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Holly Payberg-Torroija's avatar

As usual, I so love where you're headed with all of this. The challenge I see is that in order to get us to a place where an Artists' Bill of Rights would be taken seriously, there needs to be a shift in understanding of what artists even do and that they are, in fact, deeply needed. I've often found it ironic that those in society most likely to rail against and make policies against those in society that they label lazy and "entitled", are often the same people who feel completely entitled to help themselves to all the entertainment and art they can gorge on, without feeling an ounce of need for actually supporting the artists who created it. They seem to think, even though we all live in a capitalist society, that artists should just be satisfied with the act of creating, and then should just go away. Never have a complaint. Never use their voice. They don't seem to even be aware of the incredible risks and sacrifices made, the fears and challenges artists face in order to create the art they enjoy. As if it all just happens by magic. I feel like we might need a documentary that explores what this world would be without art, music, comedy, movies and then from there explore the importance of artists who give their lives to such expression and what their rights should be.

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Christopher Schiller's avatar

A lot of what you envision here is contained in the concept recognized by many countries other than the US as Droit Morale, or Moral Rights. The US industries and government has strongly fought against these copyright related rights, even excluding them in multilateral treaties, or giving them such short thrift that they aren't available to US artists. The term has become so toxic that I have come up with another reference for them that is descriptive of what they are to the artist: Reputational Rights.

Being able to control those aspects of creative works that reflect on the creator's reputation are strongly recognized in many other countries. In the US, the courts have relegated them only available as negotiated contractual terms. We do have a few of them ingrained in our contracts, e.g. the credits clauses for the entertainment industry requires recognition for participation of the crew and cast in measure to their contribution to the end work. There are even provisions of removal or credits for works that would reflect badly on the reputation of the participant because of things outside their control, (see the whole, "Alan Smithee" rabbit hole, if you're curious.)

But getting these reputational rights in a regimented way, accessible to all, is a very uphill target, a fight that's been going on for quite some time with very little progress. And even achieving that goal would remove some aspects of our industry that we currently rely heavily on. For example, there is a very strong argument that the reason many countries in Europe don't see many sequels to films is directly tied to the number of rights holders that would have to align in agreement in order to make one. Both copyright and moral rights holders would all have to agree. That can be a lot of cats to herd. Therefore, budgets for those countries' films are invariably lower without the possibility of derivative works adding to the potential till.

As for your other points, right now, there is a relatively new Reversion of Rights Granted term as part of copyright law. But it's not seven years. It's 35. So, perpetuity isn't as long as it used to be. But there's a burdensome formality to follow in order to execute those reversion rights.

And your number 17 is problematic in that it flies directly in the face of already standing precedential court cases about "scraping" for large data bases that would have to be overturned, an unlikely scenario not least of which because of the untenable burden it would impose on all research of the kind. There's not an easy fix for what you seek.

So some of the things you seek are doable, though difficult, and come with limitations and impositions that might be distasteful to many. And it may take a long hall to get to where they're offered ubiquitously. But, as I'm always want to say, "Everything's negotiable." We can start with every contract we negotiate and ask for these things that are important, one contract at a time, one project at a time. If we do it enough, the odd clauses turn into industry standard practice. And we change things little by little and get to a better place in the end.

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