The Day a DAOs Dune Dream Died
Mōrena lil shits!!
I love starting the newsletter off with an apology! Today's apology is because yesterday, as I was talking about our new episode of Culture Vulture (WHICH IS OUT NOW), I said it was our first episode for "2020" - a place that no one wants to go back to. I’m here to clear things up and let you know that we are in fact in 2022 (did anyone else never get used to writing 2021 so it just feels like time hasn’t passed????) Anyway, I apologise for my mistake but also… surely we’re used to it by now because of who I am as a person???
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In today’s newsletter:
Cryprobros learn copyright
Keeping up with the Kardashian’s PR Machine
Hong Kong has ordered thousands of hamsters be surrendered for “disposal” after they test positive for Covid-19
A wholesome pet story to balance that out
Microsoft is spending $70bn to buy Call Of Duty, World of Warcraft, Candy Crush and more
Sauce ON fries or BESIDE fries?
A DAO bought Dune but got everything completely wrong
Yesterday I read the funniest Twitter thread about a DAO (which I’ve written about here and spoken about here) called ‘Spice DAO’ who paid 2.6 million euros for a copy of ‘Dune’ (you know that book/film that everyone is nuts over atm?) Anyway, the version that the DAO bought wasn't a copy of the original Dune (by Frank Herbert), but it was a storyboard and production bible for a failed adaptation that never made it to see the light of day.
But don't worry! The group bought this overpriced production bible with a plan:
Now… here we have a bit of an issue. They want to “make it public” and then turn it into an animated series that they could sell to a “streaming service,” and that’s how (I’m assuming) they were going to see a return on their huge investment. First of all, this very book/production bible is actually extremely public already. It exists online for free:
Secondly, just because you own a copy of a book, doesn’t mean you own the rights to a book (seems obvious, but I think it got a lil lost in translation here - maybe I asked for too much??) You can’t just buy a book you like and then go and turn it into a TV show because you own a copy. As one user pointed out, it’s not like if I buy an original copy of Spiderman I can go and make an adaptation of it and sell it on… I didn’t think of it, nor do I own the rights.
While we aren’t specifically talking about NFTs here, it’s a good time to let Ryan Broderick from Garbage Day explain why even when you buy an NFT you don’t own the image or copyright to that either:
“Now, here’s the thing. Buying an NFT does not mean you own the image or the copyright to that image. An NFT is a digital address that represents a piece of media, but if an NFT hosting platform crashed tomorrow, the media associated with that NFT would likely 404, but the NFTs would still exist… And NFTs exist independently of copyright, as well.”
Buying a Bored Ape NFT for $10 million or whatever does not mean that you own the copyright to it. Similarly, if you were, in this case, to pay 100-times the asking price for the storyboard of an unproduced film based on someone else’s intellectual property, you do not suddenly own the copyright to that intellectual property, nor do you even have the ability to produce that film.”
Reality has hit for Spice DAO after they obviously got no legal advice before purchasing this. The current workaround is to create an NFT of every page of the book, and then burn the actual book once that's done (🎶this thing was a masterpiece til we tore/burned it all up🎶).
Honestly, they should just buy the rights to make THIS WHOLE SAGA a movie instead.
A NEW CULTURE VULTURE EPISODE FOR YOU:
Keeping Up With The Kardashian's PR Machine - Culture Vulture — open.spotify.com
Happy 2022! We start the year off with a discussion about Molly Mae, Tom Holland and Zendaya, before discussing the Kardashian's carefully calculated (and annoyingly effective) PR strategy. From intentional photoshop fails, new relationships, pregnancies, song lyrics and cheating partners, a LOT happened over summer to distract from Astroworld.
Hong Kong has ordered thousands of hamsters be surrendered for “disposal” after they test positive for Covid-19
Yep - after finding traces of Covid-19 on 11 hamsters in a pet store, Hong Kong has ordered thousands of them to be surrendered for “disposal.” About 2000 hamsters (who are also known to be the heaviest drinkers in the animal kingdom) are going to be killed, which includes any who were bought after December 22nd. This means if you have one at home that you got for Christmas, you've got to hand it over with a warning not to “kiss or abandon them on the street” as Hong Kong and mainland China attempt to sustain a zero Covid strategy.
Authorities announced on Tuesday that traces of the virus were detected on 11 hamsters at the ‘Little Boss’ pet shop and associated warehouse in Causeway Bay. They were found as authorities were investigating the city’s first untraceable Delta variant diagnosis in more than three months, in a 23-year-old store employee. (Two employees were also confirmed to have Covid, including one who cleans out the animal cages and handles the hamsters.)
“Hong Kong’s health secretary, Sophia Chan, conceded there was no evidence domestic animals can pass the disease to humans, but authorities were acting out of caution.”
😔🐹
A wholesome pet story to balance things out
This week of all weeks we need some cute cat content - and here it is. Barnaby the cat had been missing for eight months when Rachael Lawrence rang the vet to talk about her other cat. While she was on the phone she heard a meow that sounded very familiar and it started bugging her, so she rang the vet back to ask who’s cat it was in the background. They said that the cat was a stray, but when Rachel asked for more details, like whether the "stray" she had heard over the phone was black, with a white patch on one of his back feet, they realised that it was Barnaby.
He’s now back with his family and it’s a very cute and wholesome story that makes me 🥺🥺
Microsoft is spending $70bn to buy Call Of Duty, World of Warcraft, Candy Crush and more. Which is kinda HUGE
I’ll be honest, I don’t follow gaming that closely, but I know it’s a HUGE sector that I don’t think enough about and naturally, in my quest to keep you all in the loop and not let us get out of touch, I wanted to write about this: Microsoft has just bought “Activision Blizzard,” the publisher of mega franchises including Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Candy Crush, in the biggest ever takeover in the tech and gaming sectors.
And why now? The metaverse, that’s why:
“Microsoft said that the $68.7bn (£50.6bn) all-cash deal – which dwarfs its previous biggest, the $26bn takeover of LinkedIn in 2016 – will “provide the building blocks for the metaverse”.
The deal, however, comes as Activision Blizzard (which has 10,000 staff globally) has been answering to a string of allegations of sexual misconduct and discrimination involving senior executives, firing more than three dozen employees and disciplining another 40 since July last year.
With the pandemic keeping us indoors and the emergence of (or at least interest in) the metaverse, this doesn’t feel like a shocking move - and it’s kinda good from Microsoft probably (actually what do I know? EXCEPT THAT $70BILLION IS A LOT OF MONEY.) Here’s a smarter piece from Recode about whether this is a good or bad thing in terms of consolidation (uniting/merging.)
Sauce ON fries or BESIDE fries?
OBVIOUSLY BESIDE. The only time it's acceptable to have your sauce on top is when you're at a rugby game and you have a lil pottle of chips and you're practically forced to put it on top (napkins are necessary here.)
So, to the 6% of you who prefer the sauce on top in all situations... I'm scared of you.
Our thoughts on the Molly-Mae situation (Culture Vulture)
Lexi and Fez, Sitting in a Tree (The Cut)
JUST A BUNCH OF REALLY GOOD STORIES (Pocket)
Disney+ is bringing back The Proud Family in February (Polygon)
How the Kardashians successfully distracted us from Astroworld (Culture Vulture)
TikTok trainspotter Francis Bourgeois stars in The North Face and Gucci ad (The Drum)
You can listen to us talk about all things pop culture on Culture Vulture, about THE WORLD on The Shit Show or watch us explain the internet on Extremely Online.
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