IP rights on a spectrum

The intellectual property (IP) transition from the analog age to the digital age was adventurous. The Internet wasn't built with IP and copyright in mind. The web1 and web2 periods were boisterous and impactful, but it didn't touch the core concept of digital ownership. The general concept of ownership in the web2 digital world mostly mirrored the analog version because it still required an external intermediary to settle the question of the rightful owner. The web3 revolution is transformational because it directly impacts the concept of ownership of digital goods.

The IP Lawyers Answer Your Questions about NFTs episode on The Overpriced JPEGs demonstrated why some parts of the IP law may need to be rewritten and certainly current laws will be tested in court. Watch the episode on how the lawyers decomposed the concept of IP into 5 different parts. The problem areas are also outlined in this a16z blog post introducing the NFT licenses.

The web3 ecosystem is attempting to "standardize" or at least organize different flavors of licensing. A16Z released in August 2022 released an NFT-specific copyright licensing framework.  

The licensing models are a great place to start and may be fitting for many projects. However, as more projects become interconnected in the ecosystem and as we soon start seeing the convergence of physical objects and digital NFTs the license models may need to get extended.

We released EulerBeats in early 2021 at the start of the epic NFT cycle (I'm one of the co-founders of the project). Back in late 2020, there was already some confusion about the rights and ownership associated with the NFTs. Many creators used boilerplates from Artblocks. We knew that EulerBeats was historical and packed a lot of "firsts" in the way we combined various on-chain properties and game theory incentives. The project also provided utility to the NFT owners.

Thus we made a point of making licensing very clear to the NFT users and owners. We also published TLDR to spell out in plain English what you get with an "original" token and what you get with a "print". E.g., the ToS spells out that your rights are terminated when you sell your token. And as the owner of the "original" token, you get the royalties from sales, but you can't stop someone from making prints. With the subsequent release of the "Futura", we updated the ToS as the utility, and the benefit extended to the NFT owners who remix the beats.

A Survey of NFT Licenses: Facts & Fictions - by Galaxy