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ecrivainsolitaire · 6 months

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Open Art Guild – Testing the boundaries of collective IP ownership

Experimental release: Dr. T’chem’s Office (authorised for personal and commercial use)

I’ll try to keep this brief (you can read the full thesis statement here) but as we all know, intellectual property law is broken. It’s being exploited from every side and art workers are more vulnerable than ever to automation, copyright theft and myriad other unforeseeable forms of theft from the proletariat. We as a collective need to come together and work towards the creation of a better future.

The Open Art Guild is my proposal for the first of many steps towards a far away but necessary goal: the eradication of intellectual property as it pertains to the arts. It’s based on the open source standard and the creative commons, and the goal is for us to start creating a future where we stop thinking of artworks as private property to hoard, and start sharing the responsibilities and the benefits of their creation with the collective. And as I am proposing the idea, I should give the first step.

Which is why I am announcing the release of my short story series, Dr. T’chem’s Office, into the Open Art Guild license. This is an episodic HFY comedy series about the office hours of a sleazy yet well intentioned xenoanthropologist in charge of human integration into the crew of a spaceship, who happens to find them fascinating. You can read the first few instalments here:

The basics of the license go as follows: I’m giving any artist permission to use the assets of my artwork (in this case, settings, characters, plot lines and other unique concepts) both for personal use and for commercial use, provided they commit to crediting the original artist, giving away 30% of any profit back to the hands of the collective in the breakdown the guidelines specify, and giving the same license to any works they create derivative from this series. Any artist can join the Guild by remixing existing artworks in its database or voluntarily submitting their own works. For the time being this prototype model will have to rely on the honour system, but I have outlined the basic guidelines for a platform dedicated to facilitating the Guild’s business and income redistribution.

The purpose of this experiment is to test whether this system is financially viable, what modifications it needs, and how to enforce it. It’s also a way to study what the community thinks of this model. To summarise the implications, here are the pros and cons as I see them.

Pros:

- All fan art, spin-offs, third-party merchandise and other forms of adaptation become automatically authorised and monetisable, provided both the original artist and the remixer are active members of the Guild.

- All adaptations are automatically non-exclusive and must give away the same rights as the original, diminishing the incentive for massive corporations to try and scam an artist out of their intellectual property.

- It effectively unionises freelance artists of all fields to balance out negotiations with non Guild entities.

- It encourages artists to continue their output in order to reap the benefits of the Guild, by using the redistribution system as an incentive, instead of the current status quo where artists are actively fighting market forces all by themselves in order to make enough time and resources to work on their craft.

- It provides a safety net where everyone is invested in the continuous welfare of everyone else, giving a sense of class solidarity and facilitating donations and shared resources.

- It motivates artists to invest in each other, as the growth of one means the growth of the whole Guild.

- Eventually, if the project succeeds and the proposed platform comes to exist, it would effectively create a universal basic income for all Guild members, as well as a self sustained legal fund to protect their assets from IP theft by non Guild entities.

- It will give you complete control over whether your art can be used for AI dataset training, on an opt-in, post-by-post basis, so you don’t have to wonder who might be stealing it. If the platform is created, all works whose creators have not authorised to be used for this will have data scrambling features to make sure thieves can’t use them.

Cons:

- It will require all Guild members to permanently renounce to 30% of their profit, in order to build up the funds and distribution system.

- It will have to be built entirely on trust of the collective, at least until a platform can be established, which may take weeks or may take decades depending on lots of unpredictable factors.

- Leaving the Guild will require all artworks shared with the collective to become Creative Commons; once you renounce your right to monopoly of your IP, it’s permanent, no way to go back. This is necessary in order to prevent asset flippers and other forms of IP scabs to join the Guild, extract other people’s assets and then scram.

- Due to banking regulations entirely out of our hands, some artists will have participating in the redistribution. If the platform ever becomes a reality, one of its main goals will be to remedy this immediately.

This proposal requires a high cost, but it provides an invaluable reward. If the system works, it will empower all artists to profit from their work and protect it as a collective. If it doesn’t, all that will have happened is that you will have created a lot of Creative Commons art, which financially isn’t ideal, but artistically is extremely commendable. Even in the worst case scenario, corporations will not be able to hold your art hostage with exclusivity deals. To me, the benefits vastly outweigh the costs, but I do want to emphasise: there will be costs. This is an effort to subvert the entire way art has been monetised since the 1700s. It will require a lot of work, a lot of people, and a lot of time, to make it work. But I believe it can work. If you believe it too, you are welcome to join the Open Art Guild.

Please do read the guidelines for the Guild and the guidelines for the platform before you start creating, and give me whatever feedback you have. If it’s good, if it’s lacking, if I’m overstepping legal boundaries, if you can find loopholes, anything. I tried to make it airtight but I’m not a legal expert. This is not my project, it is a project for the proletariat. Everyone should have a say on what they’re signing on for. And regardless of what you think, share it with all artists you can. This will only work if as many people as possible participate.

Doctor T’chem’s Office’s license

This work has been released under the Open Art Guild license, and has been approved for reuse and adaptation under the following conditions:

For personal, educational and archival use, provided any derivative works also fall under a publicly open license, to all Guild members and non members.

For commercial use, provided redistribution guidelines of the Guild be followed, to all active Guild members.

For commercial use to non Guild members, provided any derivative works also fall under a publicly open license, with the explicit approval of the artist and proper redistribution of profit following the guidelines of the Guild.

For non commercial dataset training of open source generative art technologies, provided the explicit consent of the artist, proper credit and redistribution of profit in its entirety to the Guild.

Shall this work be appropriated by non Guild members without proper authorisation, credit and redistribution of profit, the non Guild entity waives their right to intellectual property over any derivative works, copyrights, trademarks or patents of any sort and cedes it to the Creative Commons, under the 4.0 license, irrevocably and unconditionally, in perpetuity, throughout time and space in the known multiverse. The Guild reserves the right to withhold trade relations with any known infractors for the duration its members deem appropriate, including the reversal of any currently standing contracts and agreements.

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ecrivainsolitaire · 6 months

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The Open Art Guild Project: a proposal to empower collectively owned art

Over the last few decades we have seen the degradation of copyright, the blatant manipulation of intellectual property law in order to monopolise wealth and the exploitation of artists in favour of an economy of artistic landlordship: massive corporations holding the prole artist hostage to their increasingly unoriginal library of content produced not to encourage creative enlightenment, but to hold on to properties that ought to be already in the public domain. The capitalist owns the IP, so the capitalist keeps getting richer, while the artist is more and more oppressed, overworked, underpaid, scammed out of their rightful intellectual property, deplatformed, and automated away whenever possible. This is unsustainable, and the arrival of new technologies for digital art automation has overflowed that unsustainability to its breaking point. We cannot continue down this path.

The Open Art Guild is my proposal to remedy this. This proposal consists of two main parts: a copyright standard, designed for the fair distribution of income and the collective ownership of intellectual property; and a distribution platform, planned to empower artists big and small to profit from said intellectual property without being under the thumb of corporations or fighting one another under senseless infighting caused by bourgeois class warfare. The artist should not fight the artist over ownership of rights. The big artist should not see the small artist as a threat, nor should the small artist see the big artist as an obstacle to their own growth. Through mutual empowerment, both may prosper.

The Open Art Guild License

The Open Art Guild License is built upon the current Creative Commons 4.0 License. This license is irrevocable until the work qualifies for public domain according to all relevant legislations, provided that the artist remains a member of the Guild. In order to participate in the Guild, an artist shall follow the following precepts:

The artist shall only publish works under the OAG License that have licenses available to the public. This means public domain, open source, Creative Commons and works created by other members of the Guild. Works derived from privately owned media, such as fanart of intellectual properties not part of the Guild, shall be excluded from the Guild. If the artist did not have permission to use it before, or if the artist only has individual permission, the work will not qualify for Guild submission.

All works created under the OAG License shall be free to adapt, remix, or reuse for other projects, even commercially, provided that the artist doing so is also an active member of the Guild, that the projects derived from it are also under the OAG License, and that the artist follows through with their dues and obligations.

Whenever the format permits, the artist shall provide the assets used for the works in their raw form in a modular fashion, including colour palettes, sound assets, video footage, code, screenplays, subtitles, and any other elements used in the creation of their work, in order to facilitate their reuse and redistribution for the benefit of all other artists.

The artist waives their right to 30% of the total profit generated by works submitted to the guild, regardless of where it is published. This revenue shall be redistributed in the following manner:

10% shall be designated towards the maintenance of the Open Art Guild platform. In absence of a platform that follows the requirements to belong to the Guild, this percentage shall be donated towards a nonprofit organisation of their own choosing dedicated to the protection and distribution of art in any of its forms. Some examples may include Archive.org, Archive Of Our Own, Wikimedia, or your local art museum or community center. Proof of donation shall be made publicly available. The artist shall empower the Guild, as the Guild has empowered the artist.

10% shall be designated towards the Open Art Guild legal fund. In the absence of a fund dedicated to the protection of the OAG, this percentage shall be donated towards a nonprofit organisation dedicated to the protection of the legal rights of artists in any of their forms. Some examples may include Creative Commons, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Industrial Workers of the World, or another artist union like the WGA. Proof of donation shall be made publicly available. The artist shall protect the Guild, as the Guild shall protect the artist.

10% shall be designated towards the Open Art Guild creator fund. In the absence of a fund dedicated to redistribute the profits of the OAG, this percentage shall be donated to other members of the Guild, prioritising small creators. Alternatively, it may be directed towards the recruitment of new members to the Guild via donation and an invite. Proof of donation shall not be required, but the receiving artist(s) is(are) encouraged to declare in their own platform that the donation was received. The artist shall give to the Guild, as the Guild has given to the artist.

The artist shall continue to create Guild submissions for the duration of their membership, with a minimum of one submission per month in order to guarantee their continued support. The artist shall live off of labour, not property.

In return for these duties, the artist shall receive:

Permission to adapt, remix, or reuse any of the works in the Guild’s archive for their own derivative works, fan fiction, remixes, collages, or any sort of transformative application, provided dues and obligations are in order.

Protection of their intellectual property as part of the collective works of the Guild by the legal fund designated and sustained by all paying members, to prevent non Guild members from trying to exploit their works unauthorised.

If an artist strikes a deal for non-Guild adaptation, the proportional dues shall also be paid to the Guild fund and members by the non-Guild institution in charge. Said deal shall not be allowed an exclusivity clause, and all works derived from a Guild work shall follow through with their dues in perpetuity. If the non-Guild entity chooses to terminate the business relationship, all intellectual property rights over the adaptation shall irrevocably be granted to the Guild as compensation, guaranteeing the distribution to the creators and the legal fund, as well as the follow-through with whatever payment terms the Guild artist has agreed to.

No Guild artist shall prosecute another Guild artist for use of works under the OAG License, provided that the derivative work also follows the OAG License terms. If these terms are violated, amicable resolution shall be sought by both parties. If litigation becomes inevitable and compensation is required, said compensation will also require the 30% dues to fund the Guild and its members, no matter which way it sides. In no case shall an artist, Guild or non-Guild, be left without recourse.

If an artist becomes unable or unwilling to continue to pay their dues, the artist shall be given an option to suspend or cancel their membership. If a membership is suspended, the artist will be excluded from the creator fund until their dues are renewed. No compensation shall be required of the artist for the suspension period, and all protections other than the creator fund shall still apply. If a membership is cancelled, all works published by the artist under the OAG License shall automatically be granted a Creative Commons 4.0 License instead, in order to protect Guild members from litigation by non-Guild members.

Membership that has been cancelled shall be renewable at any time, provided that the former Guild artist has not engaged in predatory litigation against Guild member or the Guild itself. The Guild shall determine what constitutes predatory litigation on a case-by-case basis. Licenses that were lost during cancellation shall not be given back, as CC4.0 is irrevocable, but new works shall still qualify for OAG Licenses.

These protections shall not be conditional to the artist’s moral values or the content of the works created. All works that do not break the laws applicable to the jurisdiction from which they were submitted shall be treated with the same respect and granted the same rights and obligations, in perpetuity and throughout time and space within the known multiverse. The Guild shall not exist to police art, but to promote it.

Open Art Guild License Template

All submissions of Guild works and projects shall include the following legend, both in English and in the publication language when applicable. Point 4 may be omitted if the artist chooses not to submit the work for dataset training.

This work was created and published under the Open Art Guild license, and has been approved for reuse and adaptation under the following conditions:

For personal, educational and archival use, provided any derivative works also fall under a publicly open license, to all Guild members and non members.

For commercial use, provided redistribution guidelines of the Guild be followed, to all active Guild members.

For non commercial dataset training of open source generative art technologies, provided the explicit consent of the artist, proper credit and redistribution of profit in its entirety to the Guild.

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