Story Protocol came on the scene on September 6th 2023 with announcement of $54 million in funding. It promises to bring Intellectual Property management to the crypto world with benefit for writers, creative fans and organizations who want to use the IP. As always there are grandiose statements on how it is going to change the world and it has a lot of interesting people behind it, but the important details are still lacking.

We will be lacking important details for a bit now, after all they now need to hire people and get to work actually building the protocol itself. But let's look at what they have written so far on their vision: https://www.storyprotocol.xyz/media/vision

Nearly 600 years after the Gutenberg press accelerated the reproduction of creative works, the internet has evolved into the ultimate idea-propagation machine. And just as the Gutenberg press necessitated the first copyright laws, the digital era demands new IP infrastructure.

Very similar to Literary Universe problem statement, though we expand that beyond IP infrastructure to the entire ecosystem of writing. While the Story in the name and example of Gutenberg implies that this will be all about written works, mentions about TikTok, SoundCloud and gaming show that the scope is much bigger. I would even say that with remixing it is even more suited for music.

However, our IP system is still deeply wedded to the analog age. Though the architecture of IP today maintains its basic commitments to incentivizing creative work, it overlooks the open nature of value creation on the internet. Our current IP infrastructure is too unwieldy to support remixing, community lore, and co-creation as foundational pillars of creativity. Instead of leaning into the fundamental force of the internet — openness — most IP models emphasize a defensive stance, adding friction to the creative process.

I agree and disagree on equal level with this. Though for writing, from my own experiences, too many cooks or complete openes just destroy things. There needs to be some quality check and in a serialized story or evolving universe there usually is the main author or group which needs to have the option to say no to an addition as it might not fit into a theme, continuity or would break plans that have already been agreed upon. This is my biggest concern with Story Protocol.

There are two fundamental requirements that they set:

First, the internet needs a standard to track the origin and evolution of IP.

Second, the internet needs a seamless and scalable licensing regime.

These are indeed things that need to be tackled, so no contest there. Story Protocol is being compared to Git for storytelling. As mentioned above we will need to see what control can author exercise here. The next section about Nouns and Verbs addresses my concerns:

The data structures (“nouns”) address the first fundamental requirement of internet-native IP by providing a technical standard for tracking provenance and attribution. Just as the creation of protocols like HTTP, HTML, and CSS accelerated internet adoption by enabling reliable and structured information sharing, IP on Story Protocol is designed to be similarly streamlined. This standardization makes it simple for any application to leverage our data structures as a global source of provenance.

Our modules (“verbs”) address the second requirement of internet-native IP by enabling frictionless extension of IP. Once IP is captured in our IP legos, it can be composed and expanded through our modules. Modules are functions that unlock an array of abilities like licensing, revenue streams from derivative works, and access to global capital. For example, our licensing module enables programmable licenses to be generated with the same flexibility and expressivity as code, like a programmable Getty Images that works for all forms of IP. Instead of relying on one-to-one legal negotiations, creators can set their licensing conditions transparently for others to seamlessly extend their work.

The key here are Verbs, if I'm reading this correctly the original author has the option to set the license and allowed actions from the work. We can probably expect as samples of Implementation of the Creative Commons licenses (if anyone from Story Protocol is reading this, I think that would be a great example once you start showing technical capabilities).

The next section talks about blockchain which suggest that only the licensing part will live on the blockchain and the medium will be somewhere else. I suspect this will play great with NFTs.

The section on AI provides one solution to the issue of AI generated content. I don't think that it is entirely feasible given how some of the AI models work, but better solution than many I have I seen suggested.

Finally in regards to copyright law, that will be quiet a challenge. Looks like most of that will be tackled via licensing on the Story Protocol.

All in, I think this is an interesting project and we will be looking closely as they come up with technical implementation. If we deem it compatible with Literary Universe system (which right now it looks like it is), then we will move to implement it as soon as possible.