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Copyright-and-License-Guide

Use this as a guide for rights and licensing for minted and collected works on Teia and other nft platforms as well as creating art in general.

As an artist creating new work or as a collector buying artistic work, certain rights to display and re-use apply. These rights vary in different legal jurisdictions, since countries make different laws on copyright, but this document will attempt to give a general overview.

Generally, an artist will have full rights to their own work unless it was made in the course of working for someone else (eg if you designed something for your workplace or created art (or code) in the course of your job).

After a certain period after the orignal creator has died (varies from legislation to legislation, often between 70-90 years) the rights of a creation become public domain, meaning they can be used freely. (please note that even though something is in public domain, we encourage fair attribution, the fact that something is in public domain does not mean you can plagiarise the work on the Teia marketplace)

At all times please check also the code of conduct: https://github.com/teia-community/teia-docs/wiki/Core-Values-Code-of-Conduct-Terms-and-Conditions#copyright-and-intellectual-property

Artists​

Whenever someone creates any kind of creative work, all rights solely belong to the creator (=all rights reserved). The creator may or may not choose to put their creation under a specific license afterwards, that might change the availability of the intellectual property to others but the creator still holds the intellectual property to the work.

A license can specify how others are allowed to use the content: For example it can be put into public domain, meaning everyone is now allowed to use, remix, transform the content without limits. If no license is specified by the creator, the rights to the content remain reserved.

With CC (Creative Commons) licences you can give people the right to reuse your work in various ways:

  • CC aka Creative Commons: work is offered for reuse, including commercially unless the licence states otherwise.
  • Attribution means that anyone reusing the work must give credit to the originator
  • Sharealike means reuse must be done applying the same licence

Collectors and use of collected work​

Unless it is stated otherwise, you have ownership of the token you collected, for your personal use and display. You have the right to put the work up for sale (with any royalties going back to the artist – in the case of future cross platform trade where the blockchain royalty may get broken, you have a moral obligation to respect the original royalty set by the artist). You do not have full copyright, or the right to do whatever you wish with the piece. You cannot use the piece commercially, in another work or as the basis for another work without the artist’s express permission. Some artists may give the right to fully use, transform etc, but you should be sure of those rights before you use. You have the right to show work privately and probably have the right to print a personal copy. Some collectors want to share their collection publicly, on websites, virtual galleries or in physical galleries on screen. This is not so clear, and ideally should be discussed with the artist especially when shown in commercial premises. Use your own judgement here.

Glossary: Licensing options available upon mint​

When you mint and swap a work, it becomes available for collectors. Teia.art now has a dropdown to select the license under which you want to place your work.

If you don’t select anything, or select None (all rights reserved), your collectors have ownership of your work and are allowed to put it up for resale, but they do not gain any copyright or rights to reuse or rework your original.

In the dropdown menu, you can assign more liberal rights For more details on the licensing options, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses

NONE​

You reserve all rights - as sated above this is the default with any creation. if not specified otherwise the creator holds all right until specified otherwise.

CC- BY-4.0 (Attribution)​

you give rights to share / adapt

CC- BY-SA 4.0 (Attribution Sharealike)​

You give rights to share etc with same licence applying

CC- BY-ND 4.0 (Attribution-NoDerivs)​

Rights to reuse but not adapt

CC- BY-NC 4.0 (Attribution-NonCommercial)​

Non-commercial reuse only.

CC- BY-NC-SA 4.0 (Attribution-NonCommercial-Sharealike)​

Only non-commercial reuse with same licence applying

CC- BY-NC-ND 4.0 (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs)​

non-commercial reuse only, no adaptations allowed

CUSTOM​

specify your own licence in the description (for experienced users)

Copyright, copymints and plagiarism

TLDR​

If you are using other people’s work in any way, in your own work, eg collage, ‘quoting’, tributes you are responsible for checking and obtaining any rights that are required in the original. Just to be clear, none of the following should be taken as legal advice or should be used as-is as a defence against infringements. Copyright varies by country and you are advised to seek a lawyer in your own country if you get into serious trouble with any of this.

Very little art is truly unique and original in one sense. Art build on history and artists refer to historical work in both subtle and obvious ways. Artists are influenced by what they see – from landscapes and the natural world to building design, graphic design, fashion, film, tv and other art. Many serious artists learnt techniques by copying another artist’s style or even directly copying a work to understand how it was constructed. What happens in private is probably of little concern here – if you copy a work to learn a style, work through a youtube tutorial to understand a Blender technique, mirror the photographic style of a famous photographer, no one is watching too carefully. If however, you decide to show such work publicly and especially if you put a price on that work, you step into an area where others will rightly want to know if the work is your own, if it is a tribute, whether it used copyrighted material or whether it’s a direct copy and intended to fool them into parting with some money. If you mint an NFT, the platform may want to be sure that you have rights to use the content, especially if the item is a tribute or somehow refers to other prominent existing work. United States copyright law has a ‘notice-and-takedown system’ where rights-holders send notice to an online service and the service is obligated to act on that takedown quickly. Most platforms will not have resources to check and will immediately remove the item. You will be notified by the platform and then it is up to you to counter the takedown.

Fanart​

Art that is using someone else's intellectual material to pay tribute or "spin off" new material that is built on the IP of others.

In many cases, fanart is de jure infringing copyright, however it is often tolerated by the owners of the IP. When doing fanart you should be aware that this could lead to a ban. Teia doesn't explicitly forbid fanart but if the copyright owner for example reports the pieces this would lead to a direct restriction and you might end up with an restricted account.

You should also swap your fanart at extremely low prices: We will also restrict accounts that commercially sell fanart.

Laws exist in most countries giving rights of use or control over artistic creations. These are usually limited in time. After that time – often some years after the artists death – the work may become copyright-free. Much discussion on copyright revolves around the particular case of US law, which is not always appropriate. Whilst the US has tried hard to get their version of copyright laws into other country’s domestic laws, many countries have quite different laws around such ownership of creative material and the issue becomes more complex when work is shown and sold across borders. An aspect of copyright in relation to digital art right now (2022) is the use of copyrighted work in the training of AI systems. Rightclicksave.com have a discussion that argues such training should be considered Fair-Use [https://www.rightclicksave.com/article/gan-art-and-the-fair-use-of-nfts]

Derivative work/Transformation/Remix​

"Derivative work" is a term in copyright law that defines a work that is based on or includes part of another original work. True derivative works gain their own rights, but the adaption must be substantial, and should show the artistic personality of the deriving artist.

"Only the owner of copyright in a work has the right to prepare, or to authorize someone else to create, an adaptation of that work. The owner of a copyright is generally the author or someone who has obtained the exclusive rights from the author. In any case where a copyrighted work is used without the permission of the copyright owner, copyright protection will not extend to any part of the work in which such material has been used unlawfully. The unauthorized adaptation of a work may constitute copyright infringement." (US law) Right to Prepare Derivative Works

If you as an artist want to create derivative works, you might prepare yourself to defend your creations against two potential accusations: plagiarism (pretending to be only the author of something you did not create on your own) and Copyright violation.

To defend you and your piece against the reproach of plagiarism, simply put a clear citation of your sources into the description of your NFT, describing who is the original authors of the material you used. This way you can argue you are fully transparent about the material used and don't sell creations of someone else as your own.

In regards to the copyright, it gets tricky. Generally speaking, the more you transform the base material, the easier it gets for you to defend your piece as your "own creation". Apart from that, it makes sense to ask yourself a few key questions:

  • What exactly is the copyright situation of the material i want to incorporate in my piece? For example: Is it in the public domain (in which case its totally fine to use and you shouldn't get in trouble anyways), or was it a commissioned work (in which case the chances that the copyright owner has a vested interested in defending their licensing rights), is some kind of license attached to it (like with stock material), etc.

  • Why exactly do i need to use the material for my piece? How does the concept of my piece require the use of third party material (example: My piece is a satirical take on brand culture - therefore i needed to incorporate the logos of adidas and nike to properly express my artistic concept.

  • What separates my artwork from the base material i use from someone else? is there enough difference/transformation to make it a completely separate piece of art?

Copyminting​

This term generally means the duplication of someone else’s artwork on an nft platform (or across several platforms). NFT platforms will ban you if you are found to be copyminting, and really, you should be considering your own ethical nature if you want to do this. In the future copyminters will be sent to low lying islands where they can copy each other, fight about it and deal with sea level rise once they notice that. Yes, we dislike you at least that much.

Double-minting​

Refers to the duplication of an artist’s own work. This is seen as a problem because an edition of an NFT should be unique. That is, if you mint an edition of 20 of a piece of art, you should never mint that same work again because it would be at minimum an ethical breech of the contract with your collectors. It’s also unprofessional and most collectors would be wary of buying further pieces. Double-minting can happen by accident, for instance if you realise a mistake in your initial mint, and you remint it to correct that. Ideally, you would burn the first mint before reminting. If not, burn it as soon as possible. Be aware that if you don’t burn the initial, someone may buy it, and then you will have to convince them to burn their copy in order to burn all of that mistake mint (because you can’t burn a token that you don’t own, even if you are the artist).

Plagiarism​

This is the act of representing someone else’s work as your own. Many artists, photographers, writers and musicians have dabbled in this and again the line can be narrow between inspiration and rip-off. It is always a bad look if you are accused of it – it diminishes integrity and ethics which reflect on your art. Be very aware of your intentions and actions and read up on such issues if you work with the material of others. In terms of code reuse, this may vary between platforms but generally you should have added substantial input into any code you reuse (which is not just changing variable names or removing comments for example). Code reuse is seen as fine for learning technique but not for creating work that is intended for sale. The discord for platform fx(hash) is worth reading and asking questions in, if you have doubts around code-based generative work.

Fair use​

Wikipedia defines fair use as “a doctrine in United States law that permits limited use of copyrighted material without having to first acquire permission from the copyright holder”. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use] Fair use acts as a way to balance the rights of copyright holders with the rights of the public around creative work. The definition of fair use is a legal one, which revolves around factures including the nature of the original, how much of the original is used, whether it’s a commercial use and how such use affects the potential market of the original. But note that fair use only applies in the US. The Wikipedia article gives some information on its influence in the law internationally, but don’t just assume you can rely on it if you don’t reside in the US. Many Commonwealth countries including Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand and the UK use the more restrictive ‘fair dealing’ concept. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_dealing]

Trademarks​

From Wikipedia – “A trademark is a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies products or services from a particular source and distinguishes them from others”. If you use an organisation’s trademark or branding you may open yourself up to litigation. Trademarks can expire and be limited in geographical use. They may also have fair us / fair dealing limitations

For one artist’s views on all of the above, Tyler Hobbs, who created the Fidenza generative series and trademarked the term, has written an extensive piece along with some good examples of reuse of his work here [https://tylerxhobbs.com/artist-ownership-of-works]. Once you’ve read Tyler’s point of view, rightclicksave detail the other side of the coin, detailing Shilly Preston’s dilemma with an AI remix of Hobbs work with that of Xer0x [https://www.rightclicksave.com/article/on-the-artist-and-long-form-generative-art]

Public Domain​

Work in the public domain is essentially owned by everyone. Either the existing copyright has expired or the artist explicitly gave those rights to it. Note that often work that is put online in the public domain still has some rights attached to it by the platform that shows it or owns it. For instance they may require attribution of them as source, or allow use as long as it is stated that they are not endorsing anything or their name is not used. Most NFT platforms expect that if public domain work is used, that it undergoes some substantive creative transformation. If you mint public domain work you should at minimum note that it is public domain and attribute the initial creator if possible. Be aware that some platform’s Code of Conduct may not allow this, and your account might be banned. Also note that the copyminting rule means that untransformed public domain work that is minted may get banned if someone else also mints that work (since two identical works are not allowed).

Creative Commons https://creativecommons.org/about/ A US non-profit that sees current copyright laws as too restrictive for creative endeavour, deeming that it favours the large and dominant content creators. One major initiative is the CC licences (which teia and versum offer on their minting pages). These licences allow some rights to be given away while others are retained. For instance, non-commercial use may be allowed while the artist retains the right for commercial use, and also requires any use to include attribution to them. Note that if you give fully open rights to everyone, you may see uses that offend you, and commercial use that does not compensate you. Note also that you cannot give away any rights that you don’t already have. For instance, an image of a brand or of another person, minted under CC0 (all rights waved), doesn’t allow another user to use the brand or the person’s likeness however they like.

What rights are given when an NFT is collected?​

Unless stated in the licence, copyright does not transfer to the collector, in the same way that a physical artwork remains the copyright of a painter, sculptor etc. Collectors can’t just print works and sell them (or if they do, they should expect a copyright infringement notice). The collector has the right to show the work privately and to resell the work (while respecting any royalties agreement). They may not have the right to show the work publicly, either online or in a gallery, without the artist’s permission.

What about commissioned work?​

If work was commissioned by an employer, then it may well not be in your ownership as your employer will have rights over it. If a collector commissioned a work from you, they will only get the same rights as if they had collected a work you had up for sale – unless they drew up a contract specifically for this.

What is allowed in the NFT space?​

Most if not all platforms will not allow double-minting and copyminting. Obvious plagiarism is akin to copyminting. When minting work that includes or obviously refers to the work of others, the safest practice is to make sure you have or get permissions from any original creators AND to acknowledge this in the description of the work (not just in your social media posts). If you are using trademarks, especially of large or litigious brand-owners you should expect that your work might get taken down or your account banned. Bottom line – if you make use of other’s work in your own, read up on all these issues, be informed of your rights and the rights of others. Be prepared if you are challenged, or else question your own motives for creating such work – if it’s purely to profit, you are probably on shaky ground and perhaps you should reconsider and do something else.

The field of AI art is in its infancy, and so is the legal status of AI art. If a model creates a piece of media, there might be special licensing around the output work (see, for example, the Stable Diffusion license)

The best practice for people minting AI-generated art is to clearly disclose the model and software used in the metadata of the mint, especially if the output is directly minted without further human transformation.

Copyright law varies throughout the world, and since AI art is a very young field, copyright law around AI-generated art is not fully developed around the world. In US law AI art has been found not to cover "human authorship" so far, which would mean people don't get the rights to AI-generated artworks, even if they are based on their own prompts. (see this Article)

If we follow the logic of current US law, AI art can’t be copyrighted in the US legal realm. This means that AI-generated pieces that havent been transformed by a human but rather are direct machine output fall under public domain, which means the pieces can be copied, transformed, and sold freely. In the context of NFTs, this would mean the proof of authorship that gets established when an AI piece is minted is questionable since no one holds the authorship of the pieces.

tbc