A n d e r s e n S t u d i o D a y s & N i g h t s: New England Foundation for The Arts

Showing posts with label New England Foundation for The Arts. Show all posts

Thursday, August 9, 2007

Here at Andersen Studio we are currently preparing for the Southport Yacht Club Art Show coming up this weekend. The Following weekend we will once again be at Orr's Island for the week starting the 17th of August, after which the show will move to Bailey's Island.

In East Boothbay we just painted our storefront a beautiful shade of Azure Blue so you can't miss us. We are working on a large order of baby penguins and so have lots of baby penguin seconds as well as other seconds and one of a kind pieces that are not available elsewhere. Stop in to visit. We are on the road to Ocean Point, one of the most beautiful places in the world.

Meanwhile, I am following my own private campaign against the New England Cultural Data Base's terms of Agreement, which benefits the tax exempt corporation, The New England Foundation for the Arts. Congress has just historically increased it's funding for the National Foundation to the Arts, which, under other circumstances, I might welcome, but the New England Cultural Database shines a dark light on arts funding, as it exploits the individual artist,(see blog archive), who are also among the small business people community. The New England Foundation for the Arts just received a large grant from Jane's trust, which purports to be established to benefit undeserved populations.

"Jane's Trust was created through the beneficence of Jane B. Cook, who died in 2002. The Trust honors her legacy by supporting organizations and projects that primarily benefit underserved populations and disadvantaged communities.Jane's Trust makes grants in Massachusetts, Florida, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont in the areas of arts and culture, education, environment and health and welfare."

"(BOSTON) New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) announced today that it has received a two- year $200,000 award from Jane's Trust. The funding will support the establishment of a New England public art network to coalesce
assets, address needs, and pursue opportunities for collaboration and knowledge-sharing among the region's public art practitioners, select community groups, and funders. NEFA will build on the models of its existing public art programs---Fund for the Arts (FFA) and Art and Community Landscapes (ACL)---supporting public art projects to address environmental issues with an emphasis on rural and underserved communities in northern New England."

Jane's Trust is administerd by the law firm of Hemenway and Barnes, who as attorneys should have reviewed the New England Cultural DataBase Terms of Agreement

I need to do more research on the veracity of emphasis on underserved communities, but the Maine Governor Baldacci's "Creative Economy" is influenced by Richard Florida's idea that there is a monied creative class that no longer is tied to a particular community for work purposes and that communities need to support the development of arts and culture in order to attract such people, and supposedly, the benefit of having a monied class resident in a community will "trickle down" to the rest of us. In fact such a policy benefits the real estate industry, driving real estate prices up and forcing those who cannot compete with the resources of " the creative class" to move to lesser desirable locations. I haven't heard about "creative economy" projects supporting "affordable housing" for the general public. Perhaps if such projects exist they are not well-publicised. The creative economy links on this blog are focused on affordable housing for the group of people that can be classified as "artists".

Monday, June 4, 2007

A Dangerous Agreement: The New England Cultural Database

June 04 2007 ( continued from May 28 discussion)

Check out our New Andersen Studio Creative Economy Awards

The New England Cultural Data base, does not define "content", but it does state policies about protection against infringement of copyrights and intellectual property. Below is an excerpt , You can read the entire agreement here

...WAIVE ANY AND ALL CLAIMS OR REMEDIES WHICH YOU MIGHT OTHERWISE BE ABLE TO ASSERT AGAINST US UNDER ANY THEORY OF LAW (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAWS) THAT ARISE OUT OF OR RELATE IN ANY WAY TO THE CONTENT AT THIS SITE OR OUR RESPONSE, OR FAILURE TO RESPOND, TO A COMPLAINT.

Most people who would be signing this contract are unlikely lawyers. Those who cannot, or will not, hire the services of a lawyer to review the terms of agreement are left to rely on private sensibilities. Common sense can determine that the agreement is laden with double messages.

The NECD TOS states that NECD does not allow content that may constitute infringements of
intellectual property or violations of federal state or local law,. This
statement should encourage
trust in NECD.

Another statement says that the signer agrees not to pursue NECD under the law, If the signer
agrees not to pursue NECD under the law, then can NECD be governed by law?

Upon searching the NECD TOS agreement, for the word "copyright", I did not find an explicit statement recognizing that the submitter of the content retains the copyright. There are many provisions forbidding the user from posting material protected by copyright, but no statements to the effect that NECD honors the copyright. However as posted, above, there is a stipulation that the user agrees never to assert any claim against NECD under any theory of law. To my layman's interpretation ( which is the type of interpretation that most users of NECD have to rely upon), There is a loophole in the agreement, which permits the user to post material which for which the user has copyright authority. However the Terms of Agreement never specifically state that NECD will honor the user's copyright, The forbidding language about copyright infringement is always framed in terms of what the user may or not do, which includes that the user may not assert any claims against NECD under any theory of law.(Remember that this is an agreement for perpetuity). The Terms of Agreement would have one believe that NECD can exclude itself from recourse by law. Whether the terms in this contract are legally sanctioned is another question, requiring a court decision.

NEFA can afford the services of highly qualified lawyers who could have written a Terms of Agreement that withstands examination by the ordinary lay person, but NECD didn't do that. One might wonder why NECD didn't write a more trustworthy agreement, and speculate that the expectation is that most people won't bother to read the terms of service agreement, the same conclusion that I have drawn about our many local arts organizations that have signed the NECD agreement.

A legal agreement that lasts for perpetuity has to be considered in the context of the extremes of uman character (for a good example of such considerations, read the Federalist Papers written by the framers of The United States constitution).

The NECD Terms of Agreement threatens the artists rights to the fruits of their own labor, with potential loopholes allowing that those rights (as per submitted content) can legally be usurped by the well-financed bureaucratic organization, and imitating Marxist philosophy. By co-incidence of not, the company that provides the technology for NECD is called Cultural Logic, which also happens to be the name of a Marxist publication (with an impressive list of editors and advisers consisting of 45 academics from almost as many universities across the United States) The NECD Terms of agreement states that there may be additional terms of service incorporated by Cultural Logic, whose current website is but a paragraph long with a single link to NECD . Very little information is offered about Cultural Logic, which is why I did a Google search and came upon the Marxist magazine of the same name ,as the numero uno Google search result. The search results also included several other books that use the term "cultural logic", in their title. Those books are described using the language of "globalization" and "late capitalism", but not necessarily Marxist, at first glance.

NECD TOS: Our site is being hosted by Cultural Logic, Inc. ("CLI"), a third
party service provider, which may also have an acceptable use policy to which We are bound. This policy, if applicable, is expressly incorporated by reference herein to the extent that it applies to Your conduct while using Our site. Any violation of the CLI acceptable use policy, if any, by You shall constitute a violation of this section. For more information, You may view the CLI website at: http://www.clinc.us/.

(It is not my intention to suggest that NEFA is a Marxist organization, is not my intention to suggest that NEFA is a Marxist organization, but on the other hand isn't our culture about ripe for a TV series involving a covert Marxist plot to transform America, operating through hidden manipulations on unsuspecting organizations and centered in the hotbed of American Marxism – American universities?)

It can be considered that by presenting a Terms of Service Agreement on a state-partnered site, that the National Endowment for the Arts is supporting the arts, and also the legal industry. What's next? Is the NEA going to try to correct the obvious social legal imbalance by creating a program for legal advice for the masses who can't afford a lawyer to interpret such a contract?

We live in a world of corporations and corporate states, increasingly competing with the authority of nation states. The laws of nation states apply within the borders of nations.

We are left with the following questions:

If NECD claims "worldwide" and "unlimited" rights over content. What are the laws that apply on a "world wide basis?

Why does NECD need to claim "unlimited" rights over submitted content" ? See Comparison with Google's TOS

Why does NECD have a clause in which the signer agrees to "waive and never assert moral rights"?

How might the statements be put into use? Is the public to trust an organization merely because of it's name, or because it is "non-profit" or state-sponsored or state-partnered? And will any organization retain any status for "perpetuity"?

Why does NECD even need a terms of agreement? The Maine Arts Commission offers many services to artists for free and publishes content without a terms of service agreement.

NEFA offers many reports online, free of charge, which one can download without signing a legal
agreement, which amplifies the question: Why is a user agreement is required for NECD? And adds the question - Can NECD offer any cultural reports that cannot be found elsewhere without signing away one's rights - including one's moral rights?

it is stated that NEFA administers and maintains NECD, but not stated who owns NECD ( who benefits from the asserted rights over submitted content). There is a statement that NEFA administers the Database in partnership with states arts agencies of the New England States, but "We," "Us," "Our" are identified with NEFA, so apparently the "party of interest" is NEFA. But who is NEFA? NEFA is described as "in partnership" with the "states art agencies of the new England States",as opposed to "A partnership of the arts agencies of New England States". NEFA is a separate entity. It is assumed that NEFA is a nonprofit organization, but that is never actually stated. In the annual report it is found that NEFA is a public charity and has received qualification as a tax-exempt corporation under the provisions of the U. S.Internal
Revenue Code Section 501(c)(3). BINGO! The beneficiary of the rights asserted in the NECD terms of agreement, is a public charity, a corporation with tax-exempt status that operates in partnership with state agencies.

Do we really need a government sponsored data base? Isn't the Internet a free-form cultural database? How reliable can a "cultural impact" report be when the requirement for submitting content is the signing of a dubious legal agreement? The reports offered by NECD reflects only those institutions and individuals that sign the terms of service agreement. The rest of the cultural world is simply not on the DECD map -although you can find many of those, outside of the DECD map, on the Internet (including on The Maine Art Commission
website) or down the street, as anyone knows who is reading this blog.

My advice is, play it safe: Don't sign. There are many other resources in which one can participate Consider that if Google can create a reasonable terms of Service Agreement, then why can't DECD? See a short comparison here

submit
your link to Andersen Studio'd American Art Colony Trail here – or your local link if you are a Boothbay Region Artist.

Monday, May 28, 2007

The New England Cultural Database: Undermining Democracy

May 28,2007

BOOKS OF INTEREST

The Nonprofit Economy
by Burton Weisbrod

The Economics of Art and Culture by James Heilbrun, Charles M. Gray

When Governor Baldacci came into office, he established an economic intitiative called "The Creative Economy". Upon hearing the term, I first interpreted it to mean "thinking creatively about the economy, but I soon learned that the term intended stimulating the economy through the arts. In the process of researching the creative economy, I found The New England Cultural Data Base, which is funded or partners with multi-state and non-profit organizations. The New England Cultural Data Base is administered and maintained by The New England Foundation for the Arts, which receives grants from The National Endowment for the Arts I intended to set up an Andersen Studio account but upon reading the user agreement, I concluded that the agreement is highly exploitive of artists. In that regard, I am submitting the following letter to The Boothbay Register and The Lincoln County News and other Maine newspapers.

Below is the latest version of the letter sent to The Boothbay Register on June 11. 2007, and emailed with minor editing to the Governor of Maine

Dear Editor;

I have some major concerns with the New England Cultural Data Base, which is maintained by the New England Foundation for the Arts, and funded in part with federal grant money through the National Endowment for the Arts and also funded by the Maine State Art Commission, and other state art councils of New England . The New England Foundation for the Arts is a private charity and a tax exempt corporation as well as the entity referenced by ""We," "Us," "Our" in the New
England Cultural Data Base Terms of Service Agreement.

It is not clear to me that the New England Cultural Data base has any thing to offer that is not already available through the Maine Arts commission or The New England Foundation for the Arts. Neither of the afore-mentioned organizations have a terms of service agreement. Maine Arts provides an online
database of Maine artists and organizations .The New England Foundation for the Arts provides many online reports about the impact of the arts sector on the larger economy, which one can download for free without signing an agreement.

In order to access the services of New England Cultural Data Base website, or to be included in it's database, it is necessary to create an account. To do so, one must accept the terms of NECD's agreement, which states that The New England Foundation for the Arts has

"perpetual, unlimited, irrevocable, royalty-free, non-exclusive, assignable,and worldwide license, to make, copy, perform, publish, display, distribute, transmit, translate, modify, prepare derivative works and use the content in other works in any form, media, or technology"

After laying claim to such all pervasive rights over the submitted content, NEFA's Terms of agreement requires the user "to and waive, and never assert, any moral rights to the content", which is followed later in the agreement by a statement that the user

" WAIVE ANY AND ALL CLAIMS OR REMEDIES WHICH YOU MIGHT OTHERWISE BE ABLE TO ASSERT AGAINST US UNDER ANY THEORY OF LAW (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAWS"

The user must also agree not to bypass The New England Cultural Databases' homepage or "deep link" to other pages on NECD's website or use it in another medium without their written permission. However NECD states that it is allowed to deep link to pages of the user's website and access whatever content that NECD base deems appropriate This can arguably be interpreted as giving NECD permission to select "submitted content" from the user's website.

The agreement includes a section titled "Good Samaritan Content and Complaint Procedures Policy , in which NEFA makes vague promises that, in some instances, NEFA, at its sole discretion, may decide to protect submitted content from third party copy-write infringement, but NEFA remains essentially uncommitted to taking responsibility in protecting artists from copywrite infringement. The language of the contract states that "The provisions of this section are intended to implement this policy but are not in any way intended to impose a contractual obligation upon Us to undertake, or refrain from undertaking, any particular course of conduct even so, the account holder must agree to never assert any legal action against NECD and to waive and never assert any moral rights against NECD."

Most of our local non-profit organizations and some of our local art galleries have accounts on this New England Arts Database. I have spoken about this subject with the Boothbay Art Foundation where no one claimed knowledge of how BRAF came to be listed on the New England Cultural Data Base.

I for one have a problem with NECD's agreement. I would like to hear from other artists and art organizations as to how they feel about what appears to be unlimited control over the user's submitted content by this data base agreement. I would also like to hear from the cultural institutions as to whether they signed up for accounts or if their names appeared on the database in some unknown way. My web blog contains an incomplete list of local organizations that have accounts on NECD. My blog also presents a comparison between the NECD user agreement with the Google user agreement, explaining why I decided to trust Google but not to trust NEFA, from a my layman's reading of the user agreement, which reads as understandable in ordinary language.

Why haven't art organizations, including the state arts councils such as the Maine Arts Commission, demanded terms that protect the rights of the artist? After all, they owe this much to those whom they represent.

As I see it, many of our arts and cultural organizations are non-profits to which the community has generously donated, and I feel there is a moral obligation to protect the rights of the individual artists, but it appears to me that by signing this agreement, arts organizations have failed to protect the artist from copywrite infringement, while agreeing to waive and never assert any moral rights or pursue any theory of law against NECD.

Mackenzie Andersen

Andersen Studio, www.andersenstudio.com