OpenSea Faces RIAA Complaints Over ENS Domains

NFT market OpenSea acquired trademark complaints from the Recording Trade Affiliation of America (RIAA) right now and has delisted a number of offending tokens in response.

OpenSea Delists Offending NFTs

It’s been a tough week for OpenSea.

A letter from the RIAA asserts that OpenSea’s market options a number of Ethereum Identify Service (ENS) domains with names that confer with the recording affiliation and its members. OpenSea has now delisted the offending ENS domains from its non-fungible token market.

The RIAA stated that the sale of the offending domains constitutes “dilution, confusion, and/or tarnishment” of emblems. It added that promoting such domains violates cybersquatting legal guidelines, frequent regulation rights of publicity, and unfair buying and selling practices.

The letter lists 89 domains together with these referring to Common Music Group, Atlantic Information, Capitol Information, Warner Music Group, Parlophone Information, and Virgin Information.

A number of different domains confer with particular person music executives. These domains confer with Sony Music Leisure CEO Rob String, Columbia Information CEO Ron Perry, Alamo Information CEO Todd Moscowitz, and UMG CEO Lucian Grainge.

One particular person named within the letter was RIAA chairman Mitch Glazier. In March, Glazier addressed the difficulty of emblems within the NFT trade. He famous that RIAA was taking motion in opposition to the NFT platform HitPiece for its rights violations.

OpenSea Prepares for Downturn

Right now’s information comes shortly after OpenSea announced that it’s going to lay off 20% of its workforce in response to market circumstances.

OpenSea CEO and co-founder Devin Finzer wrote on July 14 that the “unprecedented mixture of crypto winter and broader macroeconomic instability” signifies that OpenSea wants to arrange for a probably “extended downturn.”

Total crypto market circumstances have precipitated the worth of the NFT market to drop dramatically this summer season.

In comparison with the huge market downturn, the RIAA’s complaints are unlikely to do appreciable harm to OpenSea on their very own. Nonetheless, the opportunity of authorized motion and the compulsion to delist tokens will possible have an effect on buying and selling volumes to some extent.

This isn’t the primary time that OpenSea has delisted objects. It beforehand delisted ENS domains referring to clothier Calvin Klein, and it has additionally delisted a set referred to as Not Okay Bears, which imitated one other NFT line referred to as Okay Bears.

Disclosure: On the time of writing, the writer of this piece owned BTC, ETH, and different cryptocurrencies.