This is a guest column from Aliens Worlds’ Ronnie McClusky.
As the digital age continues to shape the entertainment landscape, hit franchises are having to grapple with the reality that copyright on their greatest creations is starting to slip by.
The expiration of copyright protection for some of Disney’s most iconic characters is a perfect example. Created in 1928, Mickey Mouse entered the public domain in 2024 – meaning we’re all free to pen our own Mickey stories without risking a Disney lawsuit. As for Winnie the Pooh, copyright expired in 2022. Hence the subsequent arrival of a low-budget slasher film called Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey.
With a new generation of content creators gaining access to such adored characters, a potential revolution in storytelling is afoot as countless communities and subcultures get the chance to shape the future of not just iconic films, books and characters but also hit video games and franchises.
One possible outcome of copyright expiration is that the community will pick up the baton and get to work preserving the heritage of beloved works, ensuring their relevance well into the future. After all, multi-generational fandom already sustains many of the world’s biggest franchises, from Star Wars and Lord of the Rings to Doctor Who and Harry Potter.
Nevertheless, it is necessary to vet and organize the avalanche of creative work to ensure it meets the approval of most fans and is accepted as canon. Otherwise, it’s just a chaotic mishmash of ideas regurgitated into the ether. The best way of achieving this vision of community-managed intellectual property (IP) is by decentralizing the authority typically held by mega-rich movie studios and entertainment companies.
The enduring power of fandom
Fandoms do not consist of passive consumers; they are vibrant communities of committed fans who invest time, emotional energy and ultimately money into their favorite franchises.
Prone to creating fan fiction, art and other lore-adjacent content, these societies almost function as extensions of the core creative team, exploring storylines and character arcs that push the story forward. Even with copyright in place, super-fans play an important role in expanding the parameters of a given universe.
By embracing these often militantly enthusiastic fans, and incorporating their contributions into official lore, the industry can tap into a rich seam of talent and ideas even before copyright expires. Instead of being limited to producing fan works in unofficial spaces, a shift towards sanctioned community-built canon gives fans the opportunity to influence the direction of all future content.
What would this look like in practice? One option would be for movie studios and publishers to host contests and workshops that allow community members to submit stories, character designs, and other elements to be considered for integration into the official narrative. There could even be dedicated platforms to facilitate collaboration between staffed writers/animators and hobbyists.
The benefits of involving the community are obvious. Harnessing the passion of fans means storytelling stays true to the essence of the original work. By involving those who intimately know and love the characters and worlds, the resulting art will – in theory – resonate more deeply with the masses.
Commissioning work by people from different backgrounds can also bring unique perspectives to the table, resulting in richer and more inclusive stories. With these enthusiasts actively involved in driving the story forward, the risk of it becoming stale or disconnected from its roots is greatly reduced.
While inspiring a heightened sense of ownership will almost certainly lead to increased engagement and a more dedicated fanbase, what happens when inevitable disagreements occur? Disharmony among fans of a particular franchise even has its own name – Broken Base – defined as “a sustained and exceptionally vicious conflict between two or more large, vocal, and entrenched factions with little or no middle ground to be found between them.”
Managing the official canon while copyright is in place is one thing. Doing so when it has lapsed is another matter. Indeed, there is little to stop individuals or factions mercilessly twisting stories any which way, potentially with little regard for the heritage of the franchise. Which is why pursuing a community-driven model based on consensus is the way forward.
What is decentralized IP?
Technological advances already render copyright less equipped to handle the management of global franchises. With the emergence of AI tools that can scale up both visual and text-based storytelling, it’s only going to get harder.
Perhaps, then, it’s time for franchises to embrace the concept of community-driven canon before the timer runs down on copyright. How? By establishing collaborative frameworks that ensure clear guidelines and agreements between fans and copyright holders. By decentralizing intellectual property rather than selfishly hoarding it.
We are already witnessing this transition to a community-driven decentralized model in the world of gaming. In Alien Worlds, a great deal of power is concentrated into players’ hands through its DAO governance model. DAOs have gradually become the de-facto governance model of web3, empowering participants to make collective decisions for the good of the community, with votes transparently recorded on-chain.
In Alien Worlds, over a dozen independently operated DAOs take an active role in shaping the game as a whole. There’s not much these DAOs can’t do, from creating and funding original content (including mini-games) and minting NFTs to organizing community events and competing with rival DAOs for a greater share of native TLM tokens.
In Alien Worlds, the goal of each Syndicate is to develop an engaging gaming landscape, and thus compel players to ally to that planet (by mining TLM tokens there, acquiring and renting land, or participating in missions) rather than another. Thus, Syndicates actively reward those who contribute to making the planet a lively and engaging environment with cool games and rich lore. If a Syndicate fails to make an impact, players simply vote in new Custodians during the next weekly election.
In a sense, each Alien Worlds planet is its own mini-franchise complete with unique history, community, games, and mythology.
Being built on the WAX blockchain means Alien Worlds is well-suited to harnessing the creative power of fandoms and supporting community-led lore. Achieving such a feat would be more difficult (but not impossible) in a centralized environment, not least because power would ultimately reside with the publisher.
Dacoco, the primary contributor to Alien Worlds, recently unveiled Tokenized Lore, the mechanism that will enable decentralized IP. Tokenized Lore allows players to directly contribute to the game’s sci-fi mythology by submitting story proposals and vote on them, with an NFT Receipt of Authorship dispensed for approved contributions.
Combating franchise fatigue
Player-driven web3 games like Alien Worlds offer an insight into the way major franchises can embrace decentralized governance and empower fans in the digital age. Although blockchain isn’t an essential ingredient – no distributed ledger was involved in Harry Potter fans’ creation of real-life Quidditch leagues, nor Star Trek devotees’ countless independent films and series – web3 tech incentivizes community engagement through things like token rewards and transparent governance.
But these aren’t the only benefits. With franchise fatigue having already motivated Disney to cut production of Marvel films and TV series, and the superhero pool particularly polluted, the emergence of decentralized IP promises to reinvigorate series by putting fans front and center.
The future of franchises is unwritten, but as beloved characters like Mickey slip from the grasp of entertainment giants, they will have a decision to make. Plot a singular course or tap into the creative power of a huge fanbase, potentially setting a precedent for how media properties interact with communities in this new age of expanded storytelling and shared canon.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if decentralized IP became the norm?
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