The current hottest NFT collection in the world, the Bored Ape Yacht Club, has sparked two copycats who are currently beefing on Twitter over who is the actual fake Bored Ape Yacht Club.
The Bored Ape Yacht Club is a collection of over 10,000 bored ape NFTs with owners from Steve Aoki to Post Malone to Jimmy Fallon.
The highest sale for one of these melancholy monkey pics is currently sitting at $3.4 million so you can see why people are going absolutely wild for them and why they've now sparked copycats.
OpenSea, the world's largest NFT marketplace where you can pick yourself up one of these arty jpegs, has recently banned both the 'Phunky Ape Yacht Club' (PAYC) and 'PHAYC' from selling their copycat ape-based NFTs which just feature the same simians flipped so they face left (Bored Ape NFTs face right).
The Phunky Ape Yacht Club launched in December, saying it was going to bring apes and ape-based NFTs back to the people and back from the "rich d**chebags" who had taken over the Bored Ape Yacht Club.
The flipped monkey pics were initially offered for free and then listed for around $157.
As the cheapest Bored Ape currently sits around $200,000, that's a pretty big discount for a reverse image.
PHAYC followed a similar line when it launched, calling itself satire and suggesting NFTs are currently being taken a little too seriously.
PHAYC has actually made more from its sales than PAYC, leading PAYC to accuse PHAYC of being a 'cash grab fraud project'.
Strong words there from a project literally created by flipping images from another project.
There's somewhat of a grey area around NFTs and copyright. Yuga Labs, the owner of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, owns the copyright to its images which is what's enabled OpenSea to boot both copycats off the platform.
But if Yuga Labs wants to go further and file a formal complaint, there isn't really a precedent for how it could be handled.
Both companies could argue they're operating under transformative fair use, which is how much satirical art gets away with using copyrighted images, but as NFTs operate under their own sets of rules and regulations it isn't clear how this argument would track.
Both PAYC and PHAYC are currently tackling the problem of how they're going to sell their NFTs with OpenSea one of the easiest and most credible marketplaces, so not being able to list there has provided a block for them.
If they are able to find another way to sell their artworks, which should, in theory, be possible as NFTs operate in a world where they shouldn't be tied to any one platform, they may continue to do so until Yuga Labs takes further steps.
Featured Image Credit: TwitterTopics: News
