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.