Tucker Carlson inadvertently helped raise $ 14,000 for abortion rights

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Hours after the Supreme Court Overturned Row We Wade On Friday, Tucker Carlson spoke out against companies that pay for employee abortion-travel expenses. “They’m against families,” Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson said of the companies tonight.

But when Carlson gave his commentary, one image of his show was actually used for a completely different purpose: raising money for groups that help abortion.

Anonymous online auctioneers in a digital space called Web3 are offering thousands of dollars in cryptocurrency for NFT created from Carlson’s movie at last year’s show, in which he argued for physical autonomy in corona virus vaccines. Jenny Holzer, the creator of NFT Saturday 12 eth – which sells for about $ 14,500 – said she would donate the proceeds from the sale to groups including Planned Parenthood, the Center for Reproductive Rights and a DC-based lawyer. Team PAI.

(An NFT or non-fungal token is a digital image uniquely stamped on its creator. Eth is the name of a popular cryptocurrency linked to the ethereum blockchain where many NFTs live.)

This action underscores the freewheeling nature of web3, in which wild needles of money combine with the loose standards of creative ownership. One of the bizarre acts of accidental philanthropy was the outrage of activists who turned the money-laundering row over the back of someone who had slammed the 1973 verdict. Last week, Carlson Called Row “The most embarrassing court ruling handed down in the last century” and “the widely accepted joke.”

However, in his May 11, 2021 plan, Carlson Sen. Ron spoke to Johnson (R-Wis.) About Johnson’s decision not to get the corona virus vaccine. As Carlson agreed with Johnson – “Of course; This is your body, your will, we’ve heard of it for almost 50 years, “said a Fox News host. Read the text at the bottom of the screen that says “Choosing an informed choice about your own body should not be controversial.”

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Planned Parenthood in Florida Noted soon Equivalent to Chiron’s abortion rights. Those echoes also struck DC-based communications strategist Gillian Branstetter, who found some similarities to Holzer’s work. Holzer, a veteran artist, is known for combining texts and images to create political points. In the 1970s he created the “Truisms” series, which articulated messages such as “no wonder power is abused”, which he later aired on Times Square lights.

Shortly afterwards, Francester filmed a picture of Carlson, Johnson and Siren on screen asking, “Is this like a Jenny Holzer installation or something?” Added the message. And tweeted it to his tens of thousands of followers. Holzer had the idea to create an NFT from Bronster’s tweet, and the court’s draft opinion was overturned. Row Breaking this spring Decided to sell when the verdict came.

“I generally admit a lot of ignorance about NFTs, but I’m pleased to be allowed to do this work to raise some of the funds needed for abortion access,” Fran பிரான்ois told The Washington Post via Twitter DM on Monday. Branstetter is a communications strategist at ACLU, but insists he did so as a private citizen, independent of his employer. Bronster’s contract with Holzer receives 15 percent of the proceeds from the sale to the artist, all of which he says he will donate.She is a DC abortion fund.

In a phone interview, Bronster said he was a bit confused about how to translate digital commentary into a significant fundraiser.

“Don’t ask me to explain how my tweet became almost $ 15,000 for the abortion right,” he said.

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Holzer did not immediately respond to a request for comment via his studio. In the statement announcing the sale, he explained his justification for the NFT. “Although the title should be read specifically for anti-vaccine, these words can also be a pro statement,” he wrote of Siron.

Fox News did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Network Network and Carlson.

Holzer put the NFT up for auction at 12:30 pm on Friday. Tops vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Came down. She listed it as half Eth or about $ 600. Within six hours, a quartet of bidders had raised the price to about $ 13,000, and the winning bid was made at noon on Saturday.

The sale lists the sale on the NFT site as an anonymous cryptocurrency address buyer. Last November the Post discovered a Twitter account claiming to be the owner of that address; That Account, No Holzer tweeted on Friday about the auction, saying it was affiliated with a group called PleasrDAO, which calls itself “a consortium of DeFi leaders, early NFT collectors and digital artists.” (DeFi refers to decentralized funds, which are used for financial transactions on web3.)

Despite the sale, who actually owns the NFT is a complex question, legal experts say. NFT was a screen-capture of Bronster by Holzer, but the film appeared on a show owned by Carlson Fox.

“I think it’s a fair use argument, and both Fox and NFT creators can make a case for it,” he said. Darren Hedner, Florida-based intellectual property lawyer with in-depth experience in this new digital space. “But I would lean to the Fox side that this is not a fair use because the NFT is really unchanged and certainly a commercial application,” he said, citing two legal criteria that prohibit its use. .

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An interesting question raised by frequently resold NFTs is whether Carlson can theoretically defeat Fox’s order preventing the NFT from being resold. “This is a very new piece of legislation and I don’t think we’ve done much more detailing,” he said.

Meanwhile, those behind the NFT were not interested in getting caught up in those details and were more interested in spreading the message of their abortion rights.

“Physical autonomy and self-determination may be abundant, but privacy and health are pillars of the women’s reproductive rights movement,” Holzer wrote on Instagram. “The goal is community health. We must protect the rights of the individual to protect the health of the community.

Jeremy B. Meryl contributed to this report.

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