Punks kinda feel like the Karens of NFTs to me at this point. Full Disclosure: I bought a Phunk on November 9, 2021 so this art is designed to pump my own bag.

CryptoPunks = Copyrights, Lawyers, IP and DMCAs CryptoPhunks = CC0, open, public domain

“Larva Labs adopted the NFT License for CryptoPunks and Autoglyphs in 2019 in a Discord post by co-founder, John Watkinson (@pents90). It seems there is no transfer of IP, copyright, or trademark to Punk owners. However, what is granted by the license is that the art can be used for your own personal, non-commercial use and you can commercialize your own merch up to 100K a year. Two things you’re not allowed to do with this agreement is modify the art or sell third-party products with it.” -https://www.theouterrealm.io/blog/cryptopunks-copyrights

The CryptoPunks community seems vapid, with their entire focus on the money, and new people buying CryptoPunks have to be millionaires or billionaires before they can afford one. Doesn’t sound very punk to me. Also not having the IP of your Punk doesn’t sound very punk either. The IP thing really does bug me the more I think about it.

I feel like your average Punk owner is one of those types who is really uptight and controlling about copyright, wears obvious clout symbols like Rolexes, carries their credit cards in Gucci bags and brags about their yacht parties. Oh sure, there are some crypto rich mixed in with the bunch…..but at this point, there’s nothing cool about issuing DMCA take downs and sending lawyers after a few people who made derivative Punk projects. The optics just look foolish.

Phunks are the Frankenstein children of unbridled greed mixed with outdated Boomer copyright aggression from Larva Labs. If Larva Labs hadn’t gone after Phunks so aggressively, no one would give a crap about Phunks, and people wouldn’t be buying Phunks for 2.5 Eth.

It is only because Larva Labs got so worked up into a frenzy and issued a DMCA against Phunks that anyone cares about Phunks. The real story is about the socially distant Larva Labs, who is now represented by United Talent Agency, UTA, the same agency who represents U2, Madonna and now Bored Apes Yacht Club. I guess Larva Labs really wants to be in Netflix movies instead of leading the web3 revolution. LOL!

“In a striking indication of ongoing NFT crossover into the mainstream, new reports state that the Larva Labs NFT CryptoPunks, Meebits and Autoglyphs have signed with United Talent Agency, which more traditionally represents professionals in film, television, music and digital media. United Talent Agency is now in charge of representing these crypto-art entities across arenas of film, TV and video games; they’re also, of course, now responsible for the publishing and licensing of this crypto-art. “ -https://observer.com/2021/09/larva-labs-nft-cryptopunks-united-talent-agency/

CryptoPhunks = CC0 Public Domain

Buy a Phunk: https://www.notlarvalabs.com/cryptophunks/forsale

But wait! How can this be???????????????? Aren’t Phunks a derivative of Punks? Yes. How can a public domain project that was derived from a copyrighted project exist? That’s where things get interesting.

CryptoPhunks published a manifesto that outlines a call for the decentralization for the future of NFTs.

“The early purpose of CryptoPhunks was to poke fun at the high-brow, pompous group of people that were reflecting the “old-school” rules of art into this new frontier of NFTs. CryptoPhunks wanted to test these limits of “parody” and bias against centralized marketplaces, of provenance on the blockchain, censorship, while also setting out to unite strangers and collectors from around the space.

"The Phunks are marching forward to defend decentralization. We take up the following principles as a manifesto of our intent: We cannot expect governments, corporations or other large, faceless organizations to grant us privacy out of their beneficence. We know these organizations benefit when they decide what is art for us, and we should expect that they will decide for us if we don’t act. We must defend our own freedom of expression if we expect to have any. We must create our own communities and connections if we expect to have any. We are for an art that embroils itself with the everyday crap and still comes out on top. We are for all art that takes its form from the lines of life itself, that twists and extends and accumulates and spits and drips, and is heavy and coarse and blunt and sweet and stupid as life itself. We must come together and create systems which allow anonymous transactions to take place. People have been defending their own freedom of expression for centuries with whispers, darkness, envelopes, closed doors, secret handshakes and couriers. The technologies of the past did not allow for strong freedom of expression, but electronic technologies do. We the Phunks are dedicated to building real and vibrant communities around art that we love. We are defending the decentralization of art by congregating, building each other up, and speaking truth to centralized powers. We don’t much care if you approve of the art we make. We know that art, in the form of NFTs, can’t be destroyed and that a strong enough community can’t be shut down." -https://phunks.medium.com/the-cryptophunks-manifesto-785c7348e558

When I searched for “cc0 will win”, I found this post by William M. Peaster:

"A CC license is a public copyright license that allows creators to open up their works for other people to use. NFTs provide new avenues of ownership, yet ownership can be more expansive than just “control.” You can own an NFT and share it openly for others to use as they please.  I’m hinting at the rising wave of NFT projects that are embracing the CC0 “no copyright reserved” Creative Commons license. 

These projects point not to the control economy but to the clout economy, as law professor Brian L. Frye has argued. It’s the “clout of ownership” that’s scarce, while these projects’ art can be consumed and used freely by anyone.  

As such, CC0 NFTs are a way to pay creators while making their works available for everyone to consume and use commercially.

NFTs + CC0 = open-source intellectual property. This can be difficult to wrap your head around at first, to be sure. NFTs introduce scarcity for digital objects, right, so wouldn’t releasing an NFT project under the CC0 license undermine the scarcity and value of these objects? To the contrary, proponents argue that being in the public domain is the most salient advantage of CC0 NFT projects.

Why? Because the CC0 status fosters an environment in which an open community develops IP together, and all derivatives/spinoffs/remixes extend the original project’s aura and cultural charge. Accordingly, CC0 can be a powerful force multiplier for growing an NFT brand. These licenses come in different varieties, and the most permissive one is CC0. A project with a CC0 license is entirely in the public domain, meaning anyone can use its content however they’d like without having to worry about copyright infringement. -https://metaversal.banklesshq.com/p/nfts-and-cc0

As you know, the CryptoStellas is CC0, public domain. You are free to copy, distribute, remix this art, even for commercial purposes.

Stored on Arweave, the permanent web:

ARWEAVE download: https://app.ardrive.io/#/file/e7f2fcd8-5453-4e72-b69c-e67cd2148cd2/view

ARWEAVE VIEW: https://btds6qrru5mo7jejhribxo5vdsioytv4zl6clgttccc4zxhruy4a.arweave.net/DMcvQjGnWO-kiTxQG7u1HJDsTrzK_CWacxCFzNzxpjg