Moonbird’s NFT has now been moved to public domain

by James · August 9, 2022

The popular NFT project, Moonbirds, has transitioned to a public domain usage model. The change in copyright status has annoyed some of the holders!

On Thursday, Moonbirds co-founder Kevin Rose explained that Moonbirds and its sister project, Oddities, will move to the Creative Commons CCO copyright code.

This change means that the NFT project will now be under public authority and can be freely distributed, expanded and commercialized even without the owner’s permission.

1/GM.

Today we announce it @månefugler and @oddities_xyz moving to the public CC0 license.

We believe this move respects and respects the values of the internet and web3 and starts a new and important phase of the project. 🧵…

— KΞVIN R◎SE (🪹,🦉) (@kevinrose) 4 August 2022

Rose went on to add that in the coming time, “true ownership of what is recorded on the chain” will be determined as it should be, and not by a record hosted by a government or corporate entity.

After this move, the project’s terms of service will also be updated. Thus, DAOs handling Moonbirds and Oddities will be created to prevent fraud, hate speech, and violence associated with these collections.

However, the decision to move to public property has not gone down well with some NFT owners!

Some of the members claimed that they had invested in these NFTs and believed that they had exclusive rights to their NFTs. But with the latest decision, NFT owners feel they have been disenfranchised without warning.

Twitter user Loopify tweeted: “Not sure if that was the right move tbh”. While another uses Cathsimard argued“It would have been nice to implement a voting mechanism for holders”.

Justin Taylor, a Twitter executive said, “I disagree with the decision to go with CCO months after launch, and take the rights away from the holders,” further mentioning that he himself does not own a Moonbird. “Artists and creators, I think, should make the decision beforehand, as consumers were buying with an expectation,” Taylor added.

Moonbirds has the legal right to waive the project’s copyright through a creative commons license, according to Sohaib Mohammad, an NFT-focused intellectual property lawyer. However, Mohammad said the decision not to notify holders before copyright lapses highlights a lack of protection for NFT buyers.

The co-founder concluded that the community will also host a full debrief and Q&A at Friday’s Moonbirds Parliament.