User Generated Discontent
The arrival of the open internet in the '90s resulted in the cost of distribution going to zero (until SNS built centripetal ring roads). The provocative slogan "rip, mix, burn" [] led to such widespread infringement that industry trade associations were suing their customers for a time. The rationale of copyright as a means to secure economic sustenance for creators broke once the read-write web reached mass adoption. Suddenly anyone with capture tools and media editor could become their own opEd publisher or netizen journalist, bypassing the traditional media gatekeepers (and alas quality controls). This proliferated to the extent of new words describing the cultural mashup phenomena such as snub-dubbing or e'gao [], with subsequent counter-reaction by back-catalog rights-holders to criminalize economic harm to their rent-seeking and impose onerous digital locks.
The previous arrangement of media concentration allowed for efficient, if not necessarily effective, bargaining between the dominant rights-holders. Historically statutes would limit monopolist tendencies via a set of normative guidelines variously labeled "fair" dealings or limits/exceptions []. But anything that conflicted with "normal" exploitation required permission, often in the form of an IP license enumerating the permitted usage (cf BAYC). As museums and archives —much less individuals— have discovered, this can still be extremely onerous with composite works (cf holdup). The dichotomy between an idea (unprotectable) and expression (creative interpretation) seems moot when the life of the (last) author + 70 years is the lockup period and AI can generate sufficient variations to foster lock-outs. Is there a middle ground between copyleftists ("information wants to be free") and IPmaximalists ("whence bought, otherwise court")?
Bright lines make good neighbors
Lessig proposed that media be encoded with metadata beyond Dublin Core and established the CreativeCommons initiative []. The crux is that there is a human-readable, legally enforceable, and machine parsable view of what the legitimate rights holder grants permissions. Thus each distinct and protected work would supply hints as to:
attribution (moral right to be named as original author) - also signaling the start of the copyright term;
derivation refusal to deal/disclaimer over subsequent modifications;
exploitation binary permitted or not;
flow-thru and optional pass-through royalties (if any).
There are extensive guidelines, search hints, and catalogs for the body of shareable works. For developers, understanding machine parsable components is key to evolving NFTs from simple pointers to dynamic content. This has been documented as the Creative Commons Rights Expression Language []. Currently, there is an incomplete EIP proposal to attribute the origins of each contributor to a collective work. For example, the license for the BanklessDAO 1st anniversary card above might be described as:
@prefix cc: <https://creativecommons.org/4.0/#ns>
@prefix dc: <https://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1>
@prefix bDAO: <https://bDAO.eth/assets/IP/#ns>
@prefix LexDAO: <https://lexDAO.eth/IP/licensing/#ns>
dc:author ␢DAO
cc:permits cc:Reproduction
cc:permits cc: Distribution
cc:permits cc: DerivativeWorks
cc:requires cc: ShareAlike
cc:requires cc: Notice
cc:more permissions <https://bDAO.eth/bizModel/gacha/#ns>
bDAO:unit ERC20("BANK")
bDAO:upon bDAO:Timelock("4 May 2025")
bDAO:upon bDAO:after(Timelock, AN-ND->0xdead && BY-SA->0xca1f)
bDAO:upon bDAO:before(Timelock, BY-SA->0xbeef)
LexDAO:persuantTo "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_and_Progressive_Agreement_for_Trans-Pacific_Partnership"
LexDAO:persuantTo "https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/uk-new-zealand-free-trade-agreement"
LexDAO:persuantTo "https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2005/19/contents"
LexDAO:cite "{Canada} Copyright Act - Chapter C-42, article 3(1)g"
Theoretically, if this was embedded within SVG that invoked the web3.js, we could have a smart contract that displayed sponsors' trademarks in different windows, with a timeout of 1 year after which the underlying templates will become a different license (shadowing the Canadian exhibition right). Free-floating assets isolated from web3 could have the traits encoded internally or via stenography. Depending on the token-gating logic, Chippi holders might embed their NFTs directly into the anniversary card for bragging rights before being raffled to raise funds for the broader bankless DAO community.
Practical Application to Personal Front Profiles
The intrusion of firms into personal space has gone to the degree of demanding social keys as a condition of employment. There have been personal anecdotes of crypto-advocates at major financial institutions being "fired" (or whatever non-blowback reason the HR dept comes up with) just for reasoning with entrenched mindsets. However, by extending the ccREL, we can (hypothetically) implement a variation of the Chatham House rule, which encourages frank and open debates including professional opinions contrary to the "official" party line.
Korp*RAT by day, DAOpunk by light.
The actual coding of dynamic NFTs is left as a project for the dev guild ;-D
[^1]: Logie, John. (2006). "Peers, Pirates, and Persuasion: Rhetoric in the Peer-to-Peer Debates". [link](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269408905_Peers_Pirates_and_Persuasion_Rhetoric_in_the_Peer-toPeer_Debates)
[^2]: Yates, M. & Hasmath, R. (2017). "When a Joke is More than a Joke: Humor as a Form of Networked Practice in the Chinese Cyber Public Sphere". The Journal of Chinese Sociology. 4. 1-14. 10.1186/s40711-017-0067-0. [link](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321802150_When_a_Joke_is_More_than_a_Joke_Humor_as_a_Form_of_Networked_Practice_in_the_Chinese_Cyber_Public_Sphere)
[^3]: Balganesh, S., Loon, N.L.W. & Sun, H. (2021). "The Cambridge Handbook of Copyright Limitations and Exceptions". Cambridge University Press ISBN 9781108670876. [link](https://books.google.com.au/books?id=dyMVEAAAQBAJ)
[^4]: Lessig, L. (2003) "The Creative Commons." University of Florida Law Review 55(3). [link](https://www.floridalawreview.com/api/v1/articles/80349-the-creative-commons.zip)
[^5]: Abelson, Hal, et al. "ccREL: The creative commons rights expression language." (2008). [link](https://wiki.creativecommons.org/images/d/d6/Ccrel-1.0.pdf)
