A Message to The Maine Arts Commission

Help with the Main Street Private Economy Capitalization Fundraiser- No "tax deductions" with this "fundraiser" this is not the "non-profit economy_ Instead we offer a 20% discount using coupon code "Main Street" at http://www.andersenstudio.com/. Good through May 1 2009. See post below for further information.

As Posted at http://maineartscommission.blogspot.com/.

As a privately owned small business in the arts, for over fifty years, it is very disturbing to see how "stimulus” funds” are being used. The idea of a “stimulus” is that it stimulates the economy, other wise it should be labeled honestly as “spending”. As far as I have been able to determine, small business (sometimes called “main street”) is supposed to benefit from the “stimulus” funds through the trickle down effect of money spent by entitles that directly receive the funds. The entities that receive direct stimulus funds are banks, businesses that qualify as “too big to fail”, schools”, non-profit organizations, and state governments - all with “stipulations attached” (that is another discussion).

The private economy has to wait until the spending of these other entities trickles down to benefit the private sector- and in that regard, I think the grant deadlines are counter productive to the alleged purpose of the stimulus funds which are supposed to be distributed into the economy quickly. This is a transitional season and the private sector needs those benefits now and so I think the distribution of funds should take place immediately in consideration of the dire economic climate.

I read the mission statement of The Maine Arts Commission but I did not find any mention of a stipulation that says that an organization must be non-profit in order to receive the benefits of our state government arts commission. I also checked out the website for Maine Economic Development, looking for any mention of “stimulus funds” going to the private economy. Dream on.

As a member of a small ceramic art and design family business operating in the private economy for over half a century, we are experiencing, for the first time in our history, that established and well- recognized retail galleries are requesting our work on consignment. This is because there is still a credit freeze affecting “Main Street". The privately-owned small business sector is barely mentioned in the multi trillion dollar-spending bills in which our government is investing America's future, leaving the small business sector to create its own network and its own solutions in order to insure that there will be a privately owned small business sector for the future generations of the United States of America.

As a small business dealing with our own financial crunch, we realize that we will have to develop a consignment policy that will protect us from the risks involved. We need to do this as much for the benefit of ourselves as for the benefit of the context in which we function- that of the small business community - for while others receive stimulus funds, it is the small business community- Main Street, that is left to pull its self up by it’s own bootstraps- which is exactly how we got our start in the first place.

Since the stimulus funds are directed to sources outside of the small business community, I feel that the small business community needs to make its voice felt in the areas that intersects our own fields and demand that if the “stimulus” funds do not go to the direct benefit of the private economy- then at least the spending process should not be hampered from reaching the small business community with unnecessary delays.

In the interest of “re-imagining” the future of the Maine Arts Commission, I suggest that you immediately set up a relationship with the private sector, which is also supposed to benefit from ”stimulus” funds. In the original version of H.R. 1, the small business sector was described, by the House of Representatives, as “the engine that drives new job creation” even as that same bill allotted less to loans for small businesses than it did to conversion to digital TV. Susan Collins and Olympia Snow brought the funding at least up to the level where it nearly matches digital conversion funding.

I hope others in the small business will community join me in the fight to ensure some of the “stimulus” funds go to where the rhetoric said it would go. I am found on http://www.meetup.com/ in the small business category.

And in the meantime I hope the Maine Arts Commission will come out of its cocoon and develop programs to help artists and businesses that are working in the context of the private economy. For starts, we are probably not the only small manufacturer wondering how to craft a consignment agreement that will protect us from the very serious risks involved. The consignment agreements have to take the place of the unfreezing of credit that the billions of dollars given to the banking sector was supposed to do. We are not seeing any of the trillions upon trillions of government spending benefits, even as government spending puts us at risk, and so it becomes our responsibility to demand, wherever we can, that the “stimulus” funds be used responsibly, in a manner that stimulates the whole economy and not just for the temporary benefit of specialized factions.

New England Cultural Database Terms of Service: Undermining Democracy

Originally published on May 28,2007
BOOKS OF INTERESTThe 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 initiative called "The Creative Economy". Upon hearing the term, I 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 ithought I would to set up an Andersen Studio account but upon reading the user agreement, I concluded that the agreement is highly exploitative of artists. In that regard, I submitted 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" inthe 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 copyright infringement, while agreeing to waive and never assert any moral rights or pursue any theory of law against NECD.

Mackenzie Andersen
Andersen Studio, http://www.andersenstudio.com/

Update. This letter was never published in The Boothbay Register. I received a message from the editor that included an edited version of the letter which would be published upon my approval. The edited version deleted all of the direct quotes from the new England Cultural Data base terms of agreement. I did not approve the editor's edit of my letter to the editor.

As of April 2009 The New England Cultural Data base Terms of Agreement remains the same.

I added aditional blog comments on June 04, 2007 , June 15, 2007, June 22. 2007 and

In the June 22 2007 Blog Post I commented that "I personally agree that The NECD TOS is unenforceable, but also take into consideration that it is for perpetuity. It is unpredictable how the future legal climate will evolve. " Looking back in retrospective I can say that our country has changed more than I would have possibly imagined and in a direction that gives more possibility of legal weight tothe NEDC terms of Agreement

Full NECD agreement found here
The following is a list of organizations local to the Boothbay Region, which have signed the NEFA terms of agreement.
THE BOOTHBAY ART FOUNDATION
THE BOOTHBAY OPERA HOUSE BOOTHBAY RAILWAY VILLAGE BOOTHBAY THEATRE MUSEUM
COASTAL MAINE BOTANICAL GARDENS, INCORPORATED BOOTHBAY REGION HISTORICAL SOCIETY
NATIONAL SOCIETY OF THE DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION ROUND TOP CENTER FOR THE ARTS, INCORPORATED
FIREHOUSE GALLERY
FRANCISKA NEEDHAM GALLERY
VICTORIAN STABLE GALLERY
MAINE ART GALLERY
WISCASSET BAY GALLERY
LINCOLN FESTIVAL OF THE ARTS
BACKROADS GALLERY

Private Economy Networking

I just received an email from The Maine Arts Commission announcing stimulus funds for non-profit organizations and the Union of Visual Artists - so if you are among the non-profit organizations and the unions, then you are among the chosen few blessed with "stimulus" funds coming directly from the taxpayers via our government.

For those of us left out of the loop- i.e. the private economy and non-union workers, it seems we have to find our own way to deal with the huge debt the government is gifting to the people, through our own initiatives.

This especially applies to small businesses since large businesses seem to have ready access to the financial resources of our government.

There exists an online people to people financing network http://www.prosper.com/. I do not have any experience with this network upon which I can offer any advice or recommendation so all I am doing here is letting others know that it exists.

If anyone has any experience with this network, please feel free to comment here.

Or if you have any ideas on how the free and private economy can network together for our mutual benefit, speak up and I thank you.

On April 15th, I attended the Tea Party in Augusta. Maine. Before I left I saw and editorial in the Portland Press herald titled "The mad Republicans Tea Party?" The editorial was about the Tea Party scheduled to occur later in the day in Portland, Me. Although I did not attend the Tea Party in Portland, I was aware of it from emails I received from a group in Bath, Maine, which is reading and discussing “The 5000 Year Leap” a book about the history of the formation of The United States of America. I was aware that the Tea Party movement as non-partisan movement from my involvement with the Bath Group and my email discussions with The Maine Tea Party, and online forum at Paint Maine Red, a website started by “Pete The Carpenter”, who is also a primary organizer of the Augusta Tea Party.

On all occasions, the emphasis has been to get away from two- party thinking. We are encouraged to look at candidates as individuals rather than representatives of a political party. In fact we are encouraged to register to vote as independents.

The editorial on the front page of the “LOCAL & STATE’ section of The Portland Press Herald read: ” At last an entertaining use fro the Maine State Pier. It’s the perfect place for southern Maine’s conservative Republican fringe to throw itself a full- blown temper tantrum…it’s one of many such events to be held around the country on income tax day to demonstrate that the hard core GOP is mad as hell at President Obama, liberals and the media elite, and is, not, I repeat, Not, going to take it anymore.
Stop yawning, they really mean it this time”

The article went on to frame the Portland Tea Party as a Republican- organized event. Having received the emails about the event, but choosing instead to attend the event in Augusta, I did not identify it as a Republican party event, as it was being portrayed in the Bill Nemitz editorial. I knew that the Republican Project was participating, but, that does not make the event, a “Republican” event. The Tea Party was initiated as a grass roots movement of the people. Whatever party allegiances they currently or formerly adhered to, they were coming together to take back their government. Maine is, after all, the state in which our Republican senators tipped the balance of powers, which opened the gate for the passage of the Stimulus Bill and this, has gone a long way to the dissolution of party line politics in Maine.

I cannot speak for what took place in Portland but the Augusta Tea Party emphasized over and over again that this is not Republican or Democratic Issue. To my point of view the policies of the current administration are so extreme and trying to forcibly push the United States down the road to socialism, that it has finally ignited a full burning flame of constitutionalism that has been on a slow burn for decades.

While nationally televised Tea Parties across the nation drew crowds that peaked at 370 thousand (and still counting), the group at Augusta was around four or five hundred people. Smallness has it’s own advantages and in this case it is that any one could take the mike and speak to the crowd. It was the voice of the people telling their own stories. All ages were represented. Pete the Carpenter is your archetypical Maine carpenter, speaking with a down east accent and the sincerity and urgency that brings to life the first American Tea Party that ignited the American Revolution that brought about the creation of The United States Constitution- but the emphasis in the current Tea Party movement is on a civil revolution. The crowd was urged to participate in politics from the local to the national level, including the call to run for office. This is a people’s movement. The only party affiliation is the American Tea Party. This is the voice of all the people who are fed up with the policies coming out of Washington and the gradual erosion of the United States Constitution. It is a call to bring America back to its constitutional roots.