Ideas and their value - Support the Tuneback
July 14, 2007
I think there is such a thing as unconscionable commercial exploitation. It comes about when those who have money and power already act to take away from others the opportunity to exploit their own creations without so much as a “by your leave”.
When I heard about what had happened to the concept of the tuneback that was created and invented by my creative collaborator, friend, and colleague Joel Falconer, well I was immediately aware of the immorality of those that decided to capitalize without so much as a courteous well-mannered contact to the creator of the first tunebacks. This is what passes for “good business” today. And as the world has come to know it’s also what largely passes for the style of business a lot of American companies carry out today. Scandal, corruption, cheating, stealing, lying it’s the American Way today. An honorable person will tell you straight what is what, and when you look at it, they will be right. Not just right in a technical sense, but right in a moral sense.
The Free Articulator has come into existence in part to be a voice for creative morality in the new era of the 21st Century. We have an established ethic and set of principles that we work with all the time, and part of that includes embracing and fighting for what is right. We help Creative Artists to achieve their goals, so we embrace, foster and support Creative Artists whenever and wherever their rights as Creative Individuals are trampled upon by others. We consider such acts to be immoral and not part of the world we want to be living in. We do not subscribe to the usual sort of moral character that describes so much of what we see, hear and read about today.
The tuneback was intended to be a common word, and it is a common word that describes a particular kind of song as defined by Joel Falconer and you can read more about it at the Tuneback network’s new headquarters. I urge you to support the movement to make the tuneback a word of common usage by promoting it, by writing about it, by ensuring that it becomes a generic term as this will destroy its value as a trademark, and make it a word of common usage - thus thwarting any attempt by unscrupulous “business” people to exploit that which they are incapable of creating. Too long has the corporate world been raping the work and lives of Creative Artists, no more. It stops now. This sort of exploitation is no longer acceptable in our industry. The right thing to do when realizing the potential of the tuneback was to contact its creator and progenitor and make an offer to support it, not attempt to speculate on it and corner it for one’s own profit. An honorable entity would have done the right thing. That they elected not to do this is a clear demonstration of their character and moral fiber, of their lack of consideration for civilized principle and honest business.
The tuneback should be a word of common usage so we ask you to help us by using it in common speech, in written works or blogs. If you’re a songwriter, write some tunebacks and publish them on your site. Make this concept something you can do and use any time you like forever, and prevent unscrupulous and immoral speculation from occurring. We can do things to undermine excessive rapacious corporate appetites that want to own and control everything, even and most especially, our ideas. This is not, by the way, a matter of us wanting to control our ideas or not share them, we do want to share in them under the right kind of fair and equitable terms that do not seek to disenfranchise us, it’s a matter of respecting creativity as a matter of principle.
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