Digital art is crime, digital crime is art — Nicolò Bussolati, Paolo Cirio

Digital art, blockchain, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are undoubtedly among the hottest topics in today’s art market—just as the cyberattacks targeting them are. The more art becomes digital, the more it is exposed to threats. Digital counterfeits, hacking of marketplaces or art institutions, theft of accounts or private NFT keys are just some of the risks digital art faces.

However, the relationship between art and criminal law appears, in some respects, far more complex and intriguing. Digital art (particularly activist or protest art) often falls within the scope of criminal law provisions. At the same time, many cyberattacks themselves contain a significant artistic dimension. There is, in other words, a distinctive interrelationship between art and cybercrime.

The examples are numerous. Denial of Service (DoS) attacks—among the most common in cyberspace—are often conceived as artistic performances. Consider, for instance, those carried out by the Electronic Disturbance Theatre group, led by artist Ricardo Dominguez.

The use of bots and algorithms for artistic purposes can also have criminal implications. The bot created by the artist collective !Mediengruppe Bitnik to randomly purchase items on the dark web ended up buying drugs, triggering criminal proceedings. More recently, the hacker collective Anonymous broadcasted “troll faces” over Russian military radio frequencies during the conflict in Ukraine—merging art and warfare into a single act.

Where, then, does one draw the line between art and crime in the digital world? The two often overlap. On one hand, artistic performances and digital works risk falling within the reach of criminal law. On the other, cyberattacks may possess an element of artistic or aesthetic interest.

This encounter therefore seeks to overturn the traditional perspective—from “cybercrimes against art” to “cybercrimes as art,” and conversely, “digital art as crime.” Through concrete examples and a dialogue between a jurist and an artist, it will offer an artistic and socio-criminological analysis of the interplay between digital art and cybercrime.