I have genuinely spent 10 minutes starting at this but, no, it really DOES appear to be true that a bunch of cryptobros just spent €2.6 MILLION – 100x the asking price – for a book at auction in the mistaken belief that they would therefore own the copyright in it. https://t.co/2HmaGWHKWF
— Gary Brannan (@garybrannan) January 17, 2022
My personal suspicion is that the end goal is some variation on ‘NFTs’, which may or may not involve ‘money laundering’ but quite possibly premises some variation on ‘affinity fraud’.
Verge, understandably, is kinder towards the Spice Collective:
Last year, a collective of cryptocurrency fans pooled millions of dollars to buy a copy of the story bible for director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s legendary never-made adaptation of the novel Dune. After winning a November auction, the group voted last week on a direction for the project and got promptly roasted online for allegedly not understanding what they’d bought. Their plans included an animated series inspired by Jodorowsky’s Dune, and as any good collector likely knows, buying a commemorative copy of a script or storyboard doesn’t give you the right to shoot your own version.
The actual situation seems more ambiguous than some critics are suggesting. The Dune story bible’s owners, known as Spice DAO (short for “decentralized autonomous organization”), appear perfectly aware they don’t own Dune itself. Instead, they’re committing to an original series “inspired by” the book. The whole scheme might help illustrate why art can’t be reduced to a neat series of copyright licenses — rather than simply showing that “crypto bros aren’t sure how rights work.”
That said, a lot of them probably aren’t…
Spice DAO outlined its future plans in an inaugural governance proposal that was approved by 95 percent of token-holding voters. In addition to electing a four-person core management team, it commits the DAO to a set of four goals between January and March of 2022: “gain physical custody of Jodorowsky’s Dune book by arranging shipping and storage,” scan every page of the book, hire a social media agency, and “present a film treatment and budget by Roble Ridge Productions for the original animated limited series inspired by the book for a community vote.” (The series was previously announced in December.) On Twitter, Spice DAO noted that it planned to “sell it to a streaming service” in the long term…
Spice DAO obviously wouldn’t need to own a copy of the Dune bible to make a Dune-like series that wasn’t explicitly derived from Jodorowsky’s work. But I haven’t seen public statements indicating that the central parties involved believe otherwise. From the outside, the auction purchase looks plausibly like a publicity and funding strategy, not a botched attempt to buy a copyright. After all, anybody can write a script indirectly inspired by Jodorowsky’s Dune — if you want yours to get noticed, hooking up with a group of fans to purchase a rare collector’s item isn’t a bad gambit.
It’s unfortunately hard to tell how many people backing Spice DAO are on the same page about what they’re funding. Ryan Broderick’s Garbage Day newsletter, for instance, outlines some significant confusion around voting, copyright, and what “adapting” the script should mean…
So, I guess, if you’re a big fan of Dune and/or cryptocurrency, this is an exciting opportunity to advance new visions of an sf masterwork. And if you’re not, well, there’s plenty opportunity for multiple amusing-from-the-outside train wrecks?
CROAKER
Chris Foss amazing artist.
mrmoshpotato
Ugh. Sounds like a good night to start watching Bob’s Burgers again.
dmsilev
“I thought we were an autonomous collective”
germy
Old Man Shadow
“Hahaha… of course I understand copyright laws. I’m not going to make Dune. I just want to make a story about a planet that is entirely sand, a group of natives that everyone hates and thinks are savages, a chosen one, and a galactic empire…”
Disney Lawyer looks up from his iron throne a thousand miles away.
“I sense… a great disturbance in the Force…”
germy
“When someone says they’d kill for free college”
mrmoshpotato
@germy: Well! Looks like Usingimaginarycurrencytolaunder bloodmoney dot com might be going belly up sooner than expected! I hope Matt Damon got paid well.
germy
germy
Mike E
Came here to say boy, did I pick the wrong (right?) time to start watching Station 11.
Chief Oshkosh
Jesus does not love me enough for this story to be true.
Chief Oshkosh
@Mike E: I thoroughly enjoyed the book.
Baud
The NFTs must flow.
raven
@germy:
“We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.
Kalakal
@CROAKER: I’ve got a copy of 21st Century Foss, maybe I’ve got the rights to Dune.
Sounds like a combination of marketing and ignorance to me
ETA And a copy of Hardware – double claim!
Cermet
Unlikely the principle bought this not knowing it doesn’t give them any rights – that said, I agree many of the voters were more then likely mislead; that is a very good thing considering how they got their monies in the first place. The leader of this effort might have, as an after thought, decided that publicity was also worthwhile but the price they paid seems like such a waste of resources. But then, we are talking about it across many media platforms.
germy
Truly.
SpaceUnit
So basically the cryptobros are just as dumb as we’ve always thought they were.
Glad that’s settled.
germy
Cameron
@germy: Quelle surprise!
geg6
These people will fall for anything. And that explains the career of TFG.
Chetan Murthy
This might be interesting to some: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/amansethi/spicedao-dunedao-soby
TL;DR The article (and interview) claims that the guy who fronted the $$ to buy the book knew they weren’t buying any “rights”. But it’s still all sorts of ridiculous. All. Sorts.
counterfactual
Given that Jodorowsky completely missed the thesis of Dune, I’m not sure Dune fans would like it. Paul is *not* a messianic hero, he’s a pawn of the forces he unleashes.
The pre-production art work is pretty, though.
Mike E
@Chief Oshkosh: I honestly had to push through the first episode, suspend disbelief as it were, since my last job was working at a performance venue and it seemed a bit haphazard and capricious at the start… I’m glad I did, now that I’m about halfway through the season.
CROAKER
+ Rodney Matthews and Ralph McQuarrie – Chris Foss leads you a different direction
J R in WV
OK, Lessee now…
They can’t use the word / title “Dune” nor the word “spice”, nor any of the names or words used in the novel “Dune” … hmm. No “Sandworms” nor “Navigators” nor “Bene Gesserit” (sorry if ‘m mispelling some of these integral terms, I haven’t read Dune for some decades now…) No Duke Atrides, nor Emperor…
What exactly do these lame suckers think in their fevered imaginations imagine they bought besides a never made movie book? Need vaccinations against stupid, hmm??
SpaceUnit
Also, what are the chances that this wasn’t even a blind auction and that they just opened the bidding with all the money in their pockets?
Ken
@SpaceUnit: I’m provisionally crediting the guy who came up with the scheme with some intelligence, or at least low cunning. But the people who gave him their money? Yeah, bag of hammers, box of rocks, whatever metaphor you prefer.
burnspbesq
In fairness, copyright law is some weird shit—and I say that as someone who formerly specialized in international tax, so I know from weird. It’s easy to get lost in the metaphysics of the thing.
Which, I suppose, makes it a perfect tool for scam artists.
debbie
Betty White was so nice, even Google has a tribute to her on her birthday. Google her name to see it.
SpaceUnit
@Ken:
Plus, if your intentions were to put out some bootleg rip-off version of the Dune concept why would you need to shell out a fortune for a collectors edition copy of the novel? You could get a copy at Goodwill for $1.50 and have the exact same legal rights to the actual story (none).
What am I missing?
Brachiator
I am still at the point where I see a story about “crypto this” and “NFT that,” and I think, Nope, still makes no sense.
Danielx
Honestly, I am surprised the nickname “Legume” is not in wider circulation.
Chetan Murthy
@SpaceUnit: One of the things about this space — this entire space — is that the promoters are trying to convince normal people (you, me, my mom) that it’s real. So spending big bucks in splashy transactions is …. advertising. I know, I know, I know: “what maroons”. But that’s how they think.
Kirk Spencer
@J R in WV:
Actually they can get away with spice as a term for a drug and emperor. Depending on some details Navigators might be possible.
RSA
I seem to recall that there’s significant overlap between libertarians and CryptoBros, and I remember from long-ago arguments with the former that many don’t believe in the concept of intellectual property. They tend to argue along the same lines as software pirates–“It’s not theft if I’m taking a copy and you retain the original.”
I would be not at all surprised if they had a fundamental misunderstanding of copyright laws.
Ken
@Chetan Murthy: I glanced through wikipedia’s list of confidence tricks, and there’s not an exact match. It’s fairly close to the “fiddle game” but that targets only one person. As you point out, the NFT thing is trying to convince millions of people that they can get a genuine Stradivarius for just ten bucks.
Suzanne
How do these people manage to walk down the street without tripping over their own dicks?
Yarrow
@Suzanne: Their dicks are too small to trip over.
SpaceUnit
@Chetan Murthy:
Ripping off this particular version of the story will only ensure that they get sued by the actual Dune copyright holders AND by Jodorowsky.
It’s gonna make that book purchase look like a bargain by comparison.
Jeffro
We are collectively getting stupider at a rate I never could have imagined.
which is odd because me personally? I’m smart as hell and getting smarter by the day ???
Suzanne
@Yarrow: Okay, then their shoelaces.
Seriously, how are these people functional?!
Maybe I’m assuming facts not in evidence.
Gin & Tonic
@Jeffro: That’s B-J. All of us here are above average.
Yarrow
@Suzanne: People with money do dumb things.
Betty Cracker
Whichever of y’all recommended “Dickinson” on Apple TV? THANK YOU!
Mike Adamson
They could develop a series “inspired” by the book without buying the book. They should call it the griftchain.
MomSense
@mrmoshpotato:
We are rewatching the Bourne movies. Yesterday youngest and I binged Station Eleven and today we are freaked out.
Chief Oshkosh
@Suzanne:
Uh, they’re not that long?
SATSQ
James E Powell
@Jeffro:
I don’t know that I’m any smarter than the average bear, but it’s exhausting trying to figure out other people. I don’t want to do it anymore.
CaseyL
This is bonkers. Yes, ripping off a wildly popular bit of pop culture can work: 50 Shades of Gray being Exhibit 1. But E. L. James went to some trouble to file off the VIN number and come up with a story sufficiently different from Twilight to pass muster.
It doesn’t sound like these clowns intend to put that much work into it. And they’re starting with what is itself a derivative work? Just nuts.
Lazy, dishonest, and nuts.
SpaceUnit
@CaseyL:
Yeah, and I doubt the producers of The Last Starfighter payed out a nickel to George Lucas.
But by very publicly paying a couple million for a specific concept of Dune, these bozos are leaving a glow-in-the-dark infringement trail a mile long for whatever cheap garbage they puke up.
Feathers
As someone who was an aspiring screenwriter for a while, and thus learned a great deal about adaptation rights, if their intent was to do a sideways adaptation of Dune, they just totally screwed themselves. Basically if I wanted to do an adaptation of Dune without buying the rights, I’d have to be able to say “Dune, what’s Dune? I think I maybe skimmed it while stoned in high school, but I totally forgot everything about it. My movie about a messianic White Savior hiding out on a desert planet who rides around on a magic giant spider while high on the water from an underground lake during an inter galactic war which killed his whole family has nothing to do with Dune. Why would you even think to suggest that?”
A big part of this reasoning comes from an 80s-90s lawsuit over vocals in an advertisement. The client wanted Bette Midler, IIRC, but she turned them down. This was during her run of movie stardom and mega chart music hits. So they hired a Bette Midler sound-a-like. Most people probably would have thought it was Bette Midler. So she sued. And won really big money. The ruling was basically, you can hire a Bette Midler sound alike, but you can’t hire someone to pretend to be Bette Midler if she turned down the job. If Bette Midler turns you down, either hire a different celebrity, or a vocalist who can’t be mistaken for Bette Midler.
These guys basically bought a copy very expensive, very famous copy of Dune, which means they will never legally be able to make a film anything like Dune. My suspicion is that this was one of those “make the idea so stupid that anyone smart enough to figure out what we’re up to will run far away” deals. You need the marks to be really dumb, if only to make them unsympathetic to a jury if you end up in court.
Baud
They should replace sand with water and call it WaterWorld.
Gin & Tonic
James E Powell
@Betty Cracker:
I’ve wondered about Dickinson but was shy of it because I take her & her work so seriously that I might not be into a fictional representation. On your word, I will check it out.
Yutsano
First of all, it doesn’t even sound like they know what they bought. They didn’t buy the book itself. From what I understand they bought the story bible for the Jodorowsky movie, which is a completely different animal. What a story bible tells you is how a character is supposed to behave, how the various parts in the story fit together so different units can work on different parts of the film and still make everything cohere* in the end. It’s not the actual story itself. I highly doubt the dudebros who bought this are capable of finding an animation studio, writing the concepts so said studio knows the idea, adapting the bible for animation, getting the funding for the initial production step etc. It’s entirely possible that what they bought is so worthless it’s comic.
* I haven’t seen the Jodorowsky adaptation so I have no idea if it actually gels as a film.
SpaceUnit
@Baud:
Or maybe World Of Shit. Cause that’s what it’s going to look like when the lawyers get started.
West of the Rockies
@J R in WV:
Sand. Lots and lots of sand.
dmsilev
@Yutsano: Nobody has seen Jodorowsky’s Dune. It never got made. From Wikipedia,
(emphasis added)
Another Scott
@Gin & Tonic: I don’t know enough about the principals to be able to interpret that.
KyivIndependent:
Here’s hoping VVP backs down, but …
Cheers,
Scott.
catclub
This seems like something worth thinking about. How seriously do others take the airlines claims?
cckids
My small-town NE parents used the descriptor “Dumber than a bucket of hair”. Certainly applies here.
catclub
@Gin & Tonic: Is it the sickle shaped flight path that is the problem?
Gin & Tonic
@Another Scott: Which European country do you think the pilots might have preferred to fly over, but didn’t?
Betty Cracker
@James E Powell: They take extensive literary license, but in a fun way.
Gin & Tonic
@catclub:
@Another Scott:
Some context.
Oklahomo
So instead of CHOAM the tech bros have given us CHOAD. Cool, cool.
Steeplejack
Aren’t all of these grandiose plans contingent on getting (some level of) permission from the actual Dune copyright holders? A minor detail, I know, but inquiring minds, etc.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic:
A reddit commenter said Germany is currently hosting peace talks which is why they didn’t allow the flyover. FWIW obviously.
Another Scott
@Gin & Tonic: Ah.
The modern world is complicated.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
as ever, I’ll believe it when I see him cuffs, but this seems significant to this non-lawyer
Sure Lurkalot
@Yarrow:
They used to say a fool and his money are soon parted but these days, we shovel even more money their way so they can show the world how foolish they are.
Kalakal
@dmsilev: O’Bannon hired Foss to design the hardware and spaceships and Giger to do alien interiors and creatures for Alien
prostratedragon
@germy: Well du-uh!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Dune has utterly nothing to do with Herbert’s Dune. What they bought was a right to a script with scenes of child sex, necrophilia and thousands of extras taking a shit at the same time.
Let Quin explain it here;
https://youtu.be/pQ1cdEFi97g
piratedan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: would invest heavily in popcorn futures….
not because of any interest in dirty deeds but as a means of comeuppance… not to be missed.
NotMax
@dmsilev
Trailer for the documentary about the Dune that never wert.
(The documentary is available on a plethora of streaming services. Alas, not for free on any of them at this time.)
Cameron
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That’s not fair! Now he might not have a chance to impeach Joe Biden!
Leto
@mrmoshpotato: Did you see that there’s a Bob’s Burger movie coming out soon? Full feature length deal. Hoping that it’s good!
Hob
To me, what might be even stupider than the purported “we’ll pay so excessively for a copy of this book that it’ll show everyone how serious we are and then we’ll totally get funding to make a movie inspired by Dune, and we’ll sort out the rights somehow” plan is a line in the related Buzzfeed article about what this dude thinks the message of Dune is. Surprise: it’s totally the same idea as cryptocurrency and blockchain– because it’s about changing the world through decentralized action!
I mean, totally aside from cryptocurrency being bullshit that’s only likely to change the world in negative ways, it’s pretty hilarious to call Dune a success story about “decentralized action” given that it involves a messianic cult revolution led by a single person who is the only person able to perceive the future due to thousands of years of genetic manipulation by a powerful secret society. And even calling it a success story at all is a dead giveaway that they haven’t read the sequel.
Leto
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I was watching one of the talking head shows last week and they were discussing this, specifically that Gaetz’s buddy, Joel Greenberg, was providing information bugt isn’t considered a reliable witness (already proven liar). But with his ex-girlfriend’s involvement in providing testimony it’s helping the eventual case against him. But like you said, will believe it when Butthead is in cuffs.
Ken B
So does anyone know who the Bible was purchased from?
Because I can’t help but think it would be one hell of a scam to collect a big pile of money from a lot of gullible fools to buy something that I already owned but couldn’t monetize, and then spend ALL of it on the winning bid…
Kent
@catclub: I don’t know. But I live right across the river from PDX airport in Portland and my phone and iPad both show they are connected via 5G. So apparently it is already rolled out around this airport and I don’t see any planes crashing.
Poe Larity
The Spicecoin must flow.
trollhattan
Another day, another boring shift with the CH whoaah.
Your top choice for water buffalo news.
Matt McIrvin
@Ken B: I bought the copyright to the Bible and now I can ATTACK AND DETHRONE GOD using IP law! See you in court, sucker!
Another Scott
@catclub: That’s an old story. Things are being delayed.
TheVerge:
tl;dr – Basically, the FAA needs to be sure that the 5G signals are tightly-enough confined to their intended radio bands to not bleed into frequency ranges used by aircraft altimeters.
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
danielx
@Leto:
You know, I had never noticed but the resemblance is remarkable.
trollhattan
@Kent: IIUC this is a new variation of 5G just now being rolled out and not related to the 5G already in use.*
*Not a certified nerd. Please refer to certified nerds who can also form complete sentences for more information.
Gin & Tonic
@trollhattan:
Isn’t that the null set?
Another Scott
@trollhattan: Kinda-sorta. It’s related to “C-Band” which is very close to what aircraft use for some types of instruments in inclement weather.
AndroidPolice has more about the additional delays/larger-buffer-zones that some airlines want.
Cheers,
Scott.
Poe Larity
All this messiah talk, if the Dems had been thinking, they would have gone Boys from Brazil and we’d have JFK Jr. clones running for Senator in every southern state.
Gin & Tonic
Do mice eat their dead? I frequently set a mousetrap in a shed on the property – they like to live in there, and I don’t like it, so I use the old-fashioned snap-shut traps that generally kill the suckers instantly. Yesterday I went to the shed after having neglected that task for a couple of days, and found the trap holding what was probably about the top one-third of a mouse. The rest, except for some scattered fur, wasn’t around. The shed is tight enough that larger animals like cats or raccoons can’t get in. So what happened?
Kent
Pretty sure the Bible is out of copyright by now. At least in the original Hebrew and Greek.
But modern translations can and are copyrighted. So you can reproduce the 1611 King James Version all you want. But, for example, the 1978 New International Version (NIV) is copyrighted by Biblica which has licensed Zondervan to publish NIV versions in the United States.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Leto: @danielx: Trust Fund Butthead
Jay
@Gin & Tonic:
Yes, mice and rats eat the dead, and when hungry enough, the living.
Hob
@Gin & Tonic: Hey now. I have my certificate right here and I can totally form a complete sentence; it may be an overly long sentence (with digressions—often involving a random assortment of punctuation), and not well organized, but it will have every grammatical unit present and it will end with a clear full stop, dammit.
Another Scott
Poking around some old favorite sites I haven’t visited in a while tonight, I saw this – AlFranken.com – How to reform the filibuster (from December, with Norm Ornstein):
Others have talked about this, but I thought it was interesting to see the specifics spelled out and how it fits with what S&M say they require.
We’ll see!
Cheers,
Scott.
Leto
@danielx: I didn’t originate the term/comparison. That happened a few years ago with a photo of Gym Jordan and Gaetz standing side-by-side, with it captioned, “Beavis and Butthead”. But yeah, the resemblance is uncanny.
tybee
i see DougJ gets some notice on Democratic Underground
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100216258252
Kay
This is not true. The electoral count act has nothing to do with changing “our voting laws” unless he talking about regulating a single vote that Congress takes, because Republicans couldn’t manage that one vote without trying a coup.
We have to regulate Republicans in Congress. If we don’t tighten up the laws and set strict parameters for how they may behave when certifying an election they launch insurrections, but that has nothing to do with the individual citizen voting process, or civil rights protections for voters.
Mitt Romney lied a lot in his 2012 campaign and apparently he’s back at it.
Ken B
Sorry, I meant the book these clowns bought, which I understand was one of Jodorowski’s story bibles for the movie he was never able to film.
Do we know who had the copy that was sold at auction for hundreds of times its asking price?
Because it seems like a brilliant scam to collect a huge pile of money from a bunch of suckers and then spend ALL of it to buy something you own but is worth much less than you collect from the suckers from yourself…
Kay
Democrats should abandon voting rights and pass Mitt Romney’s electoral reform act instead, because talking a lot about voting embarrasses this author.
It won’t do anything for “voting rights”, or, actually, voters, but it will allow pundits to check a box and get back to the issues they care about, like screaming at teachers unions.
JMG
I am lucky enough to have enough money to invest and fortunately for me selected a conservative (in financial terms) advisor. He’d have an aneurysm if I brought up crypto, let alone NFTs, and he’d be right. The latter are just fool’s gold. The former will be wiped out by the world’s governments in due course. Privately coined money has a long and unhappy history. When the armed men come calling, the techbros will be unhappy. Please note the armed men will arrive no matter who’s in control of whatever country they’re in’s government.
Gin & Tonic
Seconded.
Omnes Omnibus
Are they Uruguayan rugby playing mice?
opiejeanne
@Kent: I’m sitting in the Seattle airport right now and I can see the 5G connection on my phone. Plane leaves at 8:25,so about 45 minutes.
NotMax
@Gin & Tonic
C.H.U.D.s.
debbie
People show you who they are.
From Frontline’s Putin’s Way:
Pharniel
@Ken B:
The cryptobros of the DAO published how big their warchest was. The owner just use straw bidders to take them right up to their exact warchest, selling for 100x the expected sale price.
The real grift seems to be that the person who actually purchased the book for the DAO gets his money back + fees and, crucially, his taxes. Because he bought his Etherium back when it was $12 a pop. So he’s going to be paid back the $3.2 million + fees + the huge tax bill. In essence he’s getting a free ~$400k.
Then the admins just decided to give themselves $250-500k each for….?
The discord server is full of True Believers and the plan seems Dumb, but it appears that’s like the typos in Nigerian 411 scams – they want to dissuade anyone who takes one look and realizes that the DAO is a grift, because now they can just say it’s fearmongering FUDders who “don’t understand crypto” and not “people accurately describing the situation”
Pharniel
Thread full of Discord messages.
https://twitter.com/fredbenenson/status/1482929634400423942?s=20
LiminalOwl
@Mike E: There is no wrong time to start watching (or reading) Station Eleven!