Original compilation: Amber, Foresight News
Original compilation: Amber, Foresight News
Twenty years ago, the newly formed Creative Commons (CC) released the first set of free public licenses, enabling creators to open up aspects of their copyrighted works to the public for sharing, reprocessing and duplication In use, this innovation has gone beyond the once mainstream "all rights reserved" certificates. Today, more than 2 billion CC-licensed works exist—including Randall Munroe's popular xkcd webcomic; user-generated content sites such as Flickr; digital images of public-domain artwork exhibited at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art; the online scientific journal PLOS One; and educational resources such as Khan Academy and Wikipedia.
A key feature of the Creative Commons model is the level of permission granted by the original creator or copyright holder - whether for adaptation, making derivative works, for other commercial use, etc. - CC0 is the most permissive as it basically Dedicated to the public domain. The previous copyright licensing system was too restrictive for many creators and could not keep up with the pace brought about by the Internet and the new digital technologies of the time. This limits the participation of creators and the larger community in shared “cultural and intellectual production,” a movement whose importance is only growing today.
Now that Web3 innovations are testing the limitations of traditional legal frameworks, it is time to establish a new set of licenses specifically designed for non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. For example, the recent wave of CC0 (no rights reserved) NFT projects has highlighted the value of Creative Common's most permissive agreement, but famous creators (including the breaking circle of graphic artist Beeple) have used certain forms of CC licenses for years certificates, while other NFT projects have opted for different custom terms. In addition, there are many NFT projects that omit the license certificate completely, or write some non-standard license certificates that may create more ambiguities than can be effectively resolved. And this has also led to many copyright loopholes and corresponding legal issues in the chaotic situation surrounding NFT licenses.
To help address these issues, we (a16z) released a set of free, public "Can't Be Evil" licenses designed for NFTs and inspired by our Creative Commons work. These licenses are freely available to the community and serve three goals:
Help NFT creators protect (or publish) their intellectual property (IP) rights;
Grant NFT holders an irrevocable, enforceable and understandable baseline of rights;
Help creators, holders and their communities unlock the creative and economic potential of their projects, while gaining a clear understanding of the intellectual property framework within which they can work.
Since most early stage projects do not have access to legal resources, we worked with some of the foremost intellectual property lawyers in the Web3 space to design six broadly applicable NFT licenses and make them available to everyone.
The case for NFT-specific licenses
Many people buy NFTs to own avatars, artwork, or any other creative work — but the reality is they often can't be sure what they're getting. When you buy an NFT today, you typically buy a tokenID (stored on the blockchain), and metadata that "points" or references other content files (usually stored off-chain, although there are examples of fully on-chain artwork ). In the vast majority of cases, this fact leads to confusion about the rights of NFT buyers.
U.S. copyright law does not automatically grant purchasers of artwork, both traditional and digital, the right to reproduce, adapt, or even publicly display the artwork. Without a copyright license or transfer from the NFT creator, the buyer cannot exercise any rights under the copyright (such as reproduction, adaptation, and public display), except through copyright exemptions, such as "fair use", although these exemptions are narrow and indeterminate .
Licenses allow creators to grant additional rights to holders, but so far, licenses have not been used consistently across projects. Many projects start without licenses, or use custom licenses that create more ambiguities than they resolve. License certificates (and other documentation of what the law allows buyers to do with their NFTs) are typically kept off-chain, where they can be tampered with without the holder's knowledge.
These issues are compounded by the fact that copyright is notoriously difficult to transfer. Even a savvy buyer can't check unlimited rights and know which ones a previous buyer may have waived.
Ideally, standardized NFT-specific license certificates should be tracked and enforced on the blockchain to provide users with more certainty. Better licensing frameworks have the potential to make high-quality licenses more accessible, remove ambiguity around ownership, and save creators some of the burden (and expense) of creating their own licensing regimes.
Applying the "can't be evil" principle to NFT licenses
"Can't Be Evil" is a guiding principle in Web3 that stems from a new computing paradigm: blockchains are computers that can make firm commitments, not controlled by people. In other words, blockchain enables a new "trustless" version of the internet, where users don't need to trust each other or rely on centralized services and companies to transact.
Instead, built-in mechanisms like cryptographic proofs distribute trust among participants, and system rules are embedded in (and enforced by) the code. Therefore, no single individual can manipulate these systems for their own benefit, or influence them with moral judgment. So instead of believing that people or companies are not evil, code ensures that they "cannot be evil".
The "Can't Be Evil" license extends this principle to NFTs by transparently codifying the rights of NFT creators, buyers, and sellers so that all parties have a common understanding of the rights associated with NFT ownership. Many current NFT holders must trust creators and previous owners to make a "don't be evil" promise to their NFTs, and projects using "Can't Be Evil" licenses can make the NFT ecosystem even more trustless, providing Holders provide a minimum baseline of standard real-world rights, reconciling real-world ownership with on-chain ownership.
With this in mind, we have developed license certificates with some defined properties:
clear and understandable
The "Can't Be Evil" license clearly outlines buyers' rights to their NFT artwork, including whether these rights are exclusive (only buyers can choose how their NFT artwork is used, creators waive all licensing rights); whether they include Commercial rights (rights that allow buyers to use their NFTs for commercial purposes); and whether they allow buyers to modify, adapt, and create derivatives of the artwork they purchase (such as changing the appearance of the artwork or using it in a different context ).
Widely applicable
As in traditional creative and open source licensing, there are many open source licensing models to choose from, and we know that not all creators want the same form of licensing for their NFTs. We designed the "Can't Be Evil" license for as many creators as possible by developing six options, each granting a different set of permissions.
We also recognize that despite these options, these licenses are not suitable for every project and that a project's licensing needs will change as rapid innovation tirelessly pushes the market in new directions. We hope this suite of products is the starting point for fostering a trustless NFT licensing ecosystem and encouraging greater standardization as the space grows.
All six licenses are available on a16z'sGitHubFound on , our legally relevant guidance provides many additional considerations for potential modifications. To this end, we've also placed the license itself under the CC0 license (thereby dedicating copyright to the public domain) so that the community can use, fork, iterate, and improve the license with maximum freedom.
creator irrevocable
Licensing makes the rights they provide irrevocable and is designed to prevent creators from swapping out their license for a more restrictive one in the future (with some necessary exceptions) that could mislead buyers. For example, one option available to creators requires that the license be terminated if the buyer violates the license or uses the NFT artwork in hate speech.
Respect revisions and adaptations
The license takes a lenient approach to modification and adaptation to encourage community re-creation of NFT projects and prevent conflicts within the community. For example, when a collection has tens of thousands of buyers, some of them may want to use their NFTs in a similar way, whether for making branded sodas or baseball caps, or for any other business activities and more. Where applicable, licenses are intended to protect the rights of owners of entire collections to modify and adapt their NFTs for such endeavors without increasing the risk of potential disputes among the community.
Supports transparent permission splitting
Likewise, once someone sells their NFT, the license states that the seller's license (and any sub-licenses the seller may have granted) will be terminated, meaning that the full "Can't Be Evil" license rights will pass to the new Owner, without any encumbrances. This is critical to protecting potential buyers from unknowingly purchasing NFTs with existing split permission rights that could limit the buyer's rights.
While this somewhat limits the holder's ability to grant perpetual sub-licenses, it does so only to the extent the holder sells their NFT. Any derivative works they have created may continue to be used provided they do not include copyrighted material in the original artwork. Ultimately, once a transparent and on-chain relicensing regime is widely adopted, it will be possible to have more open and permissive relicensing without automatic termination, as NFT purchasers will be able to see these split license certificates on chain, And incorporate them into their decision-making process for buying NFTs.
Respect third-party content
When an artist uses another artist's work to create a new artwork, they may introduce some additional legal risk to the buyer, especially if the terms of the collaboration are not clearly stated. Creators can supplement the "Can't Be Evil" license with additional rules and terms to reduce risk for buyers while enabling creators to better collaborate.
These licenses are also designed to make creators (not buyers) liable for using third-party material without permission (for example, if an artist adds to a limited collection of avatars without permission from the collection creator). responsibility. Therefore, the use of these licenses is equivalent to a firm commitment by the creator that they have not included elements of piracy in their NFT.
Claim license ownership in case of loss
These licenses are designed to address some of the uncertainties that arise when lost or stolen NFTs fall into the wrong hands, including that actual ownership does not transfer to the thief even if they no longer hold the stolen NFT. The "Can't Be Evil" license is designed to minimize the loss of NFT holders after theft by ensuring that license rights are not passed on to anyone who illegally obtains NFT.
wind up
We deploy license certificates to Arweave (ensuring they are stored in a public, permanent, and immutable manner), then incorporate each license certificate into a smart contract that any new NFT item can inherit. As a result, projects can easily add immutable references to their preferred "Can't Be Evil" license certificates directly into their on-chain smart contracts.
Our CantBeEvil.sol contract exposes the getLicenseURI() and getLicenseName() functions in the project's smart contract, which, when called, allow anyone to view the applicable license certificate for the NFT.
By referencing the license on-chain and in metadata, the marketplace may extract the license type for a given NFT and display it in the NFT's listing. This can help buyers understand the NFT-related rights they are interested in purchasing, and strengthen the legal enforceability of license certificates.
By making licenses easy (if free) to integrate, we hope to make access and access to high-quality licenses more ubiquitous, and in doing so, drive further standardization across the Web3 industry. Greater adoption of this certificate could have incredible benefits for creators, consumers, and the entire NFT ecosystem.
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