"What happened here? A random person (Alice) minted an NFT of a digital image. Alice listed the NFT on OpenSea. Alice’s NFT is not verified, so in theory it should be worthless. However, if someone buys it then OpenSea makes money. This means they have no incentive to take down unverified NFTs."
Artificial scarcity is artificial.
Nothing prevents Alice from making copies and selling each "unique" one.
Since it is decentralized, there is no centralized authority to take down the copies (that is, a DMCA-style take down).
The "no one can censor you" upsides of decentralization are not without downsides: you cannot censor or take down others, even in cases of copyright breach.
Comments
"What happened here? A random person (Alice) minted an NFT of a digital image. Alice listed the NFT on OpenSea. Alice’s NFT is not verified, so in theory it should be worthless. However, if someone buys it then OpenSea makes money. This means they have no incentive to take down unverified NFTs."
Artificial scarcity is artificial.
Nothing prevents Alice from making copies and selling each "unique" one.
Since it is decentralized, there is no centralized authority to take down the copies (that is, a DMCA-style take down).
The "no one can censor you" upsides of decentralization are not without downsides: you cannot censor or take down others, even in cases of copyright breach.