Quick take:
- Proof co-founder, Kevin Rose, is allowing anyone to remix Moonbirds and Oddities for commercial use.
- Proof is the latest Web3 company to join the CC0 movement.
- Moonbirds holders are unhappy with the Rose’s decision.
Moonbirds, one of this year’s most popular blue-chip NFT projects, has joined the CC0 movement to become public domain. The NFT collection made its debut in April and generated $285 million in trading volume in three days.
On Thursday, Kevin Rose, the co-founder of Proof – the Web3 media company behind Moonbirds its affiliated Oddities NFT collection – announced in a Twitter thread that the company is moving Moonbirds and Oddities to the CC0 (Creative Commons Zero) public license.
1/GM.
— KΞVIN R◎SE (🪹,🦉) (@kevinrose) August 4, 2022
Today, we’re announcing that @moonbirds and @oddities_xyz are moving to the CC0 public license.
We believe this move honors and respects the values of the internet and web3 and starts a new and important phase of the project. 🧵…
This means that anyone can creatively remix the Moonbirds and Oddities artwork for commercial purposes. Previously, the full commercial rights were reserved by the creators and NFT holders.
Justifying his decision, Rose said that when he launched social new website Digg in 2004, he saw many projects that iterated on the idea and pushed it in new directions.
“The default gut reaction is to protect what you’ve created. Historically, you do this by enforcing and protecting patents/trademarks/copyright. Before, I defended these old structures, and in certain circumstances, they still make sense, but web3 is a chance to reboot and reexamine everything back to first principles. A chance to say that others don’t have to fail for us to win. A chance to be more inclusive and open to all,” he continued.
Rose said that on Web3, true ownership is dictated by what’s recorded on-chain and that the authenticity of Moonbirds will come from the provenance and single source of smart contracts rather than lawyers enforcing trademarks.
At the same time, Rose also announced the upcoming formation of the Moonbirds DAO to “oversee licensing of the Moonbirds and Oddities names with the primary goals of encouraging general commercialization while preventing scams, hate speech, and violence.”
Proof’s announcement comes shortly after NFT artist XCOPY released his ‘Sunshine’ artwork into the public domain. He tweeted that he was applying CC0 to all his existing art. Both Proof and XCOPY are the latest Ethereum NFT creators to join the CC0 movement.
Nouns, a one-per-day NFT project which launched last August, is one of the best known CC0 projects in the space. Its creators told Decrypt that “in the same way that academic citations make the original paper more important, citation of Nouns in whatever form they come in—at least, this is our thesis—will make the originals more important and more valuable.”
However, some Moonbirds holders do not believe that the move to CC0 would add value to their NFTs, while others think that the decision should be made by the holders. Twitter user “zencakd” asked: “I do not get it. Can anybody explain the benefit from nft owner perspective like I am five? What is the link between anybody is doing his/her own business with free images and the value of my record in the blockchain? Some example?”
Twitter user “pullparadox” responded to that question, saying: “If someone does something cool with the image of the nft you own, the value of the NFT MAY go up because someone did something cool.”
On the other hand, some others are excited about the move. “Now you have who knows how many minds working on stuff vs just the project team. I’m excited to see where this goes,” said Twitter user “mauloadream”.
The changes will be reflected in Moonbirds’ Terms of Service and website in the coming days.
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