Sleazy Project Sold NFTs of Porn Stars, But Never Got Their Permission

At first glance, PornstarPunks looks like a promising, if ribald, take on established NFT tropes: collectible digital assets based on porn performers — its most viewed tokens on OpenSea are name brand stars Lana Rhoades, Mia Khalifa and Johnny Sins, though it also includes many little-known personalities from cam sites and OnlyFans — and styled in the 8-bit aesthetic of the uber-popular, ultra-expensive "CryptoPunks" collection.

The only problem? The creator of the project never bothered to get permission from the adult entertainers depicted — and monetized — in the collection.

One creator, porn performer-cum-financial adviser Cherie DeVille, said she was alarmed to learn that her name and likeness had been included.

"This is salt in my fucking wound!" she told Futurism. "I did not authorize this ugly NFT."

As such, the "PornstarPunks" collection is yet another illustration of the type of abuse we see over and over in the world of blockchain, where wannabe crypto tycoons frequently play fast and loose with intellectual property — and, more generally, basic ethics — in search of a quick buck. This time, though, the grift feels particularly gauche because the value is being extracted from people in an industry that's often already exploitative and harmful. 

In response to questions from Futurism, OpenSea removed the collection from its site.

"OpenSea's mission is to build the most trusted and inclusive NFT marketplace with the best selection," a spokesperson said in a statement. "[Intellectual property] and publicity rights are protected by our Terms of Service, and infringement of intellectual property rights is a violation of our policies, which we enforce in various ways, including delisting and in some instances, banning accounts in violation."

That PornstarPunks was allowed to sell the NFTs for many months in plain view, though, is galling. After all, if it had actually obtained consent and provided a cut of sales to adult content creators, it might have been kind of a wholesome idea. Many adult actors are underpaid in the first place, and frequently struggle to monetize their work in the long term, so leveraging digital collectibles like NFTs for some recurring revenue from resales could, in theory, be a promising complement to subscription-based porn services like OnlyFans.

That would only be if the creator of the collection had operated ethically, though, by approaching individual performers for permission to use their names and likenesses, and compensating them fairly when the NFTs sold. 

Instead, in the move-fast-and-break-things world of NFTs and crypto, the creator of the project — who didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment — skipped all those hard steps and just started pocketing revenue.

That sleazy move underscores a general sense that the project embodies the worst and laziest aspects of NFT culture. In addition to including people without their permission, the art just sucks, even by NFT standards. And though it seems to have started as including only representations of actual porn performers, further into the collection it began to include all sorts of bizarre entries, ranging from fictional characters to Lego figurines to public figures who aren't in porn — all depicted, almost undoubtedly, without the permissions of the people or brands involved.

Overall, the whole thing feels like a greasy cash grab that's throwing a bunch of garbage at the wall to see what sticks. Consequently, most of the collection never picked up much value.

In light of all that, the collection also serves as a rebuke of the common narrative that crypto represents a valuable opportunity for adult content creators. For a select few — including Sins, who has gotten into the NFT space himself as both an owner and the creator of a forthcoming collection — that might be true. But for most, blockchain's role in adult entertainment seems to be the same as its role in the art world: as just another way for hardworking artists to get ripped off by scammers.

"I don't believe crypto solves sex workers' problems," DeVille said. "Crypto doesn't solve sex workers' billing issues. It's bullshit that crypto solves our payment processor issues. You typically need a bank to exchange your crypto for US dollars. If a bank won't work with porn stars, it doesn't matter that we can sell porn via crypto. Crypto is unstable and completely unusable."

Do people in DeVille's position have much in the way of legal recourse? It depends on your perspective. Bobby Desmond, a Florida-based intellectual property lawyer who specializes in cryptocurrency law and the adult industry, told Futurism that although the collection is almost certainly violating copyright law by using the names and likenesses of performers like DeVille without their permission, it's likely that a realistic legal strategy would be more like a game of Whack-A-Mole than a decisive legal victory.

As such, he said, if anyone finds themselves depicted by an NFT without their permission, their best bet to get it removed is to fill out a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown request through OpenSea.

Of course, needing to be your own online legal representative is a familiar reality for anyone in the world of adult content creation, whose content is constantly stolen and reposted without permission. After all, if OpenSea was dedicating even an iota of scrutiny to the material on its site, a collection like PornstarPunks should have immediately set off red flags.

"Honestly," Desmond told Futurism, "most adult models or any adult content creator, especially if they're working on their own on a fan site, like OnlyFans... or any of those, they're intimately familiar with the DMCA, because their content is stolen all the time and they're pursuing people so that they can keep their money." 

Whether people whose art or likeness is ripped off by NFT grifters end up with anything further in the way of legal protections will depend on legal precedent that isn't yet set. For now, performers like DeVille are just left with a general sense of disgust.

"Unsurprisingly," DeVille told us, "this is another NFT scam."

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