WTF are CC0 NFT Projects?

What is CC0?

“Creative Commons Zero” is referred to as cc0. In plain English, it essentially means that the author of a work of art or other creative work has waived all intellectual property rights in it. This occurs automatically after a predetermined period of time, but it can also occur if the creator chooses to immediately renounce their intellectual property rights. You may have heard that certain things are considered to be in the “public domain,” which allows for the creation of content by anyone using that intellectual property. That merely serves as another way to state that the content is cc0.

For instance, all of Shakespeare’s original works are cc0 and in the public domain. The same is true of Sherlock Holmes and Vincent Van Gogh’s artwork.

What do CC0s have to do with NFTs?

More and more creators are opting to make the intellectual property (IP) underlying their NFT projects available to the public right away. You might wonder why and whether this is advantageous for the founders and token holders alike. And the response is, “it depends,” just like all wise answers in life.

The biggest benefit, in my opinion, is that if I own a CC0 NFT, I own everything. This does not imply that I am the IP’s owner; on the contrary, nobody is. Nobody, not the project’s founder, not the artist (s), not me. I, or anyone else, can not buy or sell it. The initial token/asset is all that is left to be owned.

However, where is the value? Isn’t the value in the IP? Yeah, and no. IP unquestionably has a lot of value. Disney makes a ton of money from the sale of toys and video games featuring its characters. If it was cc0, they could still do that, but they wouldn’t be able to stop someone else from selling toys featuring the same characters, which would probably hurt their profits. Given that there is a line of customers waiting to pay Disney to license their intellectual property, it doesn’t really make sense for them to make their content cc0.

Here in the web3/NFT space, brand building is still in its infancy. One of the best things about cc0 is that it gives anyone who wants to use the content to expand their brand creative and commercial freedom. This is a double-edged sword because it can be used by creators to make something valuable and cool that advances the universe, but it can also be co-opted by dishonest people to damage the reputation of the brand. In a sense, it’s a free for all.

But isn’t that kind of what Web3 is supposed to be, right? A wild goose chase? A trustless, decentralized web? We really shouldn’t be giving these enormous, centralized organizations such control and ownership over our intellectual property. They might end up purchasing and reselling our IP in a similar manner to how the web2 goliaths are doing with our data. This is “fixed” by cc0. They can no longer buy or sell IP because it no longer exists. These are only our tokens, and we actually own them.

And the cons of CC0ing the NFTs?

There’s nothing bad about NFT projects keeping the IP and giving owners full commercial rights. There are many good arguments in favor of this strategy. Because they are increasing the value of the IP that they have some ownership of rather than just the underlying/original token, it encourages the team and NFT holders to expand the brand. It enables token holders to share in the profits by sub-licensing their NFTs to other parties who want to use their IP to produce something.

Additionally, it aids in the team’s and the NFT owners’ brand and IP protection. Let’s say a collection containing some amazing CC0 art were to be released tomorrow. It might not garner much interest and not be widely distributed. A dishonest person might show up, “steal” the artwork and the idea, then publish it under a new name, market it like crazy, and cash in on all of the original work. Additionally, the original creators would have no recourse (legally). It might be difficult to win their case in the court of public opinion, though. Maintaining IP rights would give them (legal) protection.

Also, developing a brand without a centralized team in charge is challenging. It is hard but not impossible. A team to produce and carry out a roadmap, a creative director to plan out the franchise. A goal to strive for, but keep in mind that this is not incompatible with a project being CC0. There are many projects that have made their content available to the public while still making progress toward the specific future they have in mind for the project. However, it might be simpler to motivate a team if they are aware that they own the product they are creating and that it cannot, at any point, be taken over by bad actors.

Here are some of the NFT projects that have their IPs ‘CC0’ed: Blitmaps/Blitnauts, Mfers, CrypToadz, Loot, Nouns, Chain Runners, and Timeless Characters by Timeverse.

For most people, intellectual property rights are not a thing we think of when we’re buying an NFT. We think we’re having fun, buying a jpeg, joining a community, etc. And most probably, this is the primary motivation for both creating and holding NFTs. Having the rights of one’s NFTs open, though, is an interesting aspect when it comes to collaboration, distribution, and modularity.

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