Copyright laws have sustained artists, preserved their rights and given them the credit and fame they deserved. Whether Shakespeare in his time or Spielberg in ours — copyrights have been a blessing for artists.
Naturally, with artists emerging into the NFT fold, copyrights did too. While NFTs transferred ownership of a piece of art, they didn’t transfer certain rights like reproduction and publication to ensure that the greater credit always belonged to the artist.
Simply put, if you buy a Harry Potter book, you just get the book. You do not get the rights to print your own collection of Harry Potter books or create parallel tales or make movies based on the book or even make a poster. You just own the book. That’s it.
In an entirely anti-intuitional development, artists in the NFT world today are abandoning all copyrights of their art. In this article, we find out why.
Enter CC0 NFTs
CC0 is the common abbreviation for ‘Creative Commons Zero’, a type of rights waiving tool released by the Creative Commons Nonprofit Organisation in 2009. It is also commonly referred to as “no rights reserved” in lay terms. When artists apply the CC0 licence to their NFTs, they become known as CC0 NFTs.
A CC0 NFT can be owned by others. It means anyone can use the NFT for commercial purposes without attributing it to the original artist or creator. In a nutshell, CC0 NFTs can be seen as open-source IPs.
Typically, the copyrights of any art are usually with the artist for their entire lifetime. Reproduction or publication of any form would need the artist’s permission to avoid lawsuits. With CC0s, the artists deliberately give away their copyrights to the public domain for people to use/create/extend it however they please.
But why are artists deliberately giving their copyrights away? Let’s find out!
Importance of CC0 NFTs
With CC0 NFTs, artists want to give their artform a life of their own. The wish is for the artform to get replicated, published, meme-d and more in the public domain so that the original artform gets a community around it. It is like releasing a very catchy song and allowing all content creators to use it in their videos, make remixes, reels, etc., ensuring that the song gains massive popularity.
The artist is obviously missing out on pay cheques, but whatever they do next is already anticipated. They already have a community looking forward to it. Isn’t that the artist’s dream? To have the masses look forward to your work? And that’s just one advantage; there are just countless many that come with meme-worthy popularity.
Conclusion
Popular NFT projects such as CrypToadz, Nouns, mfers, and art by XCOPY have all opted for the CC0 path and have seen many utilise their art in forms they wouldn’t have imagined. From profile pictures to hilarious memes, these NFTs have taken time but gained a community around them and brought popularity to the creators.
When Winnie-The-Pooh came into the public domain early this year, no one would have imagined a Winnie-The-Pooh horror movie with the characters being dark and unholy versions of themselves — but that’s happening. With more CC0 NFT projects, we’ll soon see developments we wouldn’t have imagined, which will be for the better of the artists.
Of course, not every project is bound to get this popularity, but those are the slim odds you’re playing with in the NFT space.
