You are in the discussion so you are exactly where you need to be! I am glad to have you here. It seems that there is sufficient community interest to elevate the RFC into a request for funding for some development. In order of priority, i think it makes sense to (1) start with the development of a license agreement that could act as a default agreement for people minting on SuperRare; (2) create education materials to supplement the agreement; (3) campaign the agreement for community optimization and eventual DAO-approval
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Yes I like this idea of managing the rights on chain.
There was one project called mint tree or tree mint or something like that where the owner of the original NFT 1/1 could issue prints or editions out of the 1/1. And then the owner of one of those could make a few prints. But they all had the same jpg.
I asked them about allowing for remixing but they were too busy making the prints system.
It does not really seem that it is in the brand of SR to do something like this.
I would like to see a few licenses to choose from. It would be nice to have the resale rights enforced in contractual legal language. Not sure it would stand up in court but as a political statement. There is a famous contract out there that some painters would attach to their paintings when they sold them. The Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer And Sale Agreement (1971) | Primary Information
It would be great to have it on chain. Some artists like CC0 but it grants rights to the whole world not just the owner. I may want the collector to be able to make reproductions but not the whole world. Or I may just want to allow remixes. And then there is Ai art which we are not sure if it has copywrite protection. I don’t like CC0 because it does not call for attribution.
And Right of first refusal could that be but into a license or a smart contract somehow. I suppose it could be enforced in a smart contract somehow with a dead mans stick to free it up after death.
Thanks, glad I found you.
I find this matter of rights very important… I would like to know what to do to support these requests
Reproduction rights have allowed me to survive for years…they are very important especially for artists between art and illustration, or in any case with regard to publishing and commercial uses…AIs have entered all fields forcefully thanks to agencies of microstocks that have sold off all their authors…causing a collapse in the earnings of the authors themselves…an alternative is needed, the one that for now I propose to overcome with manfold it’s really difficult for me to understand how it works…something easier is needed to log in… I don’t post anymore with superrare until this thing is fixed…
thank you!
Does the SuperRare license not allow you to reproduce pieces? Or is it that anyone can come to SR and download a copy of the image and reproduce it on their own.
What is broken with SR the login process or the license? You can mint on SR without a Manifold contract.
Having a service that manages reproduction rights would be great to have. I am not sure it will help with the Ai problem of agencies of stock image companies just using Ai. I did not know the stock image companies had caused a collapse in the earnings of the creators. That makes it important to find other alternatives.
I saw a service the other day where people were selling prompts for Ai. But making a prompt is a different sort of thing than drawing or painting something.
I’ll check it out. Sounds conceptually very in line.
I disagree that its not on-brand! I think there are plenty of approaches that fulfill the prestige brand image of SR. For example, if the SRDAO gets commercial partners like infinite objects who could be identified as an authorized display manufacturer. NFTs minted on SuperRare could be “printable” through a third party store front who would have access to the whole pool of licensable material. Artists and the collector of the printed NFT share in royalties for those sales, which could create alternative revenue sources for Artists and Collectors alike without the discovery/due diligence/legal costs of deal-making with third parties. There are a lot of third parties creating cool ways to experience NFTs. I could see the DAO allowing lots of licensees to “plug into” a licensing pool to access the best art on the blockchain and making it available to new customers who probably wouldnt buy the actual underlying NFT. Copy/display rights could be super granular (i.e., one NFT license = one display) or they could be continuous with each authorized third party holding one NFT that allows them to make as many frames as they way, subject to reporting obligations back to smart contracts that pay the artist/collector.
now ur preaching [canon](https://primaryinformation.org/the-artists-reserved-rights-transfer-and-sale-agreement-1971/)! I think the idea would be to have a default set of template licenses that is community/DAO curated, with perhaps a “standard” license that maps neatly onto commercialization opportunities that are facilitated by smart contracts.
I think cc0 was great for web2 in the sense that it was permissive and didn’t try to fight the physics of open information networks. But now that web3/smart contracts permits arms length, trustless contracting it makes less sense to liberate assets under cc0 since doing so may cut the owner out of (or create claims against them) potential licensing revenue
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SuperRare TOS provides: " The Artist reserves all exclusive copyrights to Artworks underlying SuperRare Items Minted by the Artist on the Platform, including but not limited to the right to reproduce, to prepare derivative works, to display, to perform, and to distribute the Artworks."
So, Artists still hold the rights, which i think is the best place to start since i willing to wager that 99% of NFT owners have little concern to do anything but de minimis, personal display.
Artists reserving all rights permits future experiments where Artists can selectively grant to their collectors limited commercial rights that may be only usable through a protocol/product experience. As opposed to, for example, the BAYC model where broad, sweeping rights are given away but without any contemplation of how those rights get used/exhausted on-chain.
yes, true…alternatives are needed…the agencies have granted AI platforms access to all image data, plus they now accept AI-made images…the crash happened this month…plus it would be a it’s good to free ourselves from these exploiters…beyond this…reproduction rights…and in a more extended form copyrights are very important…in my opinion they guarantee the reliability of an author…who can thus manage the path of one’s work… for me now being able to manage a contract to be attached to an image is really very difficult… but it’s my fault… it would be very useful to be able to switch from platforms that accompany me in the realization of these through simple steps
currently on superrare there is this proposal with manifold…but I couldn’t figure out how to do it…my fault sorry
I found the terms of overcoming the rights … so the problem is how to attach rights sale contracts …in addition to being clearer for those who buy an nft… even if many may not like this
The modification of the license is indeed a big deal. You don’t want to distribute a license that won’t be able to capture future opportunities or business use cases that didn’t exist at the time of initial mint/distribution. But I personally believe that licenses should be irrevocable and perpetual so long as the NFT is held (absent any on-chain rule that literally requires the destruction/burning of the NFT).
There should be a way for the artists to modify the license with the consent of current owner of the work. That modification would ideally require on-chain approvals and literally edit the metadata to reference a new agreement, which would ideally be conveyed to buyers in the UI. Luckily there are projects working on mutual metadata updates involving the owner’s consent that were designed primarily for the purpose of dynamic content NFTs but could be repurposed for a dynamic legal property.
So on the whole it seems that there is considerable community interest in enabling Artists to attach a legal agreement to their NFTs. The ability to do that may practically depend upon SuperRare Labs’ ability to enable this feature at the minting stage, but if I am not mistaken it should be possible for the Artist to amend NFT metadata so long as they are also the owner of the NFT (i.e., havent sold it yet). There are also significant policy issues at play that I think are deserving of a broader, community involved education/feedback period before any licenses go up for approval.
It would be great to get any insight or gauge level of interest from people on the SuperRare Labs product/protocol people - @SuperRareJohn @perkins @RareKoko
Absent any type of feasibility opinion from SuperRare Labs, I would like to see this RFC move forward as a community approved SIP or otherwise get worked on in a subsequent grant that accomplishes the following:
- The development of a standard set of SuperRare legal license agreement(s) in the vein of the a16z licenses but specialized for single-edition NFTs and contemplating protocol-enabled licensing;
- The creation of educational content explaining the licenses for the benefit of the community;
- the creation of a minimum viable license attachment webpage (assuming that this can’t find its way to the SuperRare.com UI in the near future) that allows artists to append their NFT metadata to include a new legal property URI; or optionally
- a modular license assembly tool that allows Artists to parametrize/combine certain terms
If anyone is interesting in working on any of these with me please reach out. I am not a product or protocol engineer to I can only contribute to (1) and (2). I intend on submitting a grant whenever another round of grants opens up and welcome anyone to join my team. You can comment on this post or reach out to me directly at [email protected].
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Above all technical implementation questions, on or off chain, I see a larger issue of the legal responsibility of Superrare if something goes wrong with one contract that was attached to an NFT. As there are as many license type as there are countries (or more), wouldn’t it be better to partner with a licensed (no pun intended) partner who has the right insurances to do so? Or a middle ground solution that is providing a technical solutions to attach the license that is provided or reviewed by a proper legal advisor (but the responsibilities have to be extremely clear).
In general I think this is a great idea. Extending the 721 metadata to include a legal property is a great idea. It might even be worth having a legal metadata field that could be extensible.
It might be worth compile a base of of licenses and example use cases.
I think getting putting together some ideas for 1. will have the highest impact. If it’s too modular it might be confusing for artists and collectors.
Great call out. Ultimately, whatever license is provided will be provided “as is” and without any warranties. As with everything in crypto, people need to do their own research and consult an attorney. This highlights the need for robust education around the licenses, which would naturally include the limitations of the licenses across different jurisdictions.
Yes there ought to be a standard set with some pretty macro terms that are relatively easy to understand. We can get into more modularity down the road, which I could even see being a specialty product for advanced users that sits on top of the SuperRare protocol.