A Crypto Group Mistakenly Believes It Acquired Copyright After Spending $3 Million on ‘Dune’ Book
The spice must not be flowing for members of an NFT (non-fungible token) group that spent $3m on a rare book detailing film-maker Alejandro Jodorowsky’s failed adaptation of Frank Herbert’s epic science fiction novel Dune.
The book was offered in a Christie’s Paris sale on 22 November with an estimate of €25,000-€35,000 and bought for more than 100 times its low estimate (€2.6m, or $3m, including fees) by an anonymous group identified as Spice DAO (decentralised autonomous organisation), whose members mistakenly believed that the purchase granted them the copyright to the book, which they intended to splice and sell as NFTs before burning the physical copy.
The group stated that its goal is to “issue a collection of NFTs that are technically innovative and culturally disruptive, a first-of-its-kind”, and that burning the book would be an “incredible marketing stunt which could be recorded on video”, with the video itself sold as an NFT.
