Dealing with Plagiarism

As on any NFT platform, there is plagiarism on RMRK's Singular platform.

Until we add community-curation and other filtering features, we expect the buyers to be diligent and do research before purchasing.

Just like you would Google a project's team or history before buying their token, you should research the person whose NFTs you're purchasing, or at least look into the NFTs themselves.

The RMRK team has decided to hide works from minters that are verified plagiarisms. The NFT is still on chain and another UI can choose to show it, but we will not.

There will be no refunds for purchases of plagiarized content.

How to Check for Plagiarized Content

To help combat plagiarism, we implemented a Reverse Image Search button next to all static-image NFTs.

Clicking it will open a new tab with reverse-image-search results for that NFT's art, at which point you can compare the results.

You will be unable to purchase an NFT on Singular before you first manually check the box that confirms you have looked into the NFT.

Example 1

Here is an example. Let's take this NFT:

We will see that clicking the button opens a new tab.

This NFT is by Arkcyu, one of the Kanaria Founder bird artists.

Example 2

Here's another example. This 3D render.

This render is not found by Bing, which might give you the impression of it being safe.

However, these reverse image searches are not always 100% accurate, and it's usually worth it to check multiple services. Tineye.com is another such service where you can just paste an image in after right clicking it in Singular and selecting "Copy Image".

Looking it up there, we see that the first occurrence is in July 2013.

This leads us to this person's Deviantart profile, at which point we have two choices: either ignore this art as likely plagiarized, or contact the owner of the Deviantart profile and check if it's them minting this. Our guess would be no, since the NFT's image has a watermark in the bottom right corner, but we have not confirmed the plagiarism so the piece is not yet hidden.

What about animations and MP4?

If we check this SailorMoon NFT, we'll notice it's animated. Tineye cannot reverse search images from videos, so in this case, you would need to do it manually.

The process would be:

• take a screenshot of the part of the screen where the NFT is (SHIFT + WINDOWS KEY + S in Windows, SHIFT + COMMAND + 4 on Mac)
• paste this screenshot into Tineye.com or Bing, on Windows you can just hit CTRL+V while on the Tineye page, on Mac you need to manually upload the file.
• observe the results, as this example on Tineye.

In this particular case, we know for a fact that this art is genuine and owned by the minter (it's the excellent Shiba Tales), so we can feel safe.

What will Curation look like?

There are two planned stages for curation.

Stage 1: Community Curation and Reputation

In the first stage, we will implement Reddit-like curation where:

• newly minted NFTs will only appear on a special "New" page.
• users will be able to vote on the NFTs, weighted similarly to the art contest weights. The more active / loyal a user, the more weight your vote carries - this is your on-chain reputation.
• negatively voted works will not show up in search results or on the home page.
• positively voted works (past a certain threshold of votes-per-person-and-type to prevent self-voting) will be shown on the home page and in search results.
• highly upvoted works will be selected for the Curated section.
• strongly downvoted NFTs will be flagged for RMRK team's attention, prompting a ban of the minter.

It's important to note that different accounts will start off different. Total anons (no eggs/birds, no Singular participation, no RMRK tokens, no identity defined on the Kusama blockchain) will start lower on the points scale, whereas someone with a verified identity on Kusama might start off with 10 points on every NFT they mint.

It is in the minter's best interest to be a good and active participant of the Kusama and RMRK ecosystem to have a well built and highly reputable account to mint with.

Stage 2: RMRK-staked Curation

When RMRK's token launches and we have logic deployed on chains like Acala's Karura, we will implement a staking mechanic as such:

• to mint, you will need to stake a small amount of RMRK tokens
• if your NFT goes unreported for a specific amount of time, you get your stake back and the NFT starts showing up on home pages and search pages
• reporting an NFT requires a stake of RMRK tokens too
• once the report is resolved, the loser loses his stake (is fully slashed), the winner gets 10% of the slashed amount.

This system will augment community curation - staking the tokens would allow you to bypass the reputation and voting requirement, instead propelling you directly to the homepage and search result pages without needing upvotes.