No Copyright Reserved: Life in CC0
No Copyright Reserved: Life in CC0
08/05/2022
I have to admit, I had two newsletters ready to fire off already (I’ve been trying to work ahead a little bit now that I’m back at work), but with yesterday’s big news drop, plans have changed. Before you continue, I highly recommend reading @zeneca_33’s article on CC0 so you can have better context and understanding for what took place:
Let’s Dive In
Two days ago, I spotted @lilsaturn_eth in the @oddities_xyz channel asking the team a few questions. Specifically, these questions related to obtaining the figma files with the traits for Oddities. If you don’t know what a figma file is (neither did I), here’s the description from the Figma website itself:
Figma File Template is a ready-made document aiming to help you collaborate with developers, stakeholders, or other designers working on the same project.
Basically, Lilsaturn was asking for these files for some art that the @nounities community was hoping to work on. I don’t want to give away too much, but if you’re interested, any Oddity with the Noggles trait can join the discord and figure it out (I own one). At that moment two days ago, @akastevey_ weighed in that, unfortunately, those files were part of Proof’s intellectual property.
@lilsaturn_eth respectfully pushed back on that, and to be honest, he had pretty good reasoning. I went from not really understanding what was going on to agreeing with him pretty much (I was just lurking in the background).
Shortly thereafter, @justinmezzell himself popped in, and addressed the situation a little bit more in-depth.
You can see that he really put some great thought into this answer, but also left it a little bit open-ended. After Justin left, that was the last I had really heard about this stuff.
Until yesterday.
I was eating lunch at my desk, scrolling through discord when suddenly I saw the news pop up - Moonbirds and Oddities were being moved to the CC0 public license. Obviously, like any other announcement ever made in the history of Moonbirds, this sent discord and the twittersphere into an absolute frenzy.
Honestly, I’ll be the first to say that I am not fully aware of all of the pros and cons of going CC0, but my first gut instinct was that this was hugely positive. In a world like crypto and web3, this is the direction that things should go in. @lilsaturn_eth gave some great insight as to why this could be a real benefit to all of us in the ecosystem.
While some people were upset with the idea that they could no longer license out their own Moonbirds or Oddities, I think the reality here is that those cases are such extreme fringe situations that the vast majority of us were never going to have those opportunities anyway. However, that certainly doesn’t diminish the fact that I’m sure someone, somewhere, may have bought with that in mind, or maybe even have had something lined up - so that doesn’t mean that there weren’t any valid complaints regarding this.
My Thoughts
Now, even though I largely felt that this move was positive, that doesn’t mean that I didn’t have my own concerns. As I wrote in my newsletter yesterday, I am always trying to think of the worst case scenario when it comes to crypto and these kinds of things so that I ultimately don’t end up disappointed (and what I’m going to share is a perfect example of why that mindset isn’t always the best). While I loved the idea of moving to CC0, I was pretty concerned at first with the idea of the DAO that had been mentioned. To be upfront, I had missed a large portion of the team’s discord call where they had discussed it, but as we all know, DAO’s can sometimes be a dirty word.
Chiefly, my concern was this: I, like many of you, bought Moonbirds and/or Oddities because of the team. While the artwork is next level (shoutout @justinmezzell and @gremplin), I really invested because I know the team is going to execute in a world-class manner, and those are the people I want behind the project and community I am participating in. I was really concerned that even though the team had mentioned the DAO being only for trademark licenses and empowering the community, that maybe they were hoping to hand off the MB project in general to the DAO for future development (I’m not saying it was a logical leap for me to make 😂).
Obviously, this thought that entered my mind had absolutely zero basis in reality - but I told you, I am always thinking of the worst case scenario, and that certainly would have been it. You all know I absolutely love this community, but a DAO-run project is a completely different beast (you don’t want me in charge of the roadmap, trust me), and my hope was that the team’s roadmap and goals weren’t going to change. So I reached out to @kevinrose, who was kind enough to give us a few minutes of his time in the Collective Lounge, and I quickly realized my worries were unwarranted.
Knowing all of this, then, I truly think that the move to CC0 is extremely forward-thinking and will set a trend going forward in our space. After all, @moonbirds and @oddities_xyz are arguably one of THE first “blue chip” NFT to go this route (Nouns obviously but I kind of view the way they did it differently). While the true ramifications of this move certainly won’t be known until well down the road, I for one appreciate that the team makes these tough decisions. After all, I invested not because I was hoping to advise them of what I think they should do, but instead so that I could sit back and enjoy the ride.
Extras
Here’s an interesting article concerning the BAYC stuff going on when it comes to their IP and licenses.
When the CC0 news dropped, @0xBGS got right to work making sure I felt like a valued community member.
That’s all for today - I hope you have a great Friday!