NFT initiatives are embracing a CC0 framework, with encouraging outcomes
As the NFT industry gets more organized, with the participation of prominent artists, studios, and corporations, the sector has struggled to determine how to best safeguard intellectual property.
For instance, Bored Ape Yacht Club maintains stringent IP usage and has sued individuals, whereas CryptoKitties employs the NFT License.
Until recently, it appeared that NFT initiatives would attempt to follow Web2.0’s IP precedent, however, a different strategy has begun to gain popularity.
- What does CC0 stand for?
- Why fresh collections use it
- How various licensing may impact performance
What exactly is a CC0 License?
Copyright issues are a persistent cause of conflict between brands, creators, and the user community. Regarding NFTs in particular, numerous lawsuits have already been brought to resolve disputes between the parties.
In “Roc-A-Fella Records Inc. v. Damon Dash,” there is a disagreement regarding the copyright owner of Reasonable Doubt, Jay-debut Z’s album because it was intended to be sold as an NFT.
CC0 is Creative Commons 0, where “0” equals “no rights reserved” for the intellectual property of the project.
It is a sort of copyright that permits creators to relinquish their legal interest in their work and release it into the public domain practically immediately.
When considering NFTs, the owners can use the artwork on their NFT for any purpose, including marketing, altering, and building a brand.
In reality, this license means that you don’t even need to own an NFT from the collection; anyone may use any NFT from the collection, even as a company logo, if desired.
Which collections utilize the CC0 license and why?
Nouns were one of the first projects to use the CC0 license.
The goal of the project was to develop a community, and then a DAO, that would encourage creativity by allowing Noun characters to be used to create derivatives (new projects based on it).
They have already released a collection of sunglasses, a LilNouns NFT collection, and more efforts that you can view on their proposal page.
The moonbirds took a different route. It began with a “normal” license but switched to CC0 in August 2022.
The top collections adopting CC0 as their distribution license model as of August 22 were:
- Nouns
- Lil Nouns
- Mfers
- Goblintownwtf
- CrypToadz
- XCOPYART
- cryptodickbutts
- lootproject
- Moonbirds
The objective is to market the initiative to a larger audience so that they may contribute to its success.
With more chances for interaction through derivative collections, original art-related items, and a larger community, the collection’s popularity increases, to the advantage of its artists and NFT holders.
Therefore, giving up the rights to their collection might be advantageous for the creators and holders:
- The creators/DAO typically continue to get secondary market royalties.
- It encourages the production of derivatives, which increases interest in the original collection.
- Typically, derivatives provide an airdrop (or Whitelist places) to the original collection’s holders.
- The creators/DAO can fund new projects to increase the popularity of the collection, generating a flywheel effect
