Democratize Art

Dear lawmakers,

As the world has gone digital, the livelihoods of artists and creators are deeply impacted by technology itself and the policies governing it. We artists and creators ask that you proceed carefully as you consider the policies governing emerging technologies, including open source, peer to peer, web3, and blockchain related projects, and consult with creators directly to center the needs of working artists. Our ability to thrive requires democratizing technologies that support our organizing and digital sovereignty efforts.

Unfortunately, new laws are threatening individual creators, arts organizations, and digital community members—such as the US expansion of 6050i to digital assets in the 2021 Infrastructure Bill that creates an ill-defined felony that could carry a sentence of up to five years in prison for failing to report sometimes impossible-to-get sensitive personal information to the IRS within 15 days. Measures that affect our privacy and livelihoods should be carefully considered and studied before they are brought to a vote. Artists should not have to conduct surveillance on behalf of the government. Ever.

For too long, monopolized and discriminatory intermediaries like Spotify, Disney, and Amazon have exploited creators in order to redirect the profits of our creations into the pockets of their shareholders. The burdensome requirements to run a creative business, the maze of rights management, and legal and technical barriers have created an arts economy that is detrimental to artists and communities across the world. These pressures have stifled the sustainability of artistic careers and siphoned creative industry revenues and job growth away from our communities. We are regularly stolen from, deplatformed, and creatively stifled by the very institutions that are supposed to represent our interests. Until recently, due to consolidation in our industries, many artists seeking commercial success have had no other choice than to capitulate.

Grifters, scammers, and even well-intentioned idealists might claim that new technology is all we need to magically “fix” structural problems with the creative economy. To be clear, there is no technology that can erase years of systemic oppression and exploitation. Change only happens when artists organize movements that challenge existing power structures, and technology is a tool in that fight. Democratized technologies like community-managed social networks, social tokens, and DAOs could become powerful tools for organizing and sovereignty. For example, musician collectives are embedding the royalty & rights management of songs in tokens, with hopes of a new generation of popular music that cuts out vertically-invested middlemen and enables community-run competitors to exploitative services like Spotify. Authors are considering alternative distribution platforms to sell their works on the blockchain—avoiding restrictive contracts, rent-seeking, and invasive, nontransparent data-harvesting from tech giants like Amazon or Apple. Visual artists are leaving the discriminatory gatekeeping of art galleries and Instagram behind, offering their works on NFT exchanges that have taken the art world by storm. All these creators are forming communities outside of surveilling platforms like Facebook with the intent of keeping the value they create and building alternatives together. And, these systems are responsive to concerns from activists and creators alike, with some of the most popular blockchains now consuming around the same amount of power as Etsy or Bandcamp.

If we are going to move toward a more democratic internet, legislation must support individual creators, artists, and arts community members. We are only beginning to explore these new grassroots technologies, and artists must have a say in the policy that governs them. We implore you to involve us and carefully weigh any legislation that may impact the most marginalized artists and those that have been most failed by traditional arts economies, financial institutions, and technologies. Alternatives that disrupt the profiteering interests harming art are urgently needed. 

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

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