Director of the Office of Research and Analysis, National Endowment for the Arts

What’s the piece of news this week that is forefront on your mind when you think about technology, policy, and the arts?

I haven’t been following this as closely as I would like, but there is of course the Google Books verdict.  The whole idea that gets to the heart of Google decision: balancing the really exciting and delicious opportunities for getting more access to art online with the need for artist rights – in this case authors rights.  It has been interesting to read the arguments.

Why do you think this issue is relevant to the arts community?

I think there is a lot of discussion within the arts community about things like how intellectual property law needs modernization – or is it in fact where it should be? – in the face of the many more expansive opportunities to engage with art and also create art because of technology.

One of the places where the more expansive opportunities to engage with art comes up most frequently in our own work is the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts.  We survey for example about many types of performance, how people participate in performances, or even create art.  But what about things like mixing or remixing?  Or what people in the arts sector call the curatorial aspects of the arts?  Remixing may not be viewed by some as curatorial, some might view it as straight up creation or performance.

What are some exciting things happening in the nonprofit arts sector with respect to technology, policy or research?

On Friday the National Council on the Arts meeting had some really interesting presentations.  One of them was from the New World Symphony, who showed us some amazing things they had done with wall screens.  For me, this presentation really raised questions about the traditional infrastructure needed for arts organizations or for arts venues.  You know the idea that you have this portable aspect that can occur anywhere.  In one sense it could be venue neutral because you have a technology that enables presentation of art in a variety of different kinds of settings.  And that’s really interesting and it changes the way we think about where art is consumed or enjoyed, and how to facilitate that.  And of course there is a cost issue with that too.  Does that mean ultimately these organizations are going to have more costs and will need more infrastructure to do these kinds of things?  Or can these types of innovations happen relatively cheaply through more inexpensive media platforms?

Why is this exciting to you?

You’re just seeing much more of an understanding across the field. I’m glad that the NEA in a small way has been able to contribute to that understanding through the research we’ve done showing a strong connection between people who participate in the arts through, say, more traditional forms and through media.  You know this from our report Audience 2.0: How Technology Influences Arts Participation.  This study found that when we controlled for other factors, people who used digital media to engage with the arts or electronic media to engage with the arts are 2-3 times as likely as non-arts-media users to actually go to live events and to create art of their own.

I think there is a symbiosis here.  It might be bold to say symbiosis.  We can’t show any cause/effect relationship but certainly people are starting to understand the same values that drive people to go on the computer and look up art or engage with the art through electronic media are really what’s ruling demand for arts in other settings and other experiences.  For example the whole idea of interactivity.  That people are engaged in a way they can respond back in a way to the artwork or comment on it.  They can do their own mixing as we just talked about.  Their own curating.  That freedom, the choice that is reflected in these kinds of values is exactly what in many ways more traditional live arts more traditional live events are trying to emulate.

Fairs and festivals are a good example.  These have been going on for many years.  Performing arts festivals for example or visual arts fairs or festivals basically realize that part of the reason people go to these things is because they have that interactive element that you don’t necessarily get at some kinds of arts events.  At a fair or festival there is a freedom to choose the kinds of events you see.  You have options.  It’s kind of a smorgasbord of arts events in one place.  And there is freedom of movement.  All of these things that in other context you can think of as purely internet-related are virtues you see people programming in many kinds of more traditional arts experiences.

What do you see as a major challenge for the arts sector with respect to technology and copyright policy?

That’s an issue we certainly want to look at further.  Our office hasn’t focused on it very closely the last few years.  We are like a lot of people in the nation, who are still catching up with the technology and understanding what is permissible, what isn’t permissible and how do we ensure that the contributions of artists is recognized appropriately.

What do you think needs to happen to overcome the challenge?

A lot of it has to do with people’s ability to focus on an issue for a long period of time and having the resources to give it its due weight.  But clearly this is an area that has so many cross-cutting interests.  Getting people to talk about these issues and with a wide range of interests at the table – building a broad coalition – is probably what is needed to make a difference in this area.

Do you have a latest toy that you’re playing with that you’d like to comment on?

I recently got an e-reader for my dad and he’s become overnight almost a much more voracious reader.  And he’s going back to his old syllabi, things that he was assigned to read in college – maybe for nostalgia or something – and he never got around to reading.  So he’s really enjoying all that and I’m really tickled by his enthusiasm.

Anything you are working on that you would like to share?

We’ve been looking at the way Americans spend their time on arts activities – whether it’s going to arts events or doing arts and crafts.  We’re starting to see some interesting things.  Analogous with consumer spending patterns we’re seeing how people are spending their time doing art in the course of a day even.

For me, one of the big unanswered and unexplored questions is this.  Lets say that one of the core attributes of art is that is provides a space to reflect, and creates a safe space for people to really engage with something in a sustained way.  How is that impacted by this immediacy of art through media, this emerging environment where people can instantly interact with art?

Just like how the 24-hour news cycle was started with CNN, there is a similar cycle in terms of appreciation and enjoyment of art that is becoming shorter and shorter.  How does that change the way we appreciate, respond to and understand art?  We now have the ability to access anything almost at the drop of a hat and juxtopose different artworks with other kinds of art works.  I wonder how the meditative quality of art will fare over the long term.

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Forbes: $1,000,000.  “At 30,000,000 views, that lands Black and Ark Music Factory $20,000 – a 1000% return on investment …the song currently sits at #45 on the iTunes Top Singles chart. According to 101 Distribution, an independent music distributor, iTunes pays out $.70 per single download in the United States. That’s a much juicier check for Black and Ark Music Factory; even if the numbers are exaggerated, the intake from ‘Friday’ could top $1 million.” (via Forbes)

Digital Music News: $45,850.  “This is not the rags-to-riches story the mainstream media craves, and it may never be.  So far, after a week-long frenzy and 35 million YouTube views, Rebecca Black’s ‘Friday’ has stirred just $45,850 according to our estimates, far less than the gargantuan numbers reported in places like Forbes.  That number will increase, and may push past $100,000 soon enough” (via Digital Music News)

Slate: $40,000. “there are a few problems with this accounting. First, the numbers. As for downloads, Billboard reports that “Friday” has sold just 37,000 copies, meaning the song has earned about $26,000. And as for YouTube plays, the number could be lower. Rates depend not just on page views, but also on how many people click on the advertisements. Thus, the song and video have earned perhaps $40,000 and counting—hardly chump change, but hardly $1 million either.  Then comes the all-important question of who is benefiting from such frothy pop nonsense. Specifically, how big of a cut is the Ark Music Factory, which wrote the song and made the video, taking?” (via Slate)

Billboard: $24,900. “Here’s the math: 43,000 tracks at $0.70 cents to the artist minus a 9% distribution fee, minus 0.91 cents apiece for mechanical royalties equals $24,900.  She may be pulling in a bit more money from YouTube views if she had the foresight to set up a content partner agreement before she got 30 million views. If so, that could amount to $15,000 to $20,000 for her 33 million views.” (via the excellent Glenn Peoples at Billboard)

On Friday, Ark Music released an exclusive video interview with their CEO vaguely describing their business practices, which in many ways reminded me of the major label model.  It inspired me to revisit Steve Albini’s now infamous essay about the Problem with Music from the artist’s perspective.

With the help of a video, the album went like hotcakes! They sold a quarter million copies! Here is the math that will explain just how fucked they are. (via The Baffler)

This essay captures the heady rollercoaster ride of ‘success’ while also shining a light on exactly how various standard music industry practices typically result in the artists walking away with very little.

Some people might compare Albini’s analysis with Rebecca Black’s situation and say, it’s different because she’s famous for being bad.  She was told not to expect anything to come from the video.  But based on the evidence I’ve seen, her situation doesn’t seem to me to be substantively different than many high profile artists that are widely considered inspiring or talented or otherwise worthy of benefiting from their gifts.  In both situations, the artist does not do it alone – there is a partner that makes an investment in their potential, shows them the ropes, and expects compensation in return in the event of success.  Sometimes the relationship becomes a fruitful partnership, other times it’s a power struggle, sometimes it’s both.  The devil is in the details of the agreement.

Did you see the Ark video?  That Patrice Wilson guy is running a business.  He co-wrote the song, produced and appeared in the music video, is advertising her iTunes downloads on his website.  In the video he talks about how “we provide that video, that image consultant, the photo shoot, everything… you even get lunch” for $2-4,000.  You think he’s not going to put a clause in their agreement that says in event of unexpected overwhelming viral success, he recoups his expenses and/or take a managers cut?

This false narrative we’re seeing of Rebecca Black making a million dollars in a week is problematic for me.  You really can’t count her money until you’ve seen the contract.

Audiences for the traditional television, radio, movies, music newspaper and magazine industries declined precipitously. It’s been reasonable to think perhaps that the kinds of mass audiences television used to gather would not be seen again. And the music industry? A few weeks ago the No. 1-selling recording on the Billboard charts sold only 40,000 copies, a record low.

But there’s a new mass culture emerging, and it dwarfs the audience that TV used to command. It’s the kind where Justin Bieber can get 500 million views on YouTube for a single video, Lady Gaga can get one billion views for her videos and Charlie Sheen can get three million Twitter followers in under a week.  You don’t have to be famous to get an audience. A stupid farting baby video has more than 150 million views. Matt Harding has had 34 million views for his goofy dancing.

And it can be profitable too. Thirteen-year-old Rebecca Black got almost 50 million views after YouTube critics called her video the “most appalling thing on the internet.” Forbes says she’s a millionaire from all the interest from her video.

Then there’s Amanda Hocking, a 26-year old, who’s making millions publishing her own books online:

She gets to keep 70% of her book sales — and she sells around 100,000 copies per month. By comparison, it’s usually thought that it takes a few tens of thousands of copies sold in the first week to be a New York Times bestselling writer.

The comparison isn’t entirely fair, because Hocking sells her books for $3, and some $.99. But that’s the point: by lowering the prices, she can make more on volume, especially impulse buys. Meanwhile e-books cost nothing to print, you don’t have to worry about print volumes, shelf space, inventory, etc. And did we mention the writer keeps 70%?

There are thousands of these stories now.

Everyone seems to be complaining about information overload these days. Content is expanding at a faster and faster rate. And the nature of that content is shifting. Seventy percent of all the content made on the web this year will be made not by “professionals” but by internet users. There were 250,000 books published by traditional publishers last year. But there were 750,000 sel-published books. Traditional gatekeepers seem to have fled the building.

It’s hard not to be overwhelmed by the choice. So the key to surviving the overload is finding trusted people or websites or services that  sort through the masses and deliver what we’re looking for. It’s the rise of the curator, who are like human search engines who better deliver the information we want.

I get more and more of my news from Twitter; I follow people who are interested in things I’m interested in and are sharing what they find. I don’t have time to closely follow all the things I’m interested in, so I depend on the 100+ people I follow to monitor and point me where I need to be. It’s like having an army of curator/editors working for me. In return, I point people to the things I find on ArtsJournal and elsewhere.

Maybe this is harder to navigate than when there were only a few news options, but put in a little work, and it’s possible to be much more informed about more things than it was in the “good old days.” And it means that if you have something to say it’s possible to be part of the conversation and find an audience.

From a February 16th article on TorrentFreak:

The US Government has yet again shuttered several domain names this week. The Department of Justice and Homeland Security’s ICE office proudly announced that they had seized domains related to counterfeit goods and child pornography. What they failed to mention, however, is that one of the targeted domains belongs to a free DNS provider, and that 84,000 websites were wrongfully accused of links to child pornography crimes.

So some official at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) division of the Department of Homeland Security is charged with shutting down websites that are found to be trafficking in counterfeit goods or child pornography. Ten such sites are identified, and he gets a court order to take them offline. But then – OOPS! A fat-fingered typo occurs and he accidentally knocks out 84,000 legitimate, innocent websites in the process. For several days, any attempt to visit one of those sites was met with this lovely image, branding the site owner as a trafficker in kiddie porn:

This story rapidly made the rounds in techie news circles, but I haven’t seen any coverage of it in the general interest press, much less the arts and culture media. Here’s why you should care:

As a content producer and/or distributor, you can be shut down without any kind of authentic due process. This is true whether or not you’re the victim of an unfortunate typo. When I.C.E. wants to shut someone down, they’re required to get a court order, but there’s no opportunity for the accused to offer any kind of defense, and there certainly isn’t a jury of one’s peers. But the important thing is to take these sickos offline ASAP, right? Well, sort of. It’s not always that simple, though, which is why we have a judicial system in the first place.

Modern technology hugely amplifies otherwise modest human error. In the internet age, tasks that once would have taken huge amounts of manual labor can be executed with a single keystroke. Generally speaking this is a wonderful thing, and I for one owe my career to this phenomenon. At the same time, this amplification of individual human impact warrants extraordinary quality control mechanisms, since the consequences of a small mistaek can be enormous. Clearly, I.C.E.’s procedures lack any kind of reasonable checks and balances to ensure that their enforcement actions don’t inflict enormous collateral damage.

Music and movies are next. The US Senate is currently considering an insidious piece of legislation called the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA). This bill would expand I.C.E.’s domain-shutdown mandate to cover sites accused of unauthorized distribution of copyrighted materials (e.g., music and movies). It’s supported by a number of organizations that  are ostensibly interested in protecting the rights (and income) of content creators: the Motion Picture Association of America, the Screen Actors Guild, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture Technicians, and Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States.

It’s not hard to imagine the myriad ways COICA can go wrong. It’s a blunt instrument, employed by people who presumably have little or no subject-matter expertise (either on the content itself or the nuances of copyright law and fair use), with the same lack of due process and vulnerability to human error that exists with I.C.E.’s current activities. Furthermore, in practice it’s likely to be enforced primarily in response to requests from attorneys at large media companies. Senate sponsor Pat Leahy has proposed an amendment which is intended to address some of these concerns, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough.

I believe in the importance, value, and legitimacy of copyright. I pay for the music I listen to and the movies I watch, despite having ample opportunity not to do so. But in our zeal to protect the interests of artists and content distributors, let’s keep the old saw in mind: “first, do no harm.”

It’s not a right, but a defense to copyright infringement. “The difficulty in claiming fair use is that there is no predictable way to guarantee that your use will actually qualify as a fair use. You may believe that your use qualifies–but, if the copyright owner disagrees, you may have to resolve the dispute in a courtroom. Even if you ultimately persuade the court that your use was in fact a fair use, the expense and time involved in litigation may well outweigh any benefit of using the material in the first place.”  (via Stanford University Libraries)

How is Fair Use Determined? “Section 107 of the Copyright Act lists four factors to help you determine types of content usage that may be considered fair use. No one factor alone dictates whether a particular use is indeed fair use. Consideration of all four factors is needed to help determine whether or not copyright permission is required.  Fair use is not a straightforward concept; therefore, any fair use analysis must be conducted on a case-by-case basis considering all four factors and the circumstances of the situation at hand.  Before applying these factors to your situation, identify if the use is for criticism, comment, news reporting, education, scholarship or research. If the answer is no, obtain copyright permission to use the content.” (via The Campus Guide to Copyright Clearance)

What if neither the copyright holder nor the user can afford a lawyer?  Setting best practices might help. “poets communicated a general sense that their ability to do their work with confidence was often impeded by institutional regulations based on very straitened interpretations of copyright. They lacked clear guidance as to what material might be available in the public domain. Moreover, they were constrained by their own lack of certainty about what uses are and are not fair within the practices of poetry. While they certainly wish to appropriately control their own work, and to make money where money is to be made, poets also expressed a strong wish to affirm the importance of their ability to make reasonable unlicensed uses of copyrighted material and their support for such uses by others of their own works.” (via the Center for Social Media’s Code to Best Practices for Fair Use in Poetry)

This deal would have created astonishing precedents. “The settlement is especially controversial because it uses class action law to affect the rights of a breathtakingly broad array of authors and publishers. In approving a class action settlement, a judge must determine if it fairly represents the interests of the affected parties—in this case, millions of copyright holders. And those copyright holders have not been shy about voicing their displeasure.  Most importantly, the proposed settlement was far more ambitious than the underlying legal dispute. ‘The case was about the use of an indexing and searching tool,’ Judge Chin wrote, ‘not the sale of complete copyrighted works.’ Yet the settlement gave Google broad latitude to open an online books store to sell copies of many of the books it has scanned.  And crucially, through the legal fiction of the class action mechanism, the settlement gives Google the right to sell copies of ‘orphan works’ whose copyright holders—by definition—cannot otherwise give their permission.” (via Ars Technica)

And not just for authors. “Unlike the privacy you normally experience online, Google’s current practices show it is capable of compiling ‘dossiers’ that reveal our lives in intimate detail. These dossiers may be shared across Google products or with partners, civil litigants, and law enforcement without clear standards for review. Other online bookstores raise similar concerns, but Google is the company seeking federal court approval of what may well become the world’s largest digital book repository — so it must lead the way in protecting online reader privacy and anonymity.” (via EFF)

It also highlights the need for a real ‘Orphan Works’ solution for everyone. “The effect of this was that the agreement essentially rewrote copyright law for Google and Google only. It would give Google the right to sell copies books it didn’t have the rights to—’orphan works’ that are still under copyright, but where the copyright owner can’t be found. Selling full-text copies of copyrighted works without permission is not a traditional fair use—and it’s not what Google was doing when it got sued, to begin with.  As for orphan works, Congress needs to act.  The law needs to be fixed to allow orphan works to be used in reasonable ways while respecting that they’re still under copyright.  It’s great that Google and the Guild thought creatively about how to pay any orphan works rights-holders who eventually came forward, but a situation where the orphan works problem is ‘solved’ by creating a monopoly digital library is untenable. If Google is able to exploit orphan works, then anyone else should be able to on the same terms.” (via Public Knowledge)

Arts organizations respond: “Non-commercial radio stations provide social and cultural value that their commercial counterparts do not. We value and appreciate commercial radio; in fact we wish there were more commercial stations committed to the traditional values of localism, competition and diversity. But we recognize that, ultimately, the overwhelming majority of today’s commercial radio stations exist to deliver specific demographic audiences to advertisers. When it makes business sense for these stations to discuss or promote a local symphony or band, theater performance or new gallery, they do it, and we appreciate it. But these are programming exceptions, not the rule.” (via Fractured Atlas Blog)

Artist respond: “Thousands of today’s artists rely on the exposure generated by NPR and non-commercial radio stations. Eliminating funding for public broadcasting would be tremendously damaging to working musicians, not to mention having a negative impact on local economies.”  (via CurrentTV)

But will it be enough? “To give in to that panic is to cooperate in your own demise. Which is exactly what the NPR board did by demanding that Schiller–a visionary leader who knew where NPR had to go in the digital age–resign immediately, and without a fight. This was a stupid and cowardly act, which will be justified as institutional realism, the price for one too many slip-ups. It is not realism. The decision to let Schiller go originates in a delusion, captured so well by Jon Stewart during the Juan Williams controversy when he told NPR: you brought a tote bag to a knife fight! The delusion is that you can keep doing that and somehow it will all work out in the end.  ‘Not only does this overreaction weaken NPR, it exposes them as an organization that is fundamentally weak,’ writes Joel Mearas in CJR. I agree. But I would add that this weakness is not simply a matter of missing backbone. It is related to the inability to think politically about what it takes to secure a space for public broadcasting in this country. It takes more than friends in Congress, and a commitment to an impartial news service. Imagination is also required. There has to be something in between arid non-partisanship and politicizing public radio. Schiller couldn’t locate it, but that doesn’t mean it cannot be done.” (via PressThink)

Libya: ‘Shutting off the Internet seems to be one of the last things in the playbook in terms of a dictator that’s being threatened by uprisings.’ “In particular, an Internet blackout in Libya will make it tougher for people outside the country to know how the uprising is unfolding. That was likely the government’s main motivation in shutting down the Internet in a country where people are more likely to communicate using cell phones.” (via MSNBC)

Algeria: ‘The government doesn’t want us forming crowds through the internet.’ “The Algerian government later denied that access to the internet or social networking websites had suffered any disruption or restriction on its part. A spokesman for the Algerian Embassy in London dismissed the claim as ‘baseless’. Meanwhile Facebook said there was no evidence of notable disruptions to their service, nor of accounts being deleted.  But a spokesman for Algerian internet monitor Remyses said: ‘It is possible that the blockages of the internet were not visible from abroad, according to the Iranian ‘strangulation’ model or by the cutting of domestic connections.’” (via The Telegraph)

Tunisia: ‘The problem is not filtering, the problem is who filters and based on what law.’ “At first, the regime banned around 300 websites, but as internet use grew throughout the country –- from 1 percent of the population in 2000 to 37 percent as of last November –- the blacklist bloated to more than 2,000. When the government started going after proxies, Saadaoui said, the number jumped to many thousands. He estimated that around a thousand of the blocked sites were political, and the rest were proxies.” (via Wired)

Wisconsin: a violation of free speech? : “Former Wisconsin Assistant Attorney General Charles Hoornstra said that, if Walker is blocking the website, it could be a violation of state and federal laws concerning free speech laws. The accusation by the Wisconsin Democratic Party accompanies an accusation by the Teaching Assistants Association that Wisconsin state authorities cut off wifi access to a room they had taken over as a headquarters inside of the Capitol.” (via ThinkProgress)

See also: Egypt and the Internet (RWX)

Wired Magazine declares the web dead.

Magazine publishers were excited when Apple introduced the iPad. There were all sorts of plans for i-publishing ventures – a new generation of digital magazines that would look better than the web and were more portable than laptops. Then the iPad launched and publishers were screwed. Sure you could sell a digital copy of a magazine. But there was no option to buy subscriptions.

Single-copy sales on newsstands are not what drives magazine revenues, and it quickly became clear that single i-copies wouldn’t do it for the tablet world either. Wired went from selling 100,000 copies of its first iPad edition to 30,000 in just a few months.

So Apple has now launched a subscription scheme. While publishers can set their own prices and terms, Apple takes 30 percent. Publishers can sell their own subscriptions elsewhere, but Apple won’t let them sell subs for less than what they cost in the  iTunes store. And customers going through iTunes will be able to decide how much of their demographic data is shared with publishers.

The problems with this deal have been much discussed elsewhere. Apple’s 30 percent is excessive. Dictating price to publishers selling outside the Apple store puts a lot of control in Apple’s hands. And no publisher wants to give up control of subscriber info, which, in some ways, is the most valuable asset publishers have.

Apple’s overreach may or may not work. iTunes has a huge lead in selling digital products. But Google has jumped in with a subscription plan that offers a more favorable deal, and others will follow.

There’s a larger issue.

One of the reasons the internet “works” is because “everything” speaks to one another and is accessible. Our browsers go almost anywhere. But with everything accessible, it’s been difficult to charge for content; so much choice means that people have alternatives to paid content. This has upended traditional publishing business models.

Apple’s app market suggests this problem can be solved. Apps don’t talk universally. They offer content or services that can’t generally be accessed from the outside. They often only work on proprietary devices. Publishers can charge not only for the app, but also for the content, and the iTunes app store experience suggests that consumers will pay.

More and more pieces of what would formerly have been on the net are now finding refuge behind these walled gardens. Facebook, for example, while it’s great for pulling in links and content from the outside, is not much accessible from the outside, and Facebook controls privacy and dictates rules of interaction and who owns your content. Twitter can be displayed on the net, but it too decides rules of the road. Last week, for example, Twitter shut out the UberTwitter and Twidroyd applications after supposed policy violations. Apple regularly declines to allow apps it doesn’t like into its app store. And the iPad, as marvelous as it is, is frustrating as hell when you try to get content in or out if Apple hasn’t approved it.

Digital rights management (DRM) was an attempt to control distribution of content, but it irritates consumers, and many resist. Somehow, though, apps (which are even more restrictive in how they allow sharing) seem to be more acceptable with users.

As we become more digitally mobile, more and more content is being moved behind app walls, and mobile carriers are fighting to control content. In the recent net neutrality battles, some of the big providers were willing to concede neutrality for the traditional web as they pushed to be able to control the flow of data on mobile networks. If the future is mobile (and it is), then there’s a lot of power (and money) to be made on who decides what gets delivered and how.

The online world, which has been an untamed, Wild West in which anyone with access could play, may be evolving into an app-driven model with walls everywhere you turn. This more closely resembles the physical world in which access is controlled by those with the power and resources to pay for it.

One of the great things about the internet was that it democratized access to ideas and information, simply because it spoke a common language. But on such an internet where content moves freely, charging for content is more problematic.

Digital subscriptions are seductive for publishers looking to be more profitable. Apps might be attractive to consumers wanting higher quality products and experiences. But apps – and the app stores that regulate the transactions and offerings – are beginning to change the nature of digital content and who can produce, distribute and see it. Maybe this was inevitable. A Wired cover story last August declared that the web is dead. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, just a different thing. But we ought to spend a little time thinking about what that next thing looks like.

What’s the piece of news this week that is forefront on your mind when you think about technology, policy, and the arts?

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about cultural change and political change, and the relationship between the two. The events of the last month or so just bring back to me how crucial culture is in creating the conditions for political change. In Tunisia, a rap song by Hamada Ben Amor, aka El General, helped fire the young revolutionaries into the streets to topple the regime. And in Egypt the crowds in Tahrir Square and around the country were inspired by singing, street plays, poetry readings, and street art. All of this culture didn’t come from nowhere. Cultural change always precedes political change. The culture has been shifting and preparing those publics for these moments for decades.

Why do you think this issue is relevant to the arts community?

The arts have been treated badly by politicians, activists, and intellectuals. Demagogues condemn the arts as hell-bent on the destruction of the social order, and would leave the production of culture only to the marketplace. On the other hand, even those who support the arts often think of artists as “soft” actors in the drama of social change, unorganizable and unserious, as the velvet glove covering the fist.  Artists only get the call when it’s time to raise money or to be entertained.

It is silly to think that people are only interested in change when the elections roll around. Politics is where some of the people are some of the time. But culture is where most of the people are at most of the time. If movements for social change don’t play in the cultural realm, culture-making is ceded to the marketplace and subject to the opponents of change.

Recently, the culture wars have been coming back: I think of Chagoya’s art being destroyed in Loveland, Wojnarowicz’s work censored by the Smithsonian, Bush’s media push-back against Kanye. If people concerned with change are not disturbed by the rise in the intolerance and suppression of artists, if they are not thinking about how to do cultural work to win change, their movements are already doomed.

What are some exciting things happening in the nonprofit arts sector with respect to policy?

I think that the nonprofit arts sector has been beginning to rethink culture in a broad way. In the past decade, culture was primarily seen as something that declining cities could cash in on to rebuild their deteriorating downtowns. But at the same time, we saw the rise of local organizations that straddled old definitions of community organizing and arts organizing, many in the youth sector, reaching broad new constituencies. All of that people power and infrastructure played a role in Obama’s election. As in Egypt, all that creative outpouring did not come from nowhere. Culture revealed the mass desire for change in the country.

But then when the Obama administration stepped in, it cast culture back to its place on the margins and the excitement dissipated rapidly. We’ve now reached a moment where the nonprofit arts sector can focus much more intently on what kinds of culture work does encourage and foster progressive change. It’s a time to assess lessons and invest in experimentation.

What do you see as a major challenge for the arts sector with respect to technology and copyright policy?

Balancing creativity with compensation, and making sure artists are compensated over corporations. It’s pretty clear that the system that exists now does not work well at all. From music-making to documentary film-making, artists have lost so much to corporations over the past two decades. In one sense, it’s more difficult than ever to see this problem clearly–we are bedazzled by the sheer volume of cultural products on offer. But I think we’re really at a crisis point. It’s hard to see how one can continue to do the work without becoming in some real sense an outlaw.

Anything you are working on that you would like to share?

I’m working on organizing writers, poets, playwrights, and journalists around immigrant rights in a group called Wordstrike. In times of economic dislocation, immigrants become the first target of those afraid of change. But there is no better time than now to be envisioning the kind of nation we really ought to be, and there is no better group of folks than artists to begin to outline those visions.

Follow Jeff’s work: Website, Twitter

(Photo by Monica May for Theme)