Several gaming YouTubers have had their likenesses stolen and sold as NFTs.
YouTubers auctioned off as NFTs
An NFT is a non-fungible token, which operates almost as a one-of-a-kind trading card and at their highest level are part of Ethereum cryptocurrency and user StakeTheWeb appears to be making NFTs of users and has listed photos of them for sale on auction website OpenSea.
Jim Caddick - who is known as Caddicarus on his YouTube gaming channel -posted screen shots of the auction website to his Twitter and slammed the NFTs as a "new level of pathetic."
He wrote : "At least, AT LEAST, if you stole my s**t and tried selling it off, make it a t shirt. A mug. A clock. A thing. That you can use. And enjoy. Shilling off a profile picture for a collection you can just make yourself on a Facebook photo album is honestly a new level of pathetic."
Fellow YouTube star Jim Sterling - who hosts 'The Jimquistion' for almost one million subscribers - also claimed to have had his likeness sold as a NFT, but said he was "not surprised" in such an "exploitative market."
He tweeted: "Frankly not surprised that some freeloading leech turned my channel into an NFT. As gross as it is, I find it justifying - I did not consent to this, I do not want this, and it demonstrates everything I've said about how disrespectful and exploitative this market is. Scum."(sic)
An OpenSea spokesperson told The Gamer in a statement that it was "against [their] policy to sell NFTs using plagiarised content."
The statement read: "OpenSea supports an open and creative ecosystem in which people have greater freedom and ownership over digital items of all kinds. One of our operating principles is to support creators and their audiences by deterring theft and plagiarism on our platform.
To that end, it is against our policy to sell NFTs using plagiarised content, which we regularly enforce in various ways, including delisting and in some instances, banning accounts (as was the case in this instance). We are actively expanding our efforts across customer support, trust and safety, and site integrity so we can move faster to protect and empower our community and creators."