The rise of NFT marketplaces has shifted many routine copyright disputes from courtrooms to platform inboxes, making the handling of alleged infringement a daily operational task that affects creators, collectors and cultural stakeholders. Pamela Samuelson at University of California Berkeley has written about how traditional copyright norms encounter new friction when works are tokenized and distributed globally, underscoring the relevance for artists whose livelihoods depend on clear recourse and for communities whose cultural expressions can be misappropriated. This practical importance explains why marketplaces and regulators have focused attention on process, evidence and transparency.
Marketplace policies and legal frameworks
Platforms commonly operate under national copyright regimes and voluntary policies that aim to balance rights protection with ease of trade. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act establishes a notice-and-takedown mechanism that many services follow, and Shira Perlmutter of the United States Copyright Office has described notice-and-takedown as the primary tool used by online platforms to manage complaints. Marketplaces typically accept takedown notices, require submitters to identify the allegedly infringed work and to state a good faith belief, and they offer counter-notice procedures that can restore listings if a respondent asserts lawful ownership or authorization.
Technical constraints and cultural consequences
Blockchain immutability means that tokens and transaction records persist even after a marketplace removes a listing, so platforms instead delist items, block metadata hosting or disable purchase functions rather than erase the on-chain record. OpenSea Support documentation explains that delisting and freezing are among the actions a marketplace can take in response to validated complaints. These technical choices have human consequences: creators may find unauthorized copies still circulating, communities may see traditional motifs tokenized without consent, and collectors face uncertainty about provenance and value when a court or platform decision changes a token’s public status. The territorial nature of copyright and the costs of cross-border enforcement amplify these impacts, so marketplaces increasingly combine automated detection, human review and cooperation with rights holders to resolve disputes while signaling to users how claims are evaluated. The result is a hybrid ecosystem where legal norms, platform policy and the technical limits of distributed ledgers together shape whose rights are enforced and how cultural harms are mitigated.
