Karsten Wenzlaff, Advisor
August 26th, 2025
Karsten Wenzlaff is a Crowdfunding and Fintech Expert from Germany. He is Secretary-General of Digit[...]
A16Z Launches 6 New NFT Licenses Under ‘Can’t Be Evil’ Principle
The Defiant | Owen Fernau | Sep 2, 2022
Who owns what when someone owns an NFT? The answer is not always clear.
- When Actor Seth Green’s Bored Ape was stolen, for instance, it brought plans for a show with the animated character into question.
- There’s the ambiguity of whether the metadata, the code that creates NFT images, is actually stored in a way owners can rely on. And then there is the more general mystery of how someone can “own” digital images or characters that are only a right-click away from duplication.
a16z delves into the world of IP rights and royalties (unusual for a VC company for sure)
- In a post published on Aug. 31, a16z partners Miles Jennings and Chris Dixon said traditional copyright approaches are too restrictive for creators and cannot keep pace with technological change.
See: Strategies for Protecting NFT Brand/product IP in the Metaverse
- On Aug. 31, a16z, as the firm is known, launched six new NFT licenses under the brand “Can’t Be Evil” that purport to help artists monetize the new technology. The licenses have been released to the public gratis.
- pplying the 'Can't Be Evil' principle to NFT licenses
- “Can’t Be Evil” is a guiding principle in web3 (and a riff on the “don’t be evil” slogan popularized by Google) arising from a new computational paradigm: blockchains are computers that can make strong commitments and that are not controlled by people. In other words, blockchains enable a new “trustless” version of the internet where users don’t need to trust one another or rely on centralized services and corporations to transact.
- According to the VC firm, the licenses aim to accomplish three goals:
- First, the licenses are meant to help NFT creators protect and distribute their intellectual property.
- They are also designed to grant NFT holders a set of ironclad rights.
- And third the instruments are supposed to help creators, holders, and the community at large leverage the licenses to “unleash the creative and economic potential of their projects.”
See:
What do you mean NFTs can now by cloned by ‘Mimics’?
Intellectual Property and NFTs: What you need to know
Miles Jennings and Chris Dixon said:
Now that web3 innovations are testing the limits of traditional legal frameworks, it’s time for a new set of licenses designed specifically for non-fungible tokens, or NFTs.
Not everyone is excited about the license: Andrew Hutchinson, head of content at Social Media Today, which provides analysis about the social media industry, didn’t see anything new in the development.
Web3 bros keep coming up with ‘new’ systems, which essentially replicate existing regulatory frameworks,” he tweeted, “but then pretend like they’ve come up with some revolutionary concept.
Continue to the full article --> here
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