Galaxy Digital research finds Bored Ape Yacht Club and Moonbirds misleading buyers when it comes to intellectual property rights. Apparently, there seems to be a lack of a way to assign intellectual property rights to owners. In particular, he covers two collections in “A Survey of NFT Licenses: Facts & Fictions” released yesterday.
How BAYC and Moonbirds misled buyers
Research shows that many publishers, including the largest, Yuga Labs, mislead NFT buyers regarding the intellectual property rights of the content they sell. Interestingly, only one of her NFT collections of the top 25 (World of Women) has even attempted to grant intellectual property rights to NFT buyers.
The problem stems from a major theme these days: the Creative Commons license. While this is seen as a solution to the project’s restrictive license, it moves the IP into the public domain, thus removing his NFT ownership entirely from a legal standpoint. Therefore, it will be impossible for NFT holders to defend their ownership in court.
Unfortunately, without on-chain representation and improved transfer of IP rights from issuers (such as Yuga Labs) to token holders (consumers), everyone’s ideas and visions for the future of web3 will not be possible. There is a possibility.
How can I fix this?
Some projects have found ways to be innovative in how they address the issues raised in the survey and not mislead buyers through complete transparency.
Another top NFT project, Doodles, has a unique way of dealing with this. This allows users to create derivative projects and earn a limited amount of earnings. This also restricts users from modifying the original art.
Alternatively, VeeFriends by Gary Vaynerchuk allows users to use NFTs for personal purposes only. This means they are not allowed to make their own commercial products.
Some projects also use the Creative Commons Zero License (aka No Rights Reserve). This simply means that anyone, not just the NFT owner, can use the artwork to create derivative works. The “Nouns” NFT collection is the most notable project subject to this license. MoonBirds recently announced plans to make this change to their NFT collection. This infuriated current owners and excited non-owners who were fans of the collection.
Spotted in a Galaxy Digital survey
Some Yuga Labs and Moonbirds brands have misled buyers due to language in their licenses. Yuga Labs says: In reality, Yuga Labs still owns the intellectual property. Galaxy Digital wrote that Yuga Labs “implicitly acknowledges that NFT owners do not actually own the art”.
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This article is an educational material.
As always, do your own research before making any type of investment.
