13 Aug 2021 20:29

Hermitage Museum says Rammstein front man Lindemann illegally selling digital items with museum's images

ST. PETERSBURG. Aug 13 (Interfax) - Till Lindemann, the lead vocalist of the Rammstein band, is illegally selling a series of items with digital images (non-fungible tokens, or NFTs) made at the State Hermitage Museum during the shooting of the Beloved Town music video, the museum said on Telegram on Friday.

"The use of images of the items from the museum's collection and interiors in the NFTs collection, and with the inscription Hermitage Edition, neither was nor could have been approved by our museum," the statement said.

The museum also claims violation of its rights and dishonest use of its name and works in the spheres of NFTs. When Lindemann was at the stage of announcing the NFTill project, the museum sent him a warning about violation of its licensing policy but "received no feedback" and the "illegal tokens were uploaded to the marketplace."

"Mr. Lindemann personally signed a contract with Hermitage, which expressly permits the use of Hermitage images and all prepared material solely in the music clip," the museum said.

The museum permitted the shooting of the clip in May 2021 as part of the Year of Germany in Russia.

It was reported that Hermitage Museum was considering releasing and selling NFTs for works of art and was in talks with Binance, a NFT marketplace. An NFT is a unique digital asset, its originality and right of ownership is proved with the aid of blockchain technology, a database for selling and buying a digital assets.