Venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) is launching a new licensing system for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to address current challenges and ambiguities over the use of crypto collectibles.
The Silicon Valley-based firm that the new project is inspired by the Creative Commons (CC), which provides for different levels of permission that creators and copyright holders can assign for their works.
Some of these CC licenses allow the public to share, remix and reuse creative outputs.
In a new blog post, a16z says that the NFT industry appears to be in need of special licenses other than the ones available with Creative Commons.
“Many NFT projects omit licenses altogether, or draft licenses that create more ambiguity than they resolve. Some copyright vulnerabilities have led to significant confusion around NFT licenses, and a number of other legal problems.
To help address these issues, we’re releasing a set of free, public ‘Can’t Be Evil’ Licenses, designed specifically for NFTs and inspired by the work of Creative Commons.”
The investment company says that it worked with foremost intellectual property lawyers to design six types of NFT licenses that are now available on GitHub.
“By making the licenses easy (and free) to incorporate we hope to democratize access to high-quality licenses and encourage standardization across the web3 industry. Greater adoption could lead to incredible benefits for creators, owners, and the NFT ecosystem as a whole.”
The announcement comes following a16z’s launch of the $600 million Games One Fund in May that will invest in the gaming and metaverse industries.
