It Is Time For An Artists’ Bill Of Rights
And something similar for all of us culture consumers too!
Our values are off, or rather our priorities and consequent actions are, so it feels like our values are off. We know we love and want one thing— even feel it deep down in our bones — but we keep doing something that furthers the complete opposite of our passion and desire.
Let’s look at how this whole experiment in society is currently built. Sure, I like getting paid well and I want all people to have the truly equal opportunity to get paid really, really well. Profit and the pursuit of wealth motivates a lot of people. But it is not the only thing that drives us. And it shouldn’t be the dominant thing that we organize society around. On the scale of things, I am firmly on the “people first” side of the scale.
Just in case you didn’t grasp where I am coming from, that’s that or me at least. On top of it, I find us people f’n amazing. Sure virtually everyone is crazy – in that we generally choose to ignore reality – but I think most of us would be pretty damn wonderful folks if we weren’t always getting distracted and forgetting what really matters most. Well, I mean we would be wonderful if we could only think and act a little more clearly — you know: based on reality.
At the core, our inherent goodness and our misplaced priorities is why I subscribe to a practice of committed observation, collection, and definition – I think such a practice keeps us closer to a reality and action based on it. If we all tried to build one and enact upon it, I think we could build something better together – and, yes, this time actually built on reality. How cool would that be?! Well, at least we can dream…
On My Perfect Planet we would build everything around the priority of “people first”. We would work to support the deep respect of people and our differences. Our differences would be a cause for celebration. It is wonderful we don’t agree – as long as it doesn’t hurt or limit others.
And it is that celebration and appreciation of differences that would lead us to protect, incentivize, and further celebrate artists – because they are what bests help us to see why we are all so remarkable. It is the artist who drives us to our best selves and thus ultimately to the best version of society. They are a precious global resource, and it is another global crisis that we are diminishing their potential. Fortunately though, it is not too late. We just have to make sure we don’t continue to neglect them like we have neglected our planet’s health. Yeah, there’s that, isn’t there? Frankly, if we actually prioritized people, we’d prioritize the health of the planet first (over people), and certainly about our immediate gratification.
If we want to structure our world or our individual actions around the prioritization of people, we’d be wise to build both an Artists’ Bill Of Rights and a Cultural Human Rights Bill. Creators and consumers both need to be protected. The Profit First World that we have all been kidnapped into needs direction. If we can agree upon what we should have built this world around, we will have a north star to guide us to the next world we want to build. Let’s see if we can sketch that map. And as always, please let me know what I may have missed or possibly gotten wrong.
Bill Of Cultural Human Rights
All rights must be equal rights for everyone, and these include, but are not limited to:
The right of everyone to access culture equally.
The right & support to express ourselves creatively.
All people are entitled to the control of & compensation for their creative work.
Freedom from monopolistic consolidation that limits choice in creation a/o consumption.
The right to share in all success our work and behavior generates; it should be illegal to transfer or surrender your share in success prior to receipt -- you can do whatever you want with it once you've received it, but it should first come to you.
Right of total access to all data and information generated by your work and behavior (creative or not).
The right for all work associated with your work to be free from usury fees and markups. Other than some actors, no one should receive more than the director, ever, be it on a fiction or non-fiction.
The right to receive true and accurate accountings of cost and income statements associated with your work.
All people are entitled to control & compensation for the use of their likeness & information.
Rights reversions to the artist of any transferred but un-utilized right to the work after 3 years.
Any all rights acquisition must pay for archival preservation.
The ownership rights to any creative work can never be granted in perpetuity; all rights revert to artist after 7 years.
All artists retain the right to rent and sell their work directly, including but limited to virtually, in accordance to the terms of existing licensing agreements.
Artists have the right to veto and block the use of their work for the promotion and/or profit of causes, values, and products provided in doing so they do not restrict others’ human rights.
Non-economic benefits of what would positively influence a “happiness index” must be accounted for in any valuation of work.
Requirement of attribution of derivative and influenced work, particularly in creation of Large Language Models and Generative AI builds.
Once Cultural Human Rights (CHR) are established, much can be built upon them. We can use them to determine the how and the why for many builds. We can organize other aspects of our ecosystems around them. We can start to see the necessary Structural Concepts for An Artist-focused Indie Ecosystem. I look forward to exploring this further with you in the weeks ahead.
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.
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.