The Declaration and the Traditional Industry - How Creative Artists want to do business
July 11, 2007
Some people will be concerned when they read the Creative Artists’ Declaration of Creative Independence that we are ignoring the fact that there are good companies, doing good business and cutting ourselves off from the lucrative market that the traditional industry model appears to have a firm hold on.
Well, that would be an incorrect assumption on their part. We do want to do business, but on our terms and in a fashion that is based on unbreakable trust. That means doing honest business with Creative Artists, because Creative Artists do honest business, and even exceptionally generous business.
Quite often they are disenfranchised, and taken advantage of by the industry that profits from their creativity, and which then refuses to adjust its contracts to make a fair deal. When it comes to matters of intellectual property and the advantages to be gained through understanding the value inherent in intellectual property rights, about which we will soon be releasing an entire series of articles that will help you come to grips with them in a very practical way that will increase your bargaining power and strengthen your negotiating position.
The traditional industry has typically taken advantage of the ignorance creative individuals have about the rights they have when they have created an original work of intellectual property. There are aspects of the intellectual property business that are often kept from view, and that many only find out about later, and by then it is too late; careers are off the rails, stalled, stopped and even ruined with disastrous consequences for those who trusted those who offered them the world, while ensuring that by exploiting ignorance they lined their pockets and emptied those of the person or persons that created the work.
The history of the art & entertainment industry is full of such cases, and it does not matter which part of the industry you look at, there you will find this sort of chicanery, discrimination, oppression and suppression where a deal is not the deal you thought it was when you signed it. It’s quite frankly, disgusting and loathsome stuff for it’s the rape of trust.
So when you take on board the Declaration and declare it yours, you are not disenfranchising yourself or the traditional industry of mutual benefit, in fact you’re ensuring that the benefit will be mutual in the fullest and most complete sense of the word. Let’s put an end to this whole “starving artist” and “rip off” legacy, once and for all. You are declaring when you take on board that Declaration that you will not go blindly into a deal, disenfranchise yourself through your own ignorance of the nature of such deals, but will go in knowing how it works, what the options are and mean, and the consequences of each of those decisions.
As the Free Articulator’s Intellectual Property series gets underway, we will give you examples of those who did do this and what they have achieved as a result. You will recognize these names and you will learn why knowing your business–the business of art & entertainment–is important to having career control and creative freedom.
Creative Artists want others to share and enjoy the benefits that come from the successful, ethical and moral publication and distribution of their work to the intended public. The whole point of creating original works is to share them, but not with the idea of taking a loss or a hit that destroys your faith in humanity, and discourages further creativity.
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