‘If you don’t want something stolen, don't put it on the Net'. Appropriation art from early net art to NFTs

Abstract

The chapter contextualizes recent works of appropriation art in the field of non-fungible tokens within the longer tradition of plagiarism, identity appropriation and mirroring in the field of net-based art, from the late ’90s to present time. In the effort to outline shared problems and strategies, as well as common roots in conceptual art, the chapter will focus mostly on artworks in which the mere act of copying and republishing existing content with no significant changes is adopted as an artistic strategy. At a moment in which the self-proclaimed innovators and heralds of the decentralized web are mischaracterizing and persecuting works of digital appropriation and satire as theft and deception, and betraying the Web3 core values by appealing conventional laws to protect their intellectual property and trademark, it is worth reconsidering how the online circulation of digital content has been discussed along the last three decades, and what practices have been developed in order to assert the legitimacy of appropriation as an artistic strategy.