artistic freedom vouchers
i stumbled into an interesting paper over at the center for economic and policy research by dean baker (a co-director of the center), titled the artistic freedom voucher: internet age alternative to copyrights.
it’s a relatively short paper, so i encourage you to read it.
the basic idea is to create a sort of single-payer system for the arts - allocate money by voucher, so the population makes the ‘artistic call,’ but fund the system through a refundable tax credit and require participants in the system to release their material to the public domain earlier than the standard copyright regime. as you might imagine, i have some first-impressions….
one of my biggest concerns is that any system that demands artists relinquish their copyrights, while also allowing other organizations to retain copyrights under the “existing system.” invites a sort of general abuse through the system. yes, you got paid your $5000 for that great childrens’ storybook, and now that you’ve been paid, you give up all rights to the work, and disney is free to make the movie, lock up their rights, essentially forever.
the brothers grimm aren’t around to cringe at the “disneyfied” versions of the stories they pulled together from the common culture so many years ago, but i imagine many living artists would be quite disturbed by such things. this problem with the afv proposal is fairly easily addressed by the good people over at creative commons.
baker also states “it is also worth noting that much of this saving will take the form of lower advertising costs” - this savings, of course, is in the form of corporations appropriating artistic works from the vastly expanded public domain without any regard for the wishes of the creators. of course, the value of using existing art in advertising is that there’s a sort of implied endorsement that comes with the package.
baker’s assertion that “creative workers are only entitled to be paid once for their work, not twice” misses a large dose of reality. aging rock stars are funding their old-age healthcare needs with “second payments” from tv commercials -
* led zeppelin, rock ‘n’ roll for cadillac
* the who, tommy (the overture, anyway) for clarinex
* the cure, pictures of you for hp
* squeeze, tempted for gap and burger king
* queen, you’re my best friend for yahoo
* the who, happy jack for hummer
* gary numan, cars for oldsmobile
* george clinton, atomic dog for mcdonald’s
* cyndi lauper, true colors for kodak
* alphaville, forever young for saturn
* baltimora, tarzan boy for listerine (nothing like a one-hit wonder 
)
* van halen, right now for pepsi
* the cult, she sells sanctuary for nissan
* abba, dancing queen for visa
* ozzy osbourne, crazy train for mitsubishi
* the rolling stones, start me up for microsoft’s windows 95 launch
* styx, mr. roboto for volkswagen
* iggy pop lust for life for royal caribbean cruises
(just digging through my culturally-soaked brain - but that’s enough to make the point. drop into adtunes for more).
there’s also the issue of the cost to manage this system. for some clues, we can look at existing “performance rights” organizations. i guess you can probably figure 10% to 15% off the top.
finally, politics. we don’t have a very solid track record of political support for the arts in this country (witness the perpetual nea-funding debates), so could anything this bold actually happen? the artistic associations (riaa, mpaa, etc) will want to weigh in on the legislation that creates such a system, and i would bet that it doesn’t come through in “pure” form.
update (2003.11.30): mighty fast pig has thoughts.
We already have a voucher system. It’s called Ticketmaster, and look how well it’s worked so far.
IMHO, the whole point of government-sponsored art is to help ensure that art does NOT wind up dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. Granted, this sets us up for all sorts of arguments about what art is worthy of government grants, but I know for sure I don’t want it to be decided democratically.
Comment by pete — November 19, 2003 @ 12:28 am
i’d agree with that. one of the important functions of government is to do the things that aren’t popular.
Comment by roj — November 20, 2003 @ 4:02 am
A quick note — any work produced by a person recieving artistic freedom voucher funding is not subject to copyright — therefore no corporation could secure the copyright to the work.
thanks for the posting.
Dean Baker
Comment by Dean Baker — August 11, 2004 @ 6:14 am
thanks for dropping by… i always welcome first-person thoughts on material here, and it’s always nice to see people expand on things - particularly their own things.
perhaps i should re-state my issue with the copyright issue in this model: disney has built its empire on “retelling” stories that aren’t subject to copyright. they do it very well, and very profitably. unless there’s some difference between “not subject to copyright” from your proposal and “public domain,” then disney (and others) can certainly create derivative works and secure copyrights on those works.
to expand a bit on my previous example, once the author of a children’s book that is “not subject to copyright” under this system gets paid whatever the system allocates, then disney is, presumably, free to come along and create a derivative work (say, for example, a film), based on the “not copyright protected” book, and reap the full benefits of the copyright system, for the full term of copyright on the film. the author can’t demand anything of disney, because they’ve been paid their stipend, and disney is free to employ the full resources of the mouse empire to produce, promote and profit from the work, with no obligation to the original author.
so, the author got paid and that’s the end of their story. disney found a great idea that was “free for the taking” in this new cultural bazaar, and can lock it up for a century. sure, someone else can come along and create other derivative works and claim they’re based on the original book, so there’s more freedom to create in this model, but the original author is locked out of all of them.
i see that as a fatal flaw in the proposal, but it’s not insurmountable - as in the original post, i refer to the creative commons licenses.
demanding that artists with limited resources give up all their rights so they can make enough money to eat while corporations (with vast resources) play on the same cultural field and with the added benefits of copyright protection just won’t work. as a rational content-creator, i’m not prepared to take off all my copyright “pads” and jump into the game with “fully-padded” competitors. that would be silly. it just further tilts the balance of power away from artist/creators and toward distributor/licensors.
you’re essentially asking artists to give up what few protections they have in exchange for dinner, and you’re asking tax payers to support that.
Comment by roj — August 11, 2004 @ 6:36 am