Also it’s not like you can create these things ex nihilo - there’s still some outside references that are necessary to give it legitimacy or meaning on any level, but the crypto bros pretend it’s not the case.
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I don’t believe this is actually true. The BAYC retains copyright to all of their “art” and only issues a commercial use license to the buyer of the token. So if I used the ape in my own TV show, I don’t think Seth Green could effectively sue me – he doesn’t own it and I don’t have a contract with him. Nor could the thief sue Seth Green for his TV show. However, Green made the TV show without paying the ransom, the BAYC could have potentially sued him for breach of contract. He might not even have a legal contract with BAYC, but if not they still own the copyright so he would still be violating their copyright.
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Let me guess, the identity of the thief can never be determined? Like there’s absolutely no way it could have been the producer of the show, right?
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Also, IANAL, but I would hope that any lawyer who was approached to write the legalese for “if someone successfully steals this token from me during the commission of computer fraud crimes, the copyright also transfers to them” would run, not walk, in the opposite fucking direction.
It makes me wonder if there’s been any official investigations into the BAYC’s terms.
That raises another problem. In some cases, paying a ransom can be illegal. Are you going to be prosecuted for it? Almost certainly not. But it may still have legal ramifications.
Maybe they should change the name of the show to Bored Gorilla Ape Marketing.
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But that’s exactly what the crypto folks want most of the time. If the crypto stuff isn’t the ultimate arbiter of full ownership, then you might as well not bother and simply print monkey vouchers on paper.
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Ah, that changes things. I had read that the copyright went with the NFT. Given that it’s procedurally generated, it’s extra hilarious that they’re keeping copyright. (And apparently that’s true for a number of the popular procedurally generated image NFTs, some of which have even more restrictive terms - some don’t allow commercial use at all.) LOL.
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This story broke my brain
He paid for a stolen phony asset with phony money. No harm, no foul.
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How would a show involving this particular Bored Ape be in any way appealing, and what would distinguish it from any kind of other production involving one of the thousands of other variations?
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Seth didn’t break down until they started emailing bits of his NFT back to him.
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Yeah, I dont understand… So much do I not understand. Is this a reality show? Why can’t they make up a new template: Bored Simian, Bored Monkey, etc. Why do they need an actual Bored Ape, unless the very premise of the show is a grift to increase the visibility, and thereby value, of actual value of Bored Apes NFT–
How I feel about NFT bro’s…
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As best I can determine this is the full extent of legal documentation:
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I would have drawn him a picture of a monkey for less.
If this is a guerrilla marketing campaign then I suppose if he tried to deduct the $300k from his taxes as a business expense that would be an actual crime?
Yah, this is the crux of it all. It’s so weird that everyone continues to treat NFTs as if they are IP rights, and not just a receipt for having bought something. If I have the receipt for a DVD player that I found on the ground, I can’t go claim it’s mine. Intent and process matter in a courtroom and the judge isn’t going to rule it’s your DVD player solely because you have the receipt in your possession. It may help, but it’s not enough.
But then these people go further by claiming ownership of all reproductions of the item. Seth says someone else can’t use a screen grab of his ape because he owns the NFT, which every sane person knows is nonsense. It’s equivalent to claiming you own all units of the DXU-4812 model DVD player ever produced because you have a receipt from Best Buy for one of them.
Seth is a smart guy and I wouldn’t have pegged him as one to get sucked into this weirdness. It’s all so bizarre, like the world is going mad.
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Oof, that is rough.
This is a format that Seth is fond of and it has worked in the past. Greg The Bunny was great and I was really sad when it was cancelled. It had a lot of heart, it was well written, and the way they mixed human and puppet actors was well done.
This trailer, not so much. 
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And to confuse matters, a few NFTs, such as this one, do give some commercial rights to the usage of the image as part of their specific NFT contract terms. So there was some basis, in this case, for Green to think he needed ownership of the NFT to make the show, but of course the contract doesn’t supersede what the actual law says about legal ownership. It’s possible the contract was written such that anyone who bought the NFT agreed that whoever had their name on that blockchain also had the usage rights, however they came by it (i.e. agreeing that if the NFT was “stolen” from them, they’d lose the rights), but I doubt it.
I wonder if Green decided that paying the new owner (who must have known it was “stolen”) was cheaper than the legal battle, or he was afraid to get into the legal battle entirely - and have the very premise of the NFT get undermined, if the court was explicit in deciding that usage rights weren’t necessarily tied to the owner in the blockchain. But the whole NFT market relies on some level of misunderstanding, so I’m wondering what Green’s is. Seems like in the video, there were other character images that could have been NFT-related. I wonder if they were purchased with Green assuming the rights issues were the same for all of them (when they almost certainly weren’t), or if they’re original creations made to look like NFTs - in which case, why not just do that with all of the art? The whole project is so weird. It’s like someone deciding to do a tv show based on Mentos when the ads went viral, just because, well, they’re a cultural phenomenon, right?
I was amused by some exchange I saw on twitter a while back, where a new NFT-purchaser was angrily telling someone, who had mocked them by displaying the image connected to their NFT, that they were going to sue them for copyright infringement if they didn’t take down the image. The “owner” was then informed that, in fact, they didn’t own the copyright and legally speaking had no more right to reproduce the image themselves than any random person. They were left plaintively asking, “So what did I buy, then?”
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What’s the exchange rate with Banana Stamps?
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In Celebrity World, winning big and losing big are the same thing.
You mean like the time they did exactly that?
(well, not Mentos, but, you know)
Unimaginably, this monkey jpg show seems even worse…
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