Why Did Moonbirds Move All User Generated Art To the Creative Commons License?

In a highly controversial move, Kevin Rose announced yesterday that Moonbirds and Oddities are moving to the CC0 public license.

No Rights Reserved

CC0 enables creators and owners of copyright-protected content to waive those rights and thereby place the creations in the public domain. This would allow anyone to freely use the works for any purpose without restriction under copyright law.

In simple terms, this would mean that anyone can freely use the Moonbirds and Oddities art in any way they see fit. This effectively legitimizes all the derivative NFT collections that have been floating around including AI and 3D Moonbirds.

The controversy

While the move to CC0 seems to honor the basic principles of Web 3, this major shift has not been received positively by everyone.

Many holders of these expensive JPEGs were caught off guard by the CC0 announcement and felt a discussion was warranted for such a massive change.

Moreover, many NFT holders who bought into the project believed they had IP rights to their JPEGs and some even had plans to use their specific bird or oddity to launch brands in the future. Building a business using these JPEGs as branding now becomes complicated as the art is effectively in the public domain and available for anyone to use and repurpose.

The upsides

In the spirit of Web 3, true ownership will no longer be determined by a central entity. Provenance will now come from the blockchain itself as God intended.

Once something is in the public domain, that right is irrevocable. There are no take backsies here even if Proof were to be sold off and managed by a different organization down the line.

The move to CC0 has massive implications regarding the Moonbirds and the Oddities IP.

I understand why people are upset. If I had plans to launch a brand using the Moonbirds IP, I would be frustrated as well. However, I have always looked at these illiquid JPEGs as just collectibles whose true utility comes from social signaling. To that end, the provenance that comes from the blockchain should be the only thing that matters. Although people can copy and repurpose your JPEG, what should truly matter is that you own the original.

Thank you for reading.

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