Hello again Avalore enthusiasts!
Things are beginning to calm down as we start entering the holiday season, so we will probably be skipping more weeks moving forward. There’s just not always news!
A little thin this week as well but I really want to avoid skipping two weeks in a row and we did have some funny interactions to discuss.
Let’s do the news!
Cuddlefish IP is Sacred
For those who missed this (idk how, it was the only thing happening on AVAX twitter for 24 hours), artist JHug got mad at one of his holders, Adam, for daring to make a character of his Cuddlefish on the Makooor platform. Wow!
There’s a lot of layers to peel back here.
I will only BRIEFLY go over the IP law portion of this, because frankly I don’t care about it.
JHug insisted that Nobs take down all Cuddlefish characters on his site, claiming that all Cuddlefish NFTs are technically his intellectual property:
Gribbly then went on to question whether the IP rights were formally documented anywhere. By JHugs lack of response, I suspect that they were not.
Again, I don’t know anything, but I would be pretty surprised if selling these images wasn’t a violation of IP rights and not really “fair use” or “commentary” in some form:
But honestly the whole “Intellectual Property” situation is really not even the main problem here.
The real issue is that he sold NFT profile pictures to people, in some cases for thousands of dollars, and is now restricting holders from making memes with their NFTs using AI.
Is he technically within his rights here? Sure, possibly, like I said I have no idea.
But in practice it just seems insane to me. Wouldn’t you want people to spread your brand? Make it their identity?
As someone who has released NFTs in the past, I would be DELIGHTED if people used the NFTs as their persona and started putting them in memes. That’s the whole point!
Please feel free to build your identity around Mambonauts or Humping Unicorns!! You have my permission to put them into memes!
My esteemed partner Frogwell said it best:
There was of course plenty of back and forth in the comments, with both JHug and Moonbags defending their position with leading questions to Grok:
And this response from Moonbags gets to the meat of the disagreement.
To him and JHug, Cuddlefish are Art pieces, with a capital “A”. They are not to be tainted by the likes of Makooor and should be treated with the utmost respect.
To the rest of us, it’s just an NFT that people buy so they can build an online persona around it. It’s not that deep.
Surprising absolutely nobody, Adam promptly changed his PFP to something that he IS free to make memes with.
This is Adam! Recognize him:
After the debate cooled down, JHug posted some cryptic tweets with artifact-heavy AI videos about something called “popcorn.”
I think it’d be hilarious if now that he’s alienated everyone, he announces he’s working on some kind of Makooor-esque AI harness.
Good for him! Hope he does a good job policing IP rights!
AVAX Takes Japan
Team1 announced a new Japan chapter while we were away!
I had the pleasure of meeting some AVAX community members in Japan at one of their events, and it definitely seems like the kind of market that can take off.
(Side note: we’re trying to get our Visa to move back to Japan. I’ll work for free! Call me!)
This is happening at a perfect time, as Makooor’s newest crowned creator, Zey, has been putting out some nonstop Malfoid anime bangers:
Having an anime-focused creator on the team has led to an influx of Japanese users and followers:
Just total domination on the Japan front from Makooor and Team1 as usual.
Could this funnel some new users from Japan onto Avalanche? Will they buy our bags? Will they purchase IP-friendly NFTs to make memes with?
Only time will tell!
That’s all the news I’ve got for this week, so let’s end on the hopeful note that an influx of Japanese users is coming to push prices up.
There’s not a ton going on these days as people seem to be busy with IRL stuff. Or maybe I’m just projecting?
We’ve been hard at work going through the 90000 steps required to set up a business in Japan that qualifies for a visa, as well as visiting with family for birthdays and medical issues.
Thank you to the Campfire team for providing the bulk of the content this week, as is tradition.
Tweet IP Friendly Collection of the Week
