Like many people on the internet, we here at Creative Commons have been thinking aboutNFTs, and the possibilities that unique digital assets might bring for artists and creators. (By the way, did you know thatBeeple, the artist who famouslysold an NFT for $69 million, has beenusing CC licenses for years?)
Most of the questions we’ve seen show up on CC’s social media feed relate to the intersection between CC licenses, which enable limitless copying (within the bounds of what the particular CC license’s terms allow, of course), and NFTs, which are designed to create digital scarcity and provide something unique to the NFT’s owner.
In short, if a CC license makes it legally possible to create infinite copies of a work, and NFTs are designed specifically to provide something that cannot be copied, is it problematic for a CC-licensed work to be minted as an NFT?
在我们看来，一个创作者在CC许可下向公众提供他们的作品和将其作为限量版NFT并不矛盾。对我们来说，这似乎与某些人在CC下发布他们的工作，同时也出售它的限量版印刷没有什么不同。
While we’re interested to see so much inventiveness happening around helping creators (whether they use CC licenses or not) monetize their work, we’re also very concerned about theenvironmental impactof NFTs and crypto art. We’re hopeful that the enthusiasm in this space leads to a next wave of innovation that is focused both on sustainability and valuing the work of artists.
需要注意的是，有许多关于nft和版权的开放性问题。A pair of posts on theKluwer Copyright Blogdoes a good job laying out the big picture (and points to several other resources that are helpful to read). The main question, as far as CC licensing is concerned, comes down to whether someone needs to either own or have a license to the copyright of a work in order to mint it as an NFT.
一方面，NFT并不是对象本身的副本，相反，正如Kluwer文章的作者所恰当地指出的那样:“表示并指向数字对象及其任何细节所在的元数据。”这可能表明创建NFT并不涉及版权。
On the other hand, many argue that it’s not a completely settled issue, and certainly not so when it comes to artists’expectationsabout the rights they have under copyright law. As Katarina Feder, a vice president at Artists Rights Society, says in a post forArtnet: “The dynamic is the same for an NFT as it is for a t-shirt: the copyright for an artwork rests with its creator … If you want to make an NFT of an artwork that’s not your own, you need to go to the source for permission.”
显然，这些是我们非常感兴趣的问题，我们期待着参与到关于NFTs和版权的更大的持续对话中。与此同时，我想指出一个涉及nft和CC许可的情况，我认为它提供了一个有用的思想练习。
Recently, podcasterPete Cogleposted on theCreative Commons Slack(sign-up required) to ask about whether an artist whose music he included in one of his CC-licensed podcast episodes was allowed to mint the episode as an NFT:
In 2010 I created a podcast where the digital artwork and two pieces of music were created by one artist. I collected (curated) 6 more pieces of music and released this as an MP3 file with a [CC BY-SA] license.
直到今天，当艺术家将MP3列为非功能性文档作为他们整体作品的一部分时，才出现了问题。
The artist asked my opinion about selling it as an NFT and I said no, partly because the podcast contained other CC licensed tracks and because I created it, not them, even though it contained some of their derivative works. … I’m wondering if someone knows more about how NFTs and CC licenses should work together.
It’s worth reading the full back-and-forth between Cogle and members of the CC team and broader CC community in the post’s replies thread (Cogle agreed to let us use his question in this case study). While we’re not presuming that the minting of an NFT does indeed implicate copyright, we felt Cogle’s concerns pointed to important related questions about thespiritof CC licensing and people’s expectations around what can and should happen with a work once it’s been offered to the public under one of CC’s copyright licenses.
Our thoughts, in a nutshell: Because Cogle’s podcast episode was originally made available under CC’s BY-SA license, it seems that as long as the person minting the NFT abides by the terms of the license (e.g. offers proper attribution and complies with anything that would be triggered by the SA clause), they are operating in line with what the license enables, both legally and in spirit. To extend the “limited edition prints” analogy from earlier, this would be a bit like pressing a limited run of vinyl records using CC-licensed audio.
Again, there are lots of unanswered questions about these subjects, and we’re excited to play an active role in helping to bring clarity to as much of it as we can. We’re also interested in knowing your thoughts, opinions, and ideas about the intersection of NFTs, copyright, and CC licensing. We’ll be watching Twitter and the CC Slack for your comments and questions. Additionally, I can imagine there being some really interesting presentations and conversations about these topics at the nextCreative Commons Global Summit.
