The Critic’s Guide to Story

Addressing the toughest topics in IP and beyond

At Story, we believe in the no-nonsense attitude of constantly shipping products in the open, products that solve real-world problems for real-world people. Part of this process is taking our biggest critics as seriously as our biggest fans, supporting our most involved builders as well as our least equipped users.

Transparently communicating what Story is—and what it is decidedly not—is a crucial starting point to establish the standards to which we hold ourselves accountable.

This guide addresses the most challenging questions to Story head-on, taking into account the most prominent critical voices of our community and beyond:

1. IP is a legal concept, and Story can’t fix the law. What’s the point, then?
2. Story can’t prevent copyright theft—so why should I use it?
3. Story can't enforce any IP—so what’s my benefit to the status quo?
4. What happens if revenue is made off-chain? Story can't enforce that either.
5. If Studio Ghibli had used Story, how would the OpenAI situation have unfolded differently?
6. IP is a boomer concept and has no place in the age of abundance. Isn’t IP dead?

1. IP is a legal concept, and Story can’t fix the law. What’s the point, then?

Intellectual property (IP) is a legal-native concept. That’s the fundamental point to understand when trying to grasp IP. While many aspects of the legal system are governed and managed through legal contracts (e.g., a sale contract for a house), IP predominantly manifests in a legal contract.

That’s because of IP's intangible nature. It can range from original thoughts and ideas to a person’s likeness, from scientific innovations to a Hollywood movie. While there is often a physical counterpart to point to, it is only the legal agreement that turns the intangible thought into actual property, IP.

Navigating IP, therefore, means navigating the legal system, which involves understanding and interpreting legal contracts. There is no alternative to the legal system for managing and monetizing IP. Story’s aim, thus, is not to present an alternative form of legal system that avoids all shortcomings of IP law, like exceeding contract negotiations, complicated terminology, bad discoverability, and much more.

Instead, Story hooks into the existing legal system with a standardized legal contract: the Programmable IP License (PIL). Through the innovation of ironclad smart contracts, Story generates a digital representation of the legal agreement and puts it on the blockchain—it puts IP on the blockchain. By standardizing licensing terms and utilizing designated parameters, the PIL reduces the friction associated with bespoke, one-off contracts that often hinder the exchange of IP. This shared structure enables IP to move through a global, interoperable system with clear, machine-readable parameters for usage, allowing creators, developers, and platforms to exchange and build on IP with far greater efficiency and certainty.

Through this process, IP becomes programmable because the digital (and decentralized) version of the IP can now be read not only manually but also programmatically by programs, agents, and digital marketplaces. It’s a digital standard for IP, a common language that all providers of digital services and goods can hook into.

This not only increases the discoverability of IP, which has long been an issue of creating a flourishing IP economy; it establishes a soft standard for IP contracts and allows for licensing IP in a permissionless manner, without needing to consult lawyers, negotiate between multiple parties, or put up with detailed legal clauses.

Programmable IP also sets the foundation for collecting royalty payments and selling licenses in an automated way. It allows entirely new use cases for IP by creating secondary markets around programmable IP, such as IPFi applications.

In conclusion, Story is not a systemic effort to substitute the analog legal system, but it makes IP management and monetization significantly simpler, more effective, and transparent. This builds the foundation for a functioning IP marketplace that unleashes the potential of this promising asset class.

2. Story can’t prevent copyright theft—so why should I use it?

A key concept of intellectual property is ownership, determining who is the rightful creator of an IP. Establishing the correct ownership means guaranteeing the authenticity of the IP. Only if the authenticity of the IP is guaranteed can IP markets function successfully.

However, even before the advent of the Internet, guaranteeing the authenticity of IP has been an issue: from fake Picassos and forged Gucci handbags, the history of IP fraud is long and filled with dazzling examples. The scale and speed of digital production and distribution, unleashed by personal computing and the Internet, have made it simpler to forge IP. Still, at the same time, it has provided essential tools to detect copyright infringement.

Nowadays, AI poses the ultimate challenge to IP authenticity. As the scale and quality of user-generated content are no longer limited, it’s increasingly challenging to identify, track, and sanction IP ownership fraud. The IP legal system struggles to keep up with the de facto online reality.

Even with all available means, a singular actor like Story cannot stop this century-old, large-scale issue overnight. Nor do we aim to be the ultimate provider of IP authenticity, as this would also necessitate a high level of centralization, generating a singular point of failure.

However, Story acknowledges the importance of ensuring sufficient IP authenticity to establish a flourishing digital IP economy. That’s why Story has implemented a system designed to provide strong authenticity signals: the Story Attestation Service (SAS).

SAS leverages a network of specialized service providers—each detecting copyright violations across different mediums (images, audio, etc.)—to provide transparent, publicly accessible, and on-chain signals on the legitimacy of an IP asset. Applications that facilitate IP registration (e.g., original content) may also attest to the provenance of an IP asset (called “apptestations”) in the future.

This blend of detection methods creates a robust ecosystem that allows IP to be registered without introducing undue friction, while allowing the market and individual ecosystem apps to determine the weight to give to each attestation provider. So, rather than preventing duplicates, which would cause far more potentially disruptive front-running risk, the signals and attestations allow the original IPs to surface above the rest.

3. Story can't enforce any IP—so what’s my benefit to the status quo?

Even when the authenticity of an IP has been verified correctly, another issue currently plaguing the IP landscape is the lack of enforcement of IP claims and the prevention of unlawful use of IP.

Even though your IP can be correctly registered, there’s still a chance that third parties use your IP without following the terms you’ve set. This is particularly relevant in the era of AI: Large AI companies, unfortunately, often operate in gray areas when utilizing publicly available IP for the training purposes of their models.

However, here's the critical point: focusing solely on enforcement overlooks the foundational steps that make enforcement possible in the first place. Effective enforcement depends on two prerequisites: an explicit declaration of rights and ongoing detection of violations. That’s where Story comes in.

First, declaration: Story allows IP holders to register their assets in a way that is transparent, time-stamped, and legally relevant. Through the IP Portal and the Programmable IP License (PIL), users not only register their ownership but also define how that IP can be used and how it cannot be used. In jurisdictions like the U.S., this act of registration alone can significantly strengthen your legal position if infringement occurs, entitling you to greater damages in court.

Second, detection: Story’s Attestation Service (SAS) brings visibility into how IP is being used (or misused). It leverages a network of service providers to identify potential violations across various formats, including images, audio, and more, surfacing strong authenticity signals in an environment where most IP infringement occurs silently. This system helps creators and platforms alike spot problematic usage early, rather than only reacting when something goes viral.

Third, enforcement: Once those two pillars are in place, enforcement becomes dramatically more actionable and more affordable. Story can’t serve as the court system, but it offers tools that make recourse significantly easier. The IP Validation Service (IPVS), for instance, includes a modular dispute mechanism that connects IP conflicts to arbitration platforms like UMA, with the flexibility to support additional providers in the future.

In short, Story doesn’t replace enforcement; it makes it possible. We handle the front end of the process (declaration and detection), so that when enforcement becomes necessary, it’s significantly cheaper, faster, and more credible. Rather than chasing outcomes in a broken system, Story helps creators establish the foundations of fair use and attribution from day one.

4. What happens if revenue is made off-chain? Story can't enforce that either.

Following standard pen-and-paper licensing agreements, royalties between parties are usually tracked by royalty reports, which are periodic (often quarterly or biannually) statements provided by the licensee (the party using the IP) to the licensor (the IP owner). These reports outline basic royalty information like units sold, revenue generated, rates applied, and any potential deductions.

Historically, this kind of reporting has been cumbersome and error-prone. As these reports are usually generated by the party using the IP, they can lack transparency. And while auditing rights may help, they aren’t always easy to enforce. This can lead to underreported or missing data due to poor accounting systems or different interpretations of contract terms. However, the issue of delayed or missing payments can also arise, a problem that is surprisingly common, especially among smaller or overseas licensees.

While handling on-chain royalty streams swiftly out-of-the-box, it’s true that Story cannot provide any immediate improvements to the system of off-chain royalty payments, as this would demand hooking into IP licensors’ accounting systems and having a legal mandate to enforce IP law (which only state actors can do). In short, there’s simply no quick fix for the century-old system of bookkeeping and revenue reporting in off-chain IP royalty payments. However, Story provides significant indirect improvements that help make off-chain payments more efficient, more secure, and more reliable.

Firstly, Story establishes a legally binding framework through the Programmable IP License (PIL), which is the basis for enforcing any off-chain revenue claims. The PIL includes a specific section on commercialization, royalty sharing, and other revenue-relevant parameters. One of the terms of the PIL obligates licensees to provide revenue data for off-chain transactions (such as merchandise sales) to licensors if a revenue share agreement is in place. This means that while the revenue transfer itself might not happen on-chain initially, the legal agreement mandates reporting. This way, there’s a legally enforceable declaration that forms the basis for any off-chain revenue sharing that has to be accounted for.

Secondly, Story’s blockchain-based solution provides on-chain transparency and evidence of licensing agreements, making sure that IP terms—including revenue policies—are permanently discoverable and retrievable. If a licensee misuses the IP outside the agreed terms, the on-chain contract and its immutable logs serve as evidence of the original agreement. The legal wrapper provided by the PIL references recognized legal frameworks and jurisdictions, allowing the aggrieved party to pursue off-chain legal recourse, such as arbitration or court proceedings, using the on-chain records as secure evidence.

Third, Story provides mechanisms to address potential breaches of the licensing terms. On the one hand, the Story Attestation Service (SAS) leverages a network of specialized service providers—each detecting copyright violations across different mediums (images, audio, etc)—to provide transparent, publicly accessible signals on the legitimacy of an IP asset. On the other hand, the Dispute Module allows users to flag content that they believe violates the on-chain license terms. If a dispute is successful, the IP in question can be flagged and may no longer be able to generate licenses or be monetized through Story. This acts as a deterrent against the misuse of IP.

Finally, all payments within the Story ecosystem are made using whitelisted ERC-20 tokens known as Revenue Tokens. While the current focus is on on-chain transactions and making it easy to bring traditional currency onto Story, the infrastructure is in place to handle revenue sharing based on license terms. Story’s royalty module can automatically distribute revenue between parent and derivative IP assets according to the on-chain license configurations. This suggests that as onramping and offramping solutions mature, it could become more seamless to track and settle off-chain revenue obligations on-chain, further automating the compensation process. In addition, we are working with onramping and offramping partners to make it extremely easy for people who call our API to stream their current currency and bring it onto Story as a settlement layer.

In short, while Story cannot immediately circumvent the limitations of the existing off-chain revenue sharing system, it does provide a palette of tools that make these payments more likely, more efficient, and more transparent. It simplifies and automates revenue splits regardless of the complexity of ownership structure, and generates a single license system valid for both on-chain and off-chain royalty payments.

5. If Studio Ghibli had used Story, how would the OpenAI situation have unfolded differently?

Studio Ghibli—the iconic Japanese animation house known for its hand-drawn masterpieces like Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro—recently became the focal point of the rift opening up in AI and IP. After OpenAI had released new image generation features for its GPT-4o model, millions of people created and shared images in the style of Studio Ghibli, fascinated by how well the model could generate pictures in their distinct style.

Soon, however, fascination turned into criticism because there was a significant catch: Ghibli had never explicitly permitted their IP to be used for training AI models, let alone the publication of user-generated images in their illustrative style. Yet, millions of users were now able to imitate their style with a few prompts, profiting off their design IP at no cost. While Studio Ghibli certainly gained a lot of popularity through this episode, they’re also bound to lose out on significant attribution and compensation, as others use their IP without consent.

Studio Ghibli is just one example of many. While large institutional IP holders can afford to file billion-dollar lawsuits against big AI companies, most IP holders cannot afford to do so. The result is an immense lack of IP law enforcement, and the sheer speed and scale of AI content production aggravate the situation. But if enforcement is the main issue, how can Story help?

Firstly, registering IP on Story is an act of declaration that creates transparency. Registering your IP is the first crucial step, a precondition for any kind of enforcement that follows. While many jurisdictions provide copyright protection even without registration, the act of registering puts you in an advantageous position. For example, according to US copyright law, if you register your IP with a copyright office and declare how you want it to be used, and someone infringes on your IP, you are entitled to much more damages than if you don't register your IP with the copyright office and someone ends up infringing your IP.

But these official declarations are only the beginning. More critical for third-party use is the contractual license agreement, which outlines the specific terms under which another party may use your IP. In contrast to the bare registration of IP, licensing terms can be fine-tuned to fit any use case. Here’s where Story shines. When you register your IP on Story, you receive an industry-grade licensing agreement for free, pre-packaged with use cases such as non-social remixing or commercial use. This act of declaring specific intent is the main deterrent to downstream copyright infringement. As these terms are immutably stored on Story’s L1 blockchain, they provide a secure reference even years from now.

While registering their IP on Story wouldn’t have led to better enforcement for Studio Ghibli, it might have halted the spread of copyright infringement in the first place by using an explicit declaration of intent. There’d be simply way less room for OpenAI to claim fair use.

The benefits of declaration and transparency extend to the other side of the equation: the AI model providers themselves. Right now, the industry standard is “ingest first, litigate later.” That’s not sustainable. If training data agreements were openly declared and tracked on-chain via Story, providers would have clarity on what content is in bounds and what content might trigger liability. Licensing, if built into the system, becomes not a minefield but a map. Therefore, Story’s IP infrastructure offers the opportunity to create a win-win model of shared value creation through programmable IP licenses, benefitting individual IP creators and large AI companies alike.

Secondly, Story helps to detect copyright infringement at scale. We have implemented a system that aims to provide strong authenticity signals for any IP registered on our platform: Story’s Attestation Service (SAS).

SAS leverages a network of specialized service providers—each detecting copyright violations across different mediums (images, audio, etc.)—to provide transparent, publicly accessible signals on the legitimacy of an IP asset. Applications that facilitate IP registration (e.g., original content) may also attest to the provenance of an IP asset (called “apptestations”) in the future. While not entirely avoiding IP infringement, SAS provides key authenticity signals in a world where most IP theft often goes unnoticed.

Together, by providing declarations of IP rights and detecting unlawful IP use, Story builds a solid basis for any downstream IP enforcement, significantly reducing the likelihood of your IP becoming subject to theft.

Had Studio Ghibli been registered on Story, the situation with OpenAI wouldn’t have magically resolved itself. However, it would have played out in the open, with terms known, boundaries set, and violations that could be identified, rather than just felt.

6. IP is a boomer concept and has no place in the age of abundance. Isn’t IP dead?

There’s a take that’s been circulating a lot lately: “IP is dead in the age of abundance.” It sounds bold, provocative, even liberating. But it gets the logic precisely backwards. Indeed, we live in an era where 8 billion people—and now, billions of machines—can create an unlimited amount of content. AI can spin out endless variations of music, writing, video, and even digital personas. That’s the first-order effect of abundance: infinite supply.

But the second-order effect is far more interesting—and far more critical. When content is infinite, originality becomes scarce. In that world, IP isn’t obsolete. It’s the last remaining source of scarcity. It’s not about locking things down. It’s not about ownership for ownership’s sake. It’s about being able to say: This is where it started; this is the source of value; the place where attribution—and economic flow—should begin. In an environment where everything is remixable, derivable, and increasingly indistinguishable, that kind of signal becomes priceless.

Ironically, many of the most vocal advocates of the so-called “age of abundance” fail to fully reckon with its implications. If everything can be copied, what’s actually rare? It’s not pixels. It’s not file formats. It’s not even distribution. What’s rare is identity. Novelty. Cultural signal. The ability to stand out in the noise. That’s exactly what IP represents.

And this isn’t theoretical. Behind closed doors, some of the very companies that publicly claim “everything should be fair use” are quietly paying tens of millions to license high-value IP catalogs. Why? Because the models they’re building need high-quality, culturally resonant data; because not all content is created equal; because originality still matters.

If anything, we’re entering the IP Supercycle. However, it won’t resemble the past. We don’t need to replicate old-school licensing regimes. What we need is IP that’s programmable, remixable, and trackable—natively digital and enforceable at scale. That’s what Story makes possible. Not a return to scarcity through gatekeeping—but a new kind of scarcity: transparent, interoperable, and fair.

Abundance doesn’t kill IP. It elevates it. Because in a world where anyone can generate infinite content, the only thing truly worth protecting—and sharing—is what’s actually original.