Andreessen Horowitz Announces Free Licensing System For NFTs

The crypto unit of Silicon Valley Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) is all set to release a set of free, public “Can’t Be Evil” licenses.

The firm has designed the licenses specifically for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and is inspired by the work of Creative Commons.

• As per the official press release, the community can freely use these licenses, which come with certain goals in mind. This includes – helping NFT creators protect or release their intellectual property (IP) rights and granting NFT holders a baseline of rights that are “irrevocable, enforceable, and easy to understand.”
• Helping creators, holders in the space, as well as their respective communities, to “unleash the creative and economic potential of their projects with a clear understanding of the IP framework in which they can work” is yet another key focus area of the licenses.
• The firm reportedly engaged in talks with some of the leading IP lawyers in the Web 3 space to devise six types of widely applicable NFT licenses and make them available for users.
• Even as some of the most prominent blue-chip collections have brought discussions regarding NFT license agreements into the spotlight, the problems persist.
• It is important to set some industry standards designed specifically for NFTs with the evolving Web 3 innovations testing the limits of legacy legal frameworks in a similar approach to that of Creative Commons, an American nonprofit organization that establishes free copyright licenses for creators.
• To that end, a16z’s Miles Jennings and Chris Dixon believe that greater standardization across the sector will help in tapping the economic potential.

“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.”