Keira Wright
Production company Miramax has filed a lawsuit accusing director Quentin Tarantino of copyright infringement for selling NFTs derived from his blockbuster 1994 film, Pulp Fiction.
On Nov. 2, Tarantino announced he would be tokenizing seven uncut screenplay scenes for the critically-acclaimed film as nonfungible tokens in December 2021. The NFTs will be built on the Secret Network, a layer one blockchain.
Each of the tokens would feature “the uncut first handwritten scripts of “Pulp Fiction” and exclusive custom commentary from Tarantino, revealing secrets about the film and its creator.”
Miramax owns the rights to the director’s classic edition of Pulp Fiction. In the suit filed on 16 Nov in the Central District of California. it claimed that, “Tarantino kept his Pulp Fiction NFT plans secret,” and that the announcement has interfered with its own plans to mint Pulp Fiction NFTs.
“This one-off effort devalues the NFT rights to ‘Pulp Fiction,’ which Miramax intends to maximize through a strategic, comprehensive approach,” Miramax attorney Bart Williams wrote in a statement.
Williams also accused Tarantino’s team of a “deliberate, premeditated, short-term money grab.”
“This group chose to recklessly, greedily, and intentionally disregard the agreement that Quentin signed instead of following the clear legal and ethical approach of simply communicating with Miramax about his proposed ideas.”
Keira Wright
More than a quarter of Australian crypto users surveyed in October plan to use digital assets as a part of their Christmas presents this holiday season.
The survey by crypto wallet and services provider Crypto.com polled 2,020 Australians aged 18-59. Of those that had used crypto over the past 12 months, 26% responded that they would consider giving some away for Christmas or buying crypto-related gifts.
More than half, or 53% of those planning to buy crypto gifts, said they would consider purchasing crypto assets, like Bitcoin (BTC) or Ethereum (ETH) for their loved ones this Christmas.
The survey also found that crypto merchandise such as themed socks or hoodies might be popular gifts this holiday season as 43% of those planning to buy crypto-centric gifts said they were looking for these items.
Around 42% said they were thinking about buying coin vouchers, and 35% were considering buying crypto books. Around a third of those surveyed said they were thinking about gifting non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Sarah Jansen
Messaging apps are commonplace in our day-to-day interactions, with more than 3.6 billion people worldwide using them. For perspective, the average person is estimated to send up to 72 messages every day. While messaging has dramatically opened up the door to communication, recent high-profile events have shown just how concerning the management of data collected from these apps can be. In September 2021, WhatsApp was fined 255 million euros for data sharing violations. Before this, in August 2020, Telegram suppressed a data leak that exposed the personal information of nearly 500 million of its users.
Although these concerns were brought to the attention of the media, messaging companies are still operating under practices that suggest data governance has not been solved for good. Perhaps most concerning are the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and human moderators to flag (and therefore monitor) all messages being sent by participants, the need for messaging applications to access users’ personal contacts and the collection of IP data. Taken together, the growth in internet connectivity and mobile communications will only increase the amount of data being stored, further increasing the risk of information being stolen from the cloud.
Recognizing the need for a solution, Secretum is taking to the power of blockchain technology. The platform itself has been designed as the world’s first and only decentralized, encrypted messaging app on the Solana blockchain. The platform allows users to communicate directly and anonymously with another wallet holder through a decentralized distributed node network.
This Daily Dose was brought to you by Cointelegraph.
