TLDR - Young artists should understand why Intellectual Property is so important to their livelihood. Especially, in the age of AI.

• NOTE - I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.

Development Hell

When I was 29, I sold an animated show idea to a big TV network. Cool, right?

Well…

The pitch process was, (shall we say) stressful. Once we started developing the show, bureaucracy watered down the content so much that it lost the creative spark that made it good in the first place.

Ever heard of "development hell?" This was it.

The biggest lesson for me was realizing how Hollywood views intellectual property (IP). Because the network paid for some initial animation tests, the scary lawyers claimed they now owned the IP rights to the cartoon concept for many years to come.

I went to an Ivy League school. I have years of experience as an animator. I’ve pulled together talented teams using complex technology. But, I was a fool. I had never fully grasped this key fact - signing over IP meant losing control of my creative livelihood.

I see talented young artists chasing their dreams every day. Many don't fully understand IP rights and how businesses use creative ideas for profit.

Intellectual Property - or IP - refers to the legal ownership over "creations of the mind" - your persona, brand, lyrics, images, inventions, and other creative works. That cute character you drew? That's your IP. The code you wrote? Also your IP. Your posts, your music, your channel... it's all IP that belongs to you, by default.

Losing control of your IP could mean losing money, reputation, and influence over how your work gets used. Here’s the real fear though:

As AI-generated content takes off, huge questions remain over how artists' IPs will be handled. Our data is at risk.

Social media platforms often bury the collection of your IP in their dense Terms of Service, and they claim broad rights to use or even sell your content.

This isn’t just social media. The same goes for games and apps - read their EULAs closely. Corporations view your data and creations as their IP, not yours. And let’s be crystal clear here. Valuable IP data makes valuable AI models. Companies already own the data, they desperately want the AI value, and it’s increasingly hard to hold them accountable.

Are we on the right path in history?

Invisible Hands to Invisible Assets

Economics examines what motivates human behavior. It’s not just money and markets. Adam Smith used the metaphor of an “invisible hand” to describe the forces governing our actions.

For a long time, economic thought centered on land ownership. Kings and lords controlled land while struggling farmers paid them taxes to work it—yeah, kind of a bummer. People assumed this structure was permanent.

With the spread of printing presses and new ideas, we evolved to value individual entrepreneurship and democratized access to labor and capital. People could now build companies and make products to sell openly.

A key shift happened when intangible assets gained prominence. That is, an idea you can’t hold in your hand, like a character or a story idea. How do you maintain control over your ideas when others can freely copy them for profit? Someone can sell unauthorized t-shirts of your drawing and capitalize on your creativity. This spurred legal protections that are called “copyright.”

This system broadly works and has enabled abundant creativity and innovation through the 20th century. It’s the internet that threw everything out of whack. The internet has digitized the sharing of our work and ideas.

Increasingly, businesses today derive value not from physical assets but digitally driven intangibles like patents, brands, data, and user trust. Like the t-shirt example, companies leverage individual contributions to build their assets.

Google, for example, owns the land they built their Googleplex on, but it’s the IP in the search data and your trust in the service that accounts for 99.9999 % of the company’s value. Digital businesses live and die on their brand, which is an imaginary concept … an intangible asset … or as we’ve learned, an IP.

Posting on Facebook is akin to farming the king’s land—you create IP that ultimately accrues more value for the platform than for yourself. If the spread of labor and capital fueled creativity in the past, perhaps similarly democratizing access to IP could spur a generative renaissance today.

But how?

We need new models for the idea-driven, “intangible economy.”

License it up

It’s important to think about IP use when you produce your content.

How do you wish others to use and consume your art? Are they free to watch it? How many times? What if they want to take your idea and modify it? Are you charging for your work? What if the collector resells it?

Even expert strategists cannot fully predict how content spreads. Some advocate maximal sharing under Creative Commons and open licenses. This promotes exposure, collaboration, and access. However, openly shared works risk alteration, misattribution, and commercial use without consent or payment.

Conversely, restrictive licensing locks things down. This can deter others from building on ideas. Forgoing initial sales to allow remixing can ultimately benefit creators through reputation gains and downstream collaboration opportunities. The open-source ecosystem is predicated on this.

Currently, copyrights, trademarks, and patents secure legal ownership of IP. Registering work formally establishes your rights. When using others’ work, carefully review licensing agreements and contracts to maintain control. Monitoring IP use across platforms allows for enforcing your rights if needed.

However, tracking these intangible digital assets across datasets is difficult. My hope for emerging blockchain technology (like Ethereum or Solana), offers potential improvements in managing IP rights and payments. Blockchain ledgers can securely timestamp and verify ownership of digital works. Smart contracts could also automate licensing procedures and royalties.

Using Mirror, this essay is a digital collectible on Optimism, a layer 2 blockchain in the Ethereum ecosystem. Collecting this essay in a wallet is little more than a novelty now, but could be a way for a writer to make money or build stronger collaborations in the future.

See how complex this gets? We need more minds to be thinking about it.

AI and your personal data rights

Protecting intellectual property involves more than just safeguarding artistic creations. As digital users, our personal data also warrants defense. Laws like the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California's Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) now give individuals more control over their information. Software platforms increasingly allow opting out of data collection and limiting sharing through privacy settings. Meanwhile, crypto markets are hashing out royalty protocols for artists selling NFTs.

It’s a start - but we aren’t moving fast enough.

Considering AI will be used to create work that will manipulate and scam, creators face new IP challenges and threats. We will need to question the ethical use and protection of our works. Where are the datasets coming from? Is my work a part of it?

As this essay is endeavoring to show, you should be taking proactive steps to value, protect, and control your work. Don't surrender your intellectual property rights lightly - they form the foundation for your creative career. Build a personal brand, with digital assets, that you can own.

Be aware of the work you produce, and take the right steps to value your work correctly. Let’s reimagine an economic future that works for all of us.

Further Reading:

Many of the ideas here were shaped by the writing and influence of Yanis Varoufakis, Peter Drucker, Yokai Benkler, Lawrence Lessig, and Paul Mason.

This essay was researched, transcribed, and refined through a combination of improvisational takes using Otter.ai, and then with Claude v2 from Anthropic. Large portions were re-written by human, other sections are generative. Imagery created in Leonardo.ai's version of Stable Diffusion.

Nye Warburton is a creative technologist and educator. He lives in Savannah, Georgia.