv. Lachman, "The directive of the Supervisor of Banks is to read a direction on how the regulator expects banks to deal with serious issues in the worlds of money laundering. Anyone who has ever tried to buy crypto understands that the real difficulty is turning crypto into negotiable money. (Fiat) Because the banks are looking at you as a criminal and the chances of completing the transfer are very challenging. "

Advocate Yehuda Sheffer, former Deputy State Attorney for Economic Enforcement who set up the Anti-Money Laundering Authority, referred to the draft directive of the Banking Supervision Authority, noting that courts are developing broad rulings criticizing banks for trying to divide the crypto content world of competition, technophobia and reluctance. "The bank's refusal to accept crypto should be reasonable, since there is no competition between banks in Israel and therefore there is strong judicial criticism of the banks in cases where they refuse to accept virtual currencies."

Advocate Sheffer addressed concerns that cryptocurrencies and NFTs are raising among regulators around the world. "It is clear to everyone that once we have a work whose value cannot be quantified, there is a fear of money laundering, which exists in every commodity and certainly in its value, such as works of art or diamonds and NFT, that we have no way of knowing the true value of the work.

" D. Sheffer added, "Right now the NFT is a huge black hole that law enforcement is not yet aware of at all. I see the benefits of the NFT but I'm a little suspicious of its ability to be used as a currency or something tradable. When someone buys air for a few million "Dollars and selling it a few minutes later at a huge profit, my mind tells me that there is manipulation here and an attempt to produce imaginary value."

Right: Lawyer Guy Lachman, Uriel Ohayon Lawyer Yehuda Sheffer (Photo: Yaara Levy)

Uriel Ohayon, co-founder and CEO of ZenGo, which has developed a keyless secure wallet, commented on the revolution of independent content makers. Distribute content and sell it independently to third parties.

"This is a revolution for anyone who has ever tried to produce content and also live from it, because technology platforms like Facebook and the like control our lives and the content we post there belongs to them and they make money from it and we get nothing but give them all the rights to the content."

• Of money

• news

Tags

• NFT