What is CC0? Understanding NFT IP ownership rights

Transcript

g m g m welcome to web3 Academy a place for entrepreneurs businesses and creators to explore and learn how to use web3 to transform business models and build thriving communities I'm Jaybird I'm coming at you from Paris this week and I'm here to keep you on the Forefront of technology so that you don't fall behind friends it is the weekly Deep dive and I've got a killer episode for you today super stoked we're gonna be talking about what is cc0 how do you understand nft IP ownership rights and some predictions for the future

some really exciting predictions some things I'm pumped us talk about including the biggest projects in the next decade I believe will be cc0 a board AP Yacht Club nft collector will have their IP license revoked I think that's going to happen in the next few years and my final prediction there will be a clear playbook for nft collectors to become millionaires from nft IP licenses but before I jump into today's podcast let me ask you a question would you like to get whitelisted for lens protocol I know I would and I know I was lucky enough to get whitelisted well because

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you up with whitelist for lens protocol you know why you want white list for lens protocol because you want your name you want I wanted jaybird.lens I want at Jaybird you know on Twitter I'm not at Jaybird on Twitter web3 Academy is Webster Academy underscore I wish we had web3 Academy well if you get wait listed for lens you're going to be able to get there first and you're going to make sure that you get your brand name whether it's your personal name whether it's your business name you're going to get hooked up and we believe lens is going to be huge and so it's going to be I think the biggest long term we're going to see most social media built on top a lens in the next decade and so this is our way

of keeping you on the Forefront of innovation and making sure that you are in the leading space with your brand name okay let's get to today's article it's the Deep dive and we're deep diving on what is cc0 and how do you understand all the different forms of nft Ip or intellectual property ownership rights to be or not to be that is the question this is one of the most famous lines written by William Shakespeare this line along with all of the works of Shakespeare are in the public domain as such anyone is free to copy perform

edit remake or commercialize the work without permission from the Creator that's right whenever anybody takes any Shakespeare work they make a movie they write a play they put it on a t-shirt it's free they're allowed to do that they don't have to license it from anybody you can go do that right now for free and you can commercialize it you can sell it you can make money off it it's all in the public domain public domain is the same thing as cc0 or creative common zero is what cc0 stands for I will use those two public domain and cc0 interchangeably throughout this article now when an nft project decides to be cc0 they are giving ownership of

their IP to the general public so the question on everyone's mind is why would an nft project decide to give up ownership rights of their IP sounds funny doesn't it and is cc0 good or bad for a project where does this lead us what does this mean what are the benefits well we're going to jump into all of those today now the answer to whether or not it's good for a project depends largely on the project objectives right now my aim is to help you understand cc0 along with the other commonly used IP rights from the perspective of a Creator business and an

nft collector so that you can decide what makes the most sense now I want to be clear I'm an adoption Maxi my mission is to help traditional businesses adopt web 3. because web3 is a new layer of the internet that enriches so many areas of Our Lives blockchain technology has the potential to vastly improve currency property rights organizational structures identity and so much more so regardless of which IP rights nft project decides to use what matters more is that we participate that we play drop an nft climb into the web 3 sandbox and

experiment now I want to be clear IP ownership rights are just tools in the Creator toolkit the Creator toolkit has absolutely exploded in the last decade with the Verizon web 2 of social media of the Creator or economy of the opportunity to create and make an income without needing a large company behind you because distribution has changed we're not going to get into that whole side of it but I want to be clear IP ownership are just a tool in the Creator toolkit so cc0 is a tool licensing is a tool trademark is a tool copyright is a

tool tools are a means to an end so before pulling out your hammer and looking for nails make sure you clearly write down your objective if you're not clear on your objective don't start using your tool all right you got to get clear on your objective first take the time to be very clear on your why why do you exist what's your mission what's your purpose and what's your objective then once you're clear on that choose the IP ownership rights that will facilitate your desired outcome now it's often clear to us that artists and businesses have different objectives one focused on sharing their art the other

focused on profit so here is a very overly simplified view of my current beliefs and which project should use cc0 now I want to be clear this is overly simplified because we're so early in the cc0 experiment but here's my view if your goal is to build a Content or media business focused on maximizing profit within the next three to five years then I would retain IP ownership if your goal is to run a grand experiment focused on composable culture with long-term timelines then cc0 is the way to go the spectrum of ownership of Ip

ownership rights from cz0 to All Rights Reserved is why it's wide spectrum there's so many variations in the middle so whatever a project chooses here's what matters most is that you communicate that with your community you communicate your goals and you communicate your intentions your community if you are launching an nft you need to think about your community now more than ever most important is to always be upfront with your community so if you don't know what IP ownership you should do make that clear the natural starting point for a project is to have controlled IP to retain ownership to the Creator that is the natural starting

point and if that's your starting point that's fine but if you don't know if you think you might do cc0 if you're not sure just communicate that be upfront with your community and be part of make decisions together all right that is what matters most also you need to know cc0 is irreversible it's permanent once you do it you cannot go backwards on it so don't rush into this decision now what makes cc0 such an interesting and fascinating tool is that we're so early in the experiment and when we're early it's always fun to talk about because we can dream and there's so much potential and who knows where it goes and as I said I think it's going to Big places but how does that work what's it

look like well only time will tell now everyone keeps saying that cc0 is the next slice bread but let's be clear here public goods and public domain rights have been around for a long time in fact we've seen many ownership IP ownership formats play out for centuries from centralized protected IP rights you know Disney being the biggest example of that Mickey Mouse also an example of that quick side note the earliest versions of Mickey Mouse become public domain I believe in 2024 it's it's very soon that will be a very interesting story to follow

how will that play out obviously Disney will fight that but it's pretty tough to fight usually when somebody tries to fight these these public domain battles and courts it just draws it out a few years but eventually it does become public domain so watch out for that one um we've also seen public domain rights play out for centuries Shakespeare Sherlock Holmes The Mona Lisa have been public domain for a while well actually the these above public domain examples are only public domain because they're older than 70 years so in most countries the term of protection of copyright expires 70 years after the death of the latest living author or

creator that's why around 2010 we saw multiple Sherlock Holmes TV series and movies being released most of the stories of Sherlock Holmes had become public domain so it was decades after the death of the author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle but right now what's different about right now is for the first time ever we have the opportunity to build intellectual property with a global Community from the beginning by making a project cc0 this concept of global Community Driven IP combined with nft ownership is so new and fascinating I am so fired up about it because it just it has huge who knows

where it leads truly it could lead in so many directions and honestly nobody knows I've listened to so many experts I've spoken to lots of people truthfully no one knows but just consider meme culture for a second okay a meme such as the one uh with the kid doing the fist pump or the one of Willy Wonka with the smirking face saying ah yeah you think you know but you don't know uh or the harembe meat or the meme of the guy looking like shocked and dismayed there's so many of these memes and it's probably easier that you see them versus me describe them but if you were to look

at memes you would recognize them instantly you would know them they're such a part of our culture and they've been spread vastly why is that it's because amine is public domain a meme is CC zero all right no it doesn't mean that any means cc0 most memes are c0 because they're either super old content that is in that has become public domain or they're usually homemade which nobody has ownership over or somebody could have ownership but they don't try to have ownership over the IP often also memes just people don't care they just like their stuff being spread and why is that unique well it's because a meme has the potential to be copied

edited remade and spread to millions of people in a very short period of time that is the massive potential of cc0 with over 4.5 billion people on the internet we're living in an era where tremendous value is created by memetic assets one of the best examples of this is the last two American presidents first Barack Obama became president from the meme yes we can then Donald Trump of all people became president from the meme make America great again never before have we had the tools and an incentive to develop mimetic assets as we do now in the past meet value

would not flow back to creators but now because of token ownership value can flow back to the creators the collectors and the community members we also haven't had much high quality contemporary IP in the public domain everything in public domain is either hundreds of years old or homemade cc0 projects have the potential to change that this will create a library of public domain content contemporary work from contemporary artists or brands with influence this is the potential to create a cultural accelerant we are about to enter the era of

composable culture like never before and there is going to be massive outcomes for the creators that lead in this space foreign so how do you know if your project should use cc0 or if you're an investor how do you know if you should invest in a cc0 project simple answer there is no simple answer sorry about that it depends there's no tldr on this one guys you got to dive deep there's a lot to understand a lot to learn but I'm going to make sure I help you figure it out so one thing is for sure for a cc0 project to be successful the

public needs to care about it they need to want to proliferate it the work needs to have cultural cachet it needs to be a memetic asset with the potential to successfully propagate or in simple terms it needs to be memeable if you want to learn from the best here's a few of the most popular CC zero projects so far nouns Moon Birds Goblin Town mfers cryptos bullet map and crypto dick butts yes you did hear me right crypto dick butts if you don't know nfts and don't know it is a very large nft project with

a massive community so since it's so early in the cc0 project sorry cc0 experiment honestly like there is no Playbook even all of these guys are experimenting I would say that nouns and moon birds are the two that I am watching closest they're the two I'm paying the most attention to they're also the two that have the biggest piggy banks so they have the most potential for success and quite frankly I believe them to be the most uh accessible to the world they're the most memeable in my mind but honestly I've never seen a meme of nouns or moonbirds so who's doing that I don't know how are we going to get there I

don't know so here's what I would say if I was the founder of a cc0 project here's a few of the things that I would be focused on in order to ensure My Success first memetic IP and I would make sure that my IP is open and widely accessible make it available it needs to be available to copy to edit to remake it needs to be simple to compose the IP it can't be hidden somewhere okay a great example of this is nouns there's an open figma file where you can find all of the nouns traits figma if I don't know those who don't know is a design software basically they have an open document where you can go and take every single

one of their traits that is used in their nouns and you can copy it and reuse it in whatever way you want number two thing I would focused on I would be focused on building a revenue engine that exists to incentivize those who are not nft holders to build on top of the project the challenge with cc0 is well if I'm not an nft holder why do I want to build on top of the project well I want to build on top of the project if I know that the project drives Revenue if I can see that there is a revenue engine and people are paying money for this project well then I will probably

use it in my in my project or I want to commercialize as well the best example I can think of this is cities okay think about city names like New York City Los Angeles Paris Amsterdam Hong Kong the biggest cities in the world they are constantly used in on t-shirts on lunch boxes uh and and movies and TV shows and books why because they're huge Brands they're very recognizable people love them now those city names those are public domain using those city names you don't have to pay

anybody you can just permissionlessly use those city names right and what is so special about that is why do you use those City memes because you've seen those cities generate Revenue because you know they're popular because they're a big deal and so if I was a cc0 project that's where I'd be focused on I'd be focused on okay how can I gen show that Revenue generation is possible how can I create a Playbook because if you can create a Playbook then others will want to copy it third thing I'd be focused on if I was a cc0 project founder is I would have a centralized decision maker that is running in parallel to the project that brings persistent value

back to the project over the course of decades the best example of this is proof and moon Birds now it's too early to see how this works how proof is going to bring value back to the Moon Birds Community but it is clear that they are committed to doing that and I believe that will be a game changer in what allows Moon Birds to be one of the biggest cc0 projects I will certainly be keeping a close eye on that project and if you keep listening I'll make sure I keep you in the loop because I'm a bird's holder so I follow it very closely okay five predictions for the future of nft Ip rights oh I'm fired about these predictions number one the

biggest projects in the next decade will be cc0 the biggest nft projects number two a board API Club nft collector will have their IP license revoked number three there will be a clear playbook for nft collectors to become millionaires from nft IP licenses number four trademarks will be granted to derivatives of cc0 projects and number five regulation is coming and it will play a big role let's dive into each one of these the biggest projects in the next decade will be cc0 the argument in favor of cc0 most often uses examples of Open Source knowledge

to demonstrate its massive potential and for good reason what would the internet be like today if it was controlled by one centralized company would there be a technological innovation and Economic Opportunity on the scale that we've seen no certainly not thankfully the creators of the folk of the internet focused on Building open source composable systems what did that do it drove an acceleration of Technology development like we've never seen before over the last 30 years so we've seen firsthand the power of Open Source knowledge

it's composable anybody can take it and they can build upon it and now we have the protocols that we built the internet on which has led to massive economic potential massive Innovation for so many now if the goal is to optimize to have Global impact then you must engineer your work to be as networked as possible you've got to take advantage of the network of fact but this is really really hard to achieve when you're a startup you know it's just it takes years years decades to achieve a network effect whereas open source enables a platform to grow by enabling others to develop and grow with you ethereum is the best recent example of

this what's amazing about ethereum is that value is able to flow back to the developers through their token past open source knowledge has never been able to drive value value back to the creators so we got a big unlock here which is why big things are coming in the cc0 space but I want to be clear I do think that cc0 is going to be harder to be successful in than the more traditional IP path the reason being cc0 there's no Playbook it's just an experiment right now and because there's no Playbook and because there's no clear Revenue model and because it's

decentralized which means that you have a community working on something it'll be very hard to be big enough and get scale needed to succeed so I think the easier path for an nft project right now if you're a project founder the easier path is not to go cc0 the easier path is to control your IP in the beginning and then perhaps what I would love to see a project do to be honest I would love to see a project control the IP in the beginning and then after five years maybe two years I don't know after a certain time when you've built a community and you are successful and you have a lot of active members in your community then go to your community and say hey guys we think that going to cc0

is a great opportunity here's why and see what they say the best example of that was blip map did this uh I think about a year into their creation they went to the community the community I think unanimously I know the community voting in favor of it I don't know if it's unanimous but the community voted in favor of going cc0 and now that project is soaring so great example here's a really simple example of why cc0 can work so when board API Club released the other side trailer they included a noun and a cryptos in the video and I'm pretty sure they did this because they just could because it was so easy didn't have to ask anybody

you have to pick up the phone and be like hey you know so and so can we use your your IP and our video and then so and so it's like oh I don't know let us get in touch with lawyers no none of that they could just use it and you know what the result was an instant boost boost in the floor project the floor price of both projects in particular cryptos I remember cryptos went up like 30 to 50 percent after it was included in this trailer just a trailer you know yes for the other side yes there's a lot of hype behind Yuga labs and they're metaverse and it's great and we're all excited but still you can see the power and the potential of cc0 in that because anybody can permissionlessly use your IP well

you get to benefit when they do that very exciting now obviously there's a downside what if they use your IP in a way that you don't like that's a risk and that's the downside and there's definitely going to be talk about that to come but I actually I'm going to save that for another episode because I kind of just got so much to discuss here on this one okay prediction number two a board ape yacht club nft holder will have their IP license revoked what does this we mean how's this going to happen well okay here's the truth most current nft projects are not granting collectors IP rights they are granting collectors a revocable

license all right there's a clear difference this is why larva Labs Louis was able to sell crypto punks and me bits to you collapse this is why Yuga Labs is able to modify the licensing rights that they're giving to their community over time many collectors not just of yoga Labs projects many collectors of all nft projects think they have ownership that is not true I want to say that again if you are an nft collector and you think that you have IP ownership of your nfts 90 I don't even know 99 you do not very high percentage you do not okay the

reason you don't is because it is very difficult to put this into smart contracts I'm not going to get into the details of that but currently the way this is done with the large majority of nft projects that say they are giving you IP ownership all they are doing is they are licensing you IP with a revocable license okay moonbirds demonstrated this very recently when they made their project cc0 previously Moon boots holders had a license to commercialize their nft and then it was gone in a second creators and moon Birds proof changed the IP ownership to cc0 and they did it

without permission of the holders I know because I'm a holder okay and you know what proof is a massive organization I mean it's just massive massive in terms of their their piggy bank and their treasury they got a lot of money got hundreds of millions of dollars your team I think is about like 20 30 people now maybe it's more than that actually I can't keep track to keep growing but I can guarantee you with their financial abilities in their their piggy bank I can guarantee you they consult the lawyers so they just showed how revocable that nft license is they want to take it back they can so be careful you're on quicksand if you're an nft holder and you think that you have IP

ownership you don't and someday this is going to be tested in courts an ape owner will do something that you collabs doesn't like for example a partnership with a firearms company or attach themselves to a controversial political campaign or something to do with hate speech and Yuga has the right to revoke the license and in this instance I wouldn't be surprised if they do or let's take a more extreme example and this is never going to happen but let's just use this example let's say that board API Club sells to Disney let's say Yuga Subs board Apache Club to Disney okay well Disney

they they make their money they live there they made all their success off of controlled IP ownership most some of the most restrictive and most control they're probably the best in the world that had controlling their IP so they don't want to share their IP with these nft holders so what are they going to do they're going to change the licensing agreement they're going to revoke that license from the NAT holders now I want to be clear in this instance those who have revenue and or a business using an nft that they previously had a license for they could probably get a trademark okay so great you can get a trademark you can probably continue to

use that uh IP in it in the in the same way that you've already been using it okay you wouldn't have this like extended license that you use it in a new way but you could use it in the same way okay you can get that trademark but those who have not commercialized their nft those who have not used it in any way would not be able to hold on to those rights they would lose them if Disney decided to take them away or anyone decided to take them away okay over the next 10 years these and many other nft ownership rights will be tested so keep a close eye on it you're going to want to keep your ear to the grindstone on this there's so much that's going to happen in the future and this is just constantly evolving third

prediction there will be a clear playbook for nft collectors to become millionaires from nft IP licenses this is already happening with many major nft collectors commercializing their entities in various ways and there will be an entire economic ecosystem which develops around nft collector IP I mean it's just I am absolutely fired up about this it's so exciting I think it's going to be it's just going to be huge how this goes down you know think about influencer agencies think about how big the Creator economy has gotten how big influencers have gone what has happened there's a whole economy around it right well there's going to be a big economy around nft IP as well

these agencies there will be nft agencies which they'll develop Partnerships for you they'll commercialize help you commercialize your IP of your nfts they'll bring you collabs they'll suggest that you create a a water company off of your cool cat like who knows but it's going to be big you know one example I heard recently was an agency that will represent your nft licenses on YouTube so they'll ensure that when your nft is used on YouTube in somebody else's video that you profit from that content because you own that you own that nft and they can prove it through the blockchain and YouTube is

very well set up for Content ownership because this is already a huge part of YouTube because every major Media Company every major Netflix Amazon uh Warner Brothers Sony all the major media and entertainment companies all are already doing this all the major sporting leagues NBA NHL baseball all of them Champions League all of them have agencies that they hire that have their job is to use their algorithms they've created to go through YouTube to find all of the content that has been taken and reposted and reproduced and copied

because that content is not public domain and they either get that content taken down or they ensure that ad Revenue that comes from that content flows back to the original Creator and that same thing will happen with nftip and so much more which is why nfts are so exciting oh my God guys I just I'm so fired up over here in Paris okay number fourth prediction trademarks will be granted to derivatives of cc0 projects already touched on this briefly a second ago in the board API Club example so I want to be clear anyone can commercialize a cc0 project in any direction however when you do commercialize a cc0 project these layer 2 projects let's call them or derivative

work can obtain controlled IP ownership rights through trademarks this is a simple yet important distinction because it grants IP ownership rights to those who build on top of cc0 work for example let's say a let's say I make a TV show okay uh and I'm using Moon birds and I'm going to call it Greta's Nest well then I can trademark the name Greta's Ness and the content that is created by the show even if that includes Moon Birds I can trademark that content okay and then that trademark gives me ip ownership rights over my derivative work okay and it's super important because it means that cc0 isn't cc0 forever it can be if

you wanted to be but cc0 can also be cc0 layer one and then Layer Two can be all rights reserved because you want to own your IP because you created something using this the public domain work using that cc0 it's fascinating and there's going to be a lot of trademark stuff that comes out of that fifth prediction regulation will play a big role guys listen to this I know we talk about regulation a lot and I know it's super dull and boring but this is important this year the U.S Senate asked the U.S copyrights and trademarks offices to conduct a study about how nfts and web3 is going to impact intellectual property is happening how is it gonna what's gonna happen

all right and they officially I believe launched a study in June and the work of the study is going to impact legislation in the U.S Congress for years to come now I've heard that they're focused on customer protection and that there is great concern about licensing but there's going to be so many facets of this this is just such a such a huge space with so many factors at play so what's most important here everybody guys and gals ladies and gents get your voices heard participate in the study they will take public comment at some part as part of the study they have not

done this yet I've been watching I haven't seen it yet when it does I will make sure I share it with you guys you'll be the first to know okay because here's the thing if we don't take part in this a bunch of people in Washington who have no idea what nfts are will start writing laws that are going to affect us all so we better participate okay in conclusion I'm going to conclude with an example how I think cc0 can work I'm going to use x copy as an example x copy who is one of the most well-known nft artists he recently made his all of his works cc0 now

how do we know if this is successful well if this adds value back to his nfts and he's making royalties because well then cc0 worked I think we can all agree nfts go up as a result of and if he's going up S company gets royalties everybody wins now let's take an example let's say Zara makes x copy t-shirts let's take let's say they take his right click save and they put it on t-shirts honestly you could see this happening I've already seen it on t-shirts it's not Zara t-shirts though um but let's say they do that well what happens when Zoro do that well Zara makes a ton of money because people are like these are dope shirts wow what

a great design I love it all right thousands of people are wearing these shirts probably tens of thousands hundreds thousands are such a massive clothing brand fashion company what does that do it draws more attention to x copy all right by drawing more attention it pushes up the price of x copy nfts now wouldn't that that would and if T holders win x copy wins everybody wins but here's the question would x copy make a partnership with Zara on his own probably not probably not because it's not authentic I don't necessarily think that I mean

babies are our next copy a little I don't really I don't necessarily think there's an authentic fit between the two you put an artist like x copy in a room with Zara you think that they're gonna you know Jive and get along and be like oh yeah you totally buy with our brand no most of the time this is why all these partnership deals are not done by the artist they're done either by an agent who represents the artist who is just trying to commercialize the out of that artist in order to make money or they're done by the estate after the artist passes away who again are trying to make money and that's when we start to see stuff on lunch boxes and on

posters and t-shirts and on socks and everything like that now I think there is a good question is is that necessarily a good thing if there's just more of the brand out there and being pushed well I think it depends on your definition of success and good you know in my example right now what I'm saying is going to make more money for X copying for his nft holders well obviously that's a massive definition of success but I think there's another part here and that part is if people takes X copies work and they spread it across the world then it's hard to imagine that his art will will become more valuable

but more so it will also be seen by more people and as a result of that it will drive more attention to him and his future work which will thus enable him to increase his influence and increase his impact I think you can all agree is really the other definition of success look whatever happens we are at such an exciting time this is so much freaking fun we are playing in a sandbox that has massive potential and I think that one thing is clear we all need to get in and play so

make sure you jump in the sandbox get off your butt and have some fun this week get involved in the cc0 project whether it be you know purchasing a c0 or nft you could purchase a little noun I think they're only a couple hundred bucks uh or another one is uh Nars is there one I'll put in the show notes they're quite cheap they're only like 20 bucks it's a derivative of the nouns project cool one you can check out but let's not forget that in the long run everything goes to cc0 whether we like it or not thanks for listening to everybody have yourself a fantastic week and I will see you next time Jay birdout

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utility implementation anyway so you should not take any of this as Financial advice thank you friends and see you in the next one