no CoPyright and no CuLtura L Cong Lomerateshappens after all these efforts have been made and when an audience must be found
that is willing to buy the work, to commission an assignment, attend the performance
or become a supporter of the artistic enterprise. it is possible to imagine many types of
customers such as audiences, of course, in all shapes and sizes, but also publicity bureaux,
design studios, churches, banks, labour unions, hospitals, municipalities, soccer clubs,
restaurants, television channels, maecenases, companies that sail the seven seas with
their cruise ships, and this by no means exhausts the list of possibilities. The first and
most direct customer for the artwork is usually the concert hall or the theatre, which
reaches the audiences for a concert or show. This customer subsequently teams up
with the initial producer as cultural entrepreneur to seduce these audiences. To stir up
an interest amongst potential buyers for a painting or sculpture the usual channel is
the art gallery, but many artists are also perfectly capable of selling straight from their
workshops.
it is clear here that part of the artistic profession consists of acts of entrepreneurship,
in order to find buyers for the created, or yet to be created, work. indeed, artists are
entrepreneurs, or to put it more precisely, cultural entrepreneurs. entrepreneurship
relies, inevitably, on taking chances. i will come back to this. artists do not often
employ many activities to find a market for their artistic works. it might be that the
bulk of the work sells itself through commissioners who commercialize it in one way
or another or who profit from it, for example through their own commercial activities.
The initiative to produce an artistic creation might also be taken by a producer who
approaches an artist, or a group of artists, with a proposal and subsequently markets
the created work. Besides the artist him or herself, the producer and commissioner are
also cultural entrepreneurs.
in and of itself, this is nothing new. Throughout the centuries, and within all cultures,
we have seen that the artist, the commissioner or the producer engages in some kind
of activity – thereby taking the initiative – not only to show the artistic work the light
of day but also to make it profitable (hauser 1972; ginsburgh and Throsby 2006).
The societal conditions under which this is done obviously differ considerably. The
core of the activity, however, always centres on entrepreneurship. in my alternative for
copyright it is not the artist who takes centre stage, but the entrepreneur, regardless of
whether he or she is an artist, a patron or a producer.
i certainly recognize that many artists, while creating and performing, do not feel
themselves to be entrepreneurs. however, it cannot be denied that a part of the reality
of their practice is exactly this even when they have an intermediary who is doing
business for them. a much- needed topic of research by artists is how, possibly, those
two different instances – creating and performing on one side and doing business on
the other side – stand in each other’s way, and could perhaps be reconciled.
The urgent question at this point is: which basic conditions need to be met to
offer an average entrepreneur – in our case cultural entrepreneur – a fair chance to
successfully operate in a world in which copyright no longer exists? one then arrives
at a level playing field.
a level playing field is a situation in any kind of market in which no single party
can manipulate this market of his own accord. This is an important principle which
has many advantages. For aspiring members, entry into that market is unhindered.
new inventions can find their way to the public. due to competition, prices are