Our Digital Commons
(An abridged version of this article has been published in this series: https://www.voluntaryarts.org/Pages/Category/our-cultural-commons)
In a cultural sector which diverges massively around ownership — or simply ignores it, it is interesting that ‘The Commons’ is increasingly in the vanguard of conversation. Before you can share though you have to understand what’s yours and what’s not. (For simplicity, in this article, by ‘digital commons’ I’m referring only to artistic production made, stored, distributed or represented digitally).
The object of (digital) commoning is to be available to all equally; exploitable, but non-exclusive. Starting from a position of giving it all away is not going to lead to a common stock of anything and neither is centralising ownership. Thinking about cultural products as common resources to build upon — extensions of the knowledge based commons — sends some hard working artists into a miasmic fit of income loss induced panic. So first, a few observations about how much we do and don’t own in terms of Intellectual Property (IP) and what the opportunities are, particularly, for our digital commons.
The IP system often claims to respect the ‘rights of authors’ but in fact, little protection or monetisation is possible until the rights we have as authors have been offered up to, usually, a publisher. Twitter, Facebook, Unsplash, etc., like most content management sites all have absolute waivers when it comes to remuneration or control of original work. Basically, they assume all rights and insist that authors relinquish them. Even where Creative Commons licenses are used for sharing (eg, Flickr) commercial sales are not permitted (though links to websites are). Copyright is arguably a charter for the protection of publishers and rights owners — rather than content creators. But, as creators, we do have power — if we choose to exercise it.
The perception of copyright as a corporate or publishers tool for profit also creates a resistance in the arts among folk who create original work, which they do not view as appropriate to any reproduction, sharing or ‘trade’ worthiness. This reasonable antipathy also bolsters the ‘anti-copyright’ movement, which has found expression in alternative licenses. Jamie Gahlon, writing in this series about Howlround and the commons in theatre, mentions; “Zelda Fichandler (who) articulated what those of us working in the arts understand innately; that theatre (and other public spaces of cultural value) cannot and should not be defined by market value alone”. Whilst not being ‘defined’ by market value alone is important for art, it’s clear that culture cannot be separated from the market either. At some level, The Arts are always reliant on the market for their existence, yet they fail collectively to retain much of the value they create, resulting in centralisation — and globalisation — of resources. Clearly, there are arts for art sake and arts which create monetary value. Re-connecting the two functions is a goal for digital commoning.
“An equitable economy requires a composable grammar of the commons” — Arthur Brock.
‘CultureBanking’ in the UK, is a response to this need for a re-connection of the moral, spiritual and material imperatives for art and culture. It is also a movement to retain IP and re-connect the market with the commons. Amongst others, there are parallel initiatives bearing the same name around the world which acknowledge that the way we fund local growth in arts and culture is flawed. In the USA Culturebank aims to create “a new paradigm in financing the arts by re-defining returns on investment”. At Culturebank in Sydney the model is equally re-distributive but uses crowdfunding methods, more akin to the SOUP model, like a modern Potlatch system. Beginning from the interests of cultural producers at a peer to peer level, the development of smart contracts means that publishers who want to incorporate a commons based approach will have to alter their own t’s and c’s to respect rights used — but only if those rights are claimed, which means dealing with the ‘business’ end of common cultural production: (A rare (unique?) example of a ‘Commons Collecting Society’ is CS3 who work for pro, semi pro and ‘prosuming’ musicians).
The Road To Somewhere by David Goodheart has offered a controversial take on the potential divide between citizens of ‘anywhere’ and ‘somewhere’ and its relation to Brexit. The location and materialisation of our digital commons legacy (eg, hypothecated income flows into the public realm/material commons) represents one potential source of healing for this place / non place-specific divide as well as a tool for regional investment in creative communities and small business.
Further to this, ‘banking’ our communal digital rights to re-fund cultural activity goes beyond a cultural tourism justified funding model. Instead of ‘Culture Drives Growth’ the strap-line becomes ‘Culture Is Growth’. The aim is to build locally sourced and rooted ‘banks’ of IP in communities which can hold their own in local national and international markets, channelling investment and income back to a real place with real benefits. Currently there are few media or market platforms performing this function. Importantly, it’s not disruptive: By taking control of the assets you create, you’re just saying: “We’re here — these are our terms, take them or leave them”. Inspired by Beeban Kidrons 5Rights Framework, community collective rights management also empowers young people to begin from a position of ownership and responsibility for their own digital assets: You have to think before you speak, act write etc!
By developing processes and creating easily adoptable solutions for artists and arts organisations to take a commons based approach to their IP, the broad aim is to regenerate commons based access to markets and to grow capital for future investment. There is also a potential to link the civic roles of arts organisations to the monetisation of their digital assets, which means more direct financing of ‘soft’ outcomes and civic roles as detailed in the Gulbenkian report on the subject (see link).
What new technology allied to commercial Digital Commons licensing offers to this equation is the possibility of ‘holding common ground’; creating and maintaining a more equitable relationship with corporate rights-holders and managers in a market for digital rights exchange. Vaughn McKenzie, in Announcing The Meta Token, offers one example of many innovations through which this is becoming possible.
Daniel Harris of Kendraio who is a CultureBanking collaborator and works on designing technology for enhanced user control over digital assets points out:
“Technologies are successful because they feed people”. That’s a good measure of value!
In making changes, there is undoubtedly an ecosystem to protect and Robert Livingstone was right to suggest that in ‘The Cultural Sector’ there is no real separation of voluntary, amateur, public and professional. He suggests that upsetting one may upset the whole ecology and I agree. But just because we shouldn’t upset something doesn’t mean it is working well. The ecology is already upset in a few ways. For example, the Creative Industries Federation (CIF) recently quoted a value on the UK cultural sector of £92 Billion (the amount by which Facebook has grown in a year). If we compare this to the Arts Council’s planned annual budget for 2018–22 of £622 million, an imagined hypothecated tax relationship (that is, if one was linked to funding the other) would show that the private arts and cultural sector is re-financing its public sector counterpart at a rate of little more than half a percent! (excluding gifts, trusts and endowments). This leaves over 18% of that £92 billion to find to match the contribution expected of all of UK companies in tax (19%). Something in the region of £17 billion annually then, is ‘missing’. Arguably, this is the current size of an annually accruing debt of the cultural ‘sector’ to it’s cultural ‘commons’. By ‘commons’ in this sense, I refer to the common access required to texts, tools, knowledge and experience needed to produce that value (cultural education, training and infrastructure has costs).
“Intellectual property is an important legal and cultural issue. Society as a whole has complex issues to face here”
Tim Berners-Lee
Creative Commons, CopyLeft, General Public Licenses, CopyFarLeft, Human Commons Licenses and user generated ‘culturebanked®’ commercial peer production licenses all represent attempts to revise the licensing of IP assets in order to create some kind of commons of digital ownership. What we need is enabling technology in order to put it to use. It’s worth considering the two following initiatives — both concerned with intellectual property.
Holo’s website states:
“Each of us wants to have control over how and with whom we interact. In order to evolve and thrive our communities must support everyone’s uniqueness. Yet, today, our online relationships are dominated by centralized corporate structures.”
- whilst -
The Alliance For Creativity, a newly created publishers network, which includes BBC Worldwide, claims to also represent content creators, affirming that:
“(ACE will) ..unite today’s content creators in the common mission of helping consumers maximise their online experience and reducing the illicit and illegal acts of online piracy that harm the thriving digital ecosystem.”
Vast amounts of the worlds wealth now rely on the passive consumption of online ‘social’ ‘tools’ and nearly all websites ‘claim’ rights to everything they represent as their own. Why? Of course there are issues about protection, ring fencing assets etc, but this blanket ‘protection’ system has hardly succeeded in helping control of free online distribution of, for example, pornography. Maybe here is a common incentive to distinguish those things we need hidden behind paywalls and those we don’t… It’s not as if this worldwide ‘protectorate’ has had great success in helping control the wide dissemination of content which we might prefer to control. By democratising our digital commons, we may find a better route.
“Intellectual property is an important legal and cultural issue. Society as a whole has complex issues to face here”
TimBL, WWWeb Inventor
The handling of IP by the BBC illustrates the extent to which there is, as yet, any substantial move towards supporting cultural commons for creators. Consider, for example, ‘The Voice’, which has broadly followed precisely the same format as purely commercial channels and sold out it’s right to ITV in 2015. A good indication of a ‘commons led approach’ is whether or not ‘contestants’ create, own and disseminate their own intellectual property. Universally in these shows, they do not. The IP remains with the show — not the acts — despite the ‘public broadcasting’ remit.
Later, profits and residual incomes will come from licensing, syndication and royalties of songs which, already in existence, must be shown as a production cost rather than any kind of income potential for the ‘creatives’ on show. We are failing to ‘back creative talent’, quite monumentally, despite claims to the contrary. The IP of the show is all. In a more commons led approach to popular talent shows, new IP could be showcased, peer production licenses attached and using technology, future income flows disseminated more fairly.
In reality, brands are sold on to be ‘monetised’ ad infinitum: Talpa Holding now own the rights and brand and protect it internationally. Since 2010, 65 international adaptations have been made and no IP has been produced or paid for beyond reproduction rights ( presumably to other Talpa Holding assets..?). Where are our ‘contestants’?
In this cheating of creative talent, ‘value’, in the form of new IP assets, is rarely created beyond the programme format — let alone retained by those who do the work! The IP system is working entirely in favour of publishers and not creators. A commons led challenge to the BBC ( and other cultural producers) is to commission programmes which add a peer production license facilitating use and re-use openly and creating a genuinely diverse cultural economy of new, accessible work — and empowering artists creatively and materially. Public service broadcasting might then begin to serve the broadcasting public — rather than just ‘consumers’.
By way of balance, BBC Introducing offer great opportunities to new music and include a PRS number for remuneration if played on air. There is an opt-in to allow BBC Worldwide to make your music available commercially. As a new venture, it will be interesting to compare this to a commons based approach: Will the licensing terms allow for peer production licences? Will BBC Worldwide help to halt the shrinkage of local journalism with similar ‘sharing’ methods? etc.
Empowering creative communities to control their assets and use the income generated directly in the public interest is the creative commons which lots of people are looking for. What the commons has too little of are payment gateways and the interoperability to enable this two way relationship between financing civic roles and voluntary action (production) to happen.
By hypothecating the financing of the public realm to creative economic outputs, using smart contracts and micropayments at a person to person level, there is a real chance to empower people from the ground up. If civic roles are available to everyone and can be micro-funded through artistic production, then all have access to the arts and civic society.
At Olympia’s Brand Licensing Fair last year, a stand simply titled: ‘Spain’ was busy promoting its cultural wares. There’s no reason any village, town or city in the UK couldn’t perform the same function — for private gain and for civic benefit. The beauty of digital though, is that this can be done with just a timestamp, a hash-code and a license…
As well as encouraging ownership of our own IP, co-production and peer to peer networks, such ‘Cultural Democracy’ offers potential for real protection, equality of opportunity and freedom in the one place it’s most needed; our minds!
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Liam Murphy is a Civic Entrepreneur and Writer who has worked as a gardener, picture framer, artist, book seller — and run an art gallery in Great Yarmouth! He’s currently transferring his LTD company into a shared art and framing workshop using common stock and facilities and writing a book about cultural industries. He’s also involved in various local and national cultural initiatives, including What Next? and the Gulbenkian Enquiry Into The Civic Role Of Arts Organisations.
CultureBanking provides ‘plug-in’ help for user-led Collective Rights Management to creative communities.
To learn more about or get involved with the project go to the CultureBanking Meetup group.
