Advocating for artists on the blockchain
Advocating for artists on the blockchain
Althea Erickson
Althea Erickson is the Director of the Sol Center for Liberated Work, a program of the Center for Cultural Innovation. Previously, Althea was the Vice President of Global Government Affairs and Impact at Etsy, and Advocacy & Policy Director at Freelancers Union.
Artists’ economic security depends on their ability to own and control their intellectual property rights, but they often lack the means or bargaining power to protect those rights.
For example, musicians often forgo rights to their work when signing record deals, while freelance writers must often sign contracts that give publishers full rights to their work in all forms in perpetuity. Unlike in many other countries, US visual artists don’t have a means to collect resale royalties on their work, even as those pieces grow in value over time.
The blockchain offers exciting opportunities for artists to take more control over their work, and expands ways for them to earn income from that work. It allows for more direct connection between artists and their fans, circumventing traditional gatekeepers. Through smart contracts and the metadata associated with NFTs, artists can set and enforce the terms of their license agreements in their work, including enabling many to collect resale royalties for the first time.
Given the opportunities and lack of traditional gatekeepers, it’s not surprising that many Black and Brown artists and creatives moved quickly into the space. Black individuals have been at the forefront of participating, legitimizing, and shaping the development of blockchain-based financial markets, activities, community forums, and art. We follow the artists we serve where they go, which is why we started exploring and learning about the web3 space.
We quickly learned that while the opportunities are significant, so are the risks, especially when it comes to artists protecting themselves and their work. In particular, the platforms themselves have significant power to set and enforce terms, limiting the promise of true self-determination for creatives.
To truly capture the ownership opportunities the blockchain offers, artists moving into the space need tools and information to help them set and enforce their rights. That’s why we commissioned Alex Glancy at the law firm Gundzik Gundzik Heeger LLP to write a report on the legal issues artists face on the blockchain (report forthcoming).
Given our interest in the issue, we were excited to learn in late 2022 that the U.S. government had undertaken a study into the issues surrounding intellectual property and NFTs. Policymakers are exploring whether current intellectual property laws need to be updated or changed, given the new technology. The U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Intellectual Property requested that the US Copyright Office and US Patent and Trademark Office undertake a joint study exploring intellectual property issues and NFTs. As part of that study, the Offices requested written comments, as well as hosted several public roundtables on the topic.
We worked with other stakeholders from the arts community to collect feedback on the issues artists and creatives face in the NFT space, and collaborated with Alex to develop comments to the USPTO/USCO study. We also participated in one of the public roundtables the Copyright Office organized, advocating on behalf of the creatives CCI serves, especially those from marginalized communities. You can read our submission here, and watch the roundtable here.
In advocating for the arts workers and creatives we serve, we made four major points:
- Artists need better tools to understand and influence the ways NFT marketplace terms impact their intellectual property rights, including the ability to assess terms, determine licenses, as well as choose or change platforms
- There is significant legal uncertainty regarding the ways copyright law and contract law overlap on the blockchain, which creates copyright management and enforcement challenges for creators and inconsistencies in enforcement
- As is the case off the blockchain, small creators need education and technical assistance to help them protect and manage their intellectual property on the blockchain, in particular given the high barriers to informed entry in the market and the lack of trusted advisors, especially within marginalized communities
- While the blockchain offers ways small creators can support themselves via direct payments and resale royalties, we worry about their overdependence on too-few platforms that could potentially use their market power to strip artists of ownership of artwork, rights to reproduce, trademark, and other economic opportunities.
Yes, we’re excited about the opportunities blockchain technologies offer for arts workers to control and derive economic benefits from their work. However, lack of information, tools, support and means to exert collective power may undermine the potential of these technologies to help creators – especially creators from marginalized communities – achieve greater self-determination.
Contributing to this public study was just the first step we’re taking to advocate for artists' ownership rights in this space. In the days to come, we’ll be publishing the report drafted by Alex Glancy on legal issues artists face on the blockchain, sharing artists' experiences and challenges with lawmakers, and continuing to collaborate with our peers to uplift their voices in the public debate.
Have a story to share about your experience using blockchain technologies? We’d love to hear it here!
Gig Worker Learning Project: Phase One Report
Gig Worker Learning Project
Phase one progress report
The Gig Worker Learning Project is a valuable resource for anyone seeking to better understand gig workers and the challenges they face.
For several years now, the conversation about gig work and the future of work has been hampered by the lack of good data. That’s why we’re thrilled that Sol Center’s first grant supports the Gig Worker Learning Project, a participatory research project by The Workers Lab and the Aspen Institute Future of Work Initiative, seeking to understand gig workers’ needs and the solutions that will impact them most.
The first phase of the project, which took place over 2022, included early stakeholder outreach and a landscape scan of existing gig workers research. The Gig Worker Learning Project published its findings from that analysis in February 2023, and considers several questions, such as:
- What is the “Gig Economy”?
- What are gig workers doing to make money?
- Who are gig workers?
- How do digital platforms affect the experiences of gig workers?
- How are gig workers using their incomes?
- What kinds of benefits and protections exist for gig workers?
This is a valuable resource for anyone seeking to better understand gig workers and the challenges they face, and definitely worth a read!
Opportunities and challenges of NFTs
Opportunities and challenges of NFTs
Can arts workers use blockchain technologies to build economic power?
We’re excited about the opportunities blockchain technologies offer for arts workers to control and derive economic benefits from their work. However, lack of information, tools, and means to exert collective power may undermine the potential of these technologies to deliver greater self-determination to creators, especially those from marginalized communities.
We’re in the early stages of advocating for artists' ownership rights in this space. We want to make sure that advocacy is rooted in the lived experiences of artists working in this space. Have a blockchain technology experience story to share? We’d love to hear it here!
Share your NFT story
Thank you so much for sharing your story! We will use these examples to shape our advocacy on this topic, and may reach out to you for more information, or to let you know about opportunities to advance social and economic protections for all.
All workers should have wage and hour protections
All workers should have wage and hour protections
Althea Erickson
Althea Erickson is the Director of the Sol Center for Liberated Work, a program of the Center for Cultural Innovation. Previously, Althea was the Vice President of Global Government Affairs and Impact at Etsy, and Advocacy & Policy Director at Freelancers Union.
The recent political fights over misclassification–whether a worker should be classified as an employee or independent contractor–have been fierce, and a major priority of the labor movement.
Labor leaders often argue that the best way to protect all workers is to classify them as employees, while their antagonists–companies that rely on contract labor–often tout workers' desire for flexibility and independence without acknowledging their twin need for security and protections. As the public debate has become more polarized between these two positions, true independent workers–those who are not misclassified–are often overlooked.
Many arts workers fall into this middle category, and found themselves caught up in the debate around AB-5 in California, which established a much more stringent “ABC test” for determining whether a worker should be classified as an employee or an independent contractor, changing many arts workers from independent contractors into employees overnight. At the time, we commissioned the Urban Institute to publish an analysis of the proposed classification law on arts workers. Lawmakers in California are still sorting out the details of implementation, first through A.B. 2257, which exempted many arts professions from the law altogether, and more recently through S.B. 1116, which seeks to support nonprofit arts institutions' capacity to comply with the law. Other states are considering similar legislation, but the topic remains fraught.
The federal government is also looking at the issue of classification. In August 2022, the Department of Labor put out a request for comments on its new proposed classification rule. Though the proposed rule didn’t mark a meaningful departure from the status quo (it rolls back a Trump era rule that was put into place during the waning days of that administration), the open comment period felt like an important opportunity to uplift the experiences of arts workers and others working in the gig economy who may be rightly classified, but lack worker protections under labor laws.
We worked with allies in the arts to solicit feedback about arts workers' experiences, and heard about frustrations some creatives feel having to choose between security and flexibility, as well as common challenges bargaining for fair pay, given that independent contractors are not allowed to collectively bargain under the law.
Ultimately, we submitted these comments to the Department of Labor, which broadly supported the new rule because it enables more flexibility than the ABC test to determine a worker's classification, ensuring that those who are misclassified can get reclassified, while also allowing courts to consider the more nuanced circumstances many arts workers operate under. We also made the broader point that all workers, regardless of their classification, deserve wage protections and the right to collectively bargain.
Current law makes it difficult for independent contractors to collectively negotiate wage and hour standards and protections. We believe this could be rectified through several reforms, including allowing independent contractors to form unions under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), allowing secondary boycotts under the NLRA, clarifying that independent contractors may set industry wage standards and overtime protections without violating antitrust law, and enabling sectoral bargaining models that include independent contractors.
It bears mentioning that the issue of classification is tantamount to worker protection because we have, as a society, tied so many protections to employment. While proper classification of workers is one path to ensuring worker protections, it is not, and cannot, be the only path to ensuring that all workers have the social and economic protections that they deserve.
We believe that arts workers–and other gig workers who share their precarity–should not have to choose between the security and protections currently tied to full-time employment, and the flexibility, independence, and ownership rights that come with independence. As a society, we should guarantee flexibility AND security to all workers, regardless of their employment status.
Reimagining paid leave for the self employed
What might a truly great paid leave program look like for the self-employed? And, if we can get paid leave working for independent contractors, how might that become the model for delivering other types of safety net protections?
The question of making paid leave work for the self-employed is a little more complicated than it might seem. Just look at the differences between the 12 states and municipalities that already have paid leave programs, and you start to realize that there are many different answers, and unfortunately, very few policy makers have considered the question at all.
Some states require independent workers to pay twice what traditional employees pay into the system, while others have multi-year waiting periods between enrollment and the ability to use the benefit. Across the board, very few governments invest in getting the word out to independent workers, so take up is usually dismal, regardless of program design.
When it comes to the self-employed, policy makers seem stuck on trying to retrofit program designs that work for employees, rather than designing something based on the needs, challenges, and specific ways non-traditional workers earn income, especially those operating at the margins, like informal workers, street vendors, and undocumented workers, among others.
That’s why, on October 3rd, 2022, we co-hosted a convening, entitled Paid Leave for the Self-Employed, alongside the Center for American Progress (CAP) and the Freelancers Union. The hybrid event, held in-person at the CAP offices in Washington DC, as well as virtually, brought together representatives of the independent workforce alongside policy experts and advocates working on the issue of paid family and medical leave.
The goal of the event was to imagine what a truly great paid leave benefit for the self-employed might look like, and chart the beginnings of a path to advance that vision. The event laid the groundwork for future relationships and alliances among participants (many of whom had never met before), while simultaneously bringing both worker advocates and paid leave policy experts into a deep discussion about the opportunities and challenges of imagining a system that actually works for the most excluded workers.
Going forward, we’ll be publishing the outcomes of the discussion, as well as working with participants to advocate for more inclusive paid leave policies at the state and federal levels.
Convening Participants
Drew Ambrogi, Coworker.org
Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, National Community Reinvestment Coalition
Jennelyn Bailon, Center for Cultural Innovation
Chanda Causer, Main Street Alliance
Althea Erickson, Center for Cultural Innovation
Rafael Espinal, Freelancers Union
Aurelia Glass, Center for American Progress
Cassandra Gomez, A Better Balance
Pronita Gupta, Workshop
Adrian Haro, Workers Lab
Josie Kalipeni, Family Values at Work
Angie Kim, Center for Cultural Innovation
Namatie Manseray, MomsRising
Nathaniel Marro, Music Workers Alliance
Jake McDonald, National Partnership for Women & Families
Sapna Mehta, Center for Law and Social Policy
Hope Mohr, Guilded
Mary Rasenberger, Authors Guild
Vasu Reddy, National Partnership for Women & Families Bela Salas-Betsch, Center for American Progress
Vicki Shabo, New America Foundation
Meredith Shaffer, Public Private Strategies
Naomi Smith, Main Street Alliance
Shelly Steward, Aspen Institute Future of Work Initiative
Meredith Tannor, Freelancers Union
Molly Weston Williamson, Center for American Progress
Haeyoung Yoon, National Domestic Workers Alliance
Jeffrey Zubricki, Etsy
The Other Side of the Storm
The Other Side of the Storm
What do Black immigrant domestic workers in the time of COVID-19 teach us about building a resilient care infrastructure?
Kim Freeman Brown, Marc Bayard
Presented by The Institute for Policy Studies in partnership with
National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) We Dream In Black Program
If we hope to build protections that support all workers, we need to understand the challenges faced by those most excluded from our current systems of support.
We’ve been closely following the work of the National Domestic Workers Alliance’s We Dream in Black initiative. Their most recent research and report highlights the experiences and priorities of domestic workers who are Black, immigrant women. The findings highlight how important an intersectional lens is to designing and delivering benefits and protections for all.
If we hope to build protections that support all workers, regardless of their job, identity, or ability, then we need to understand the challenges faced by those excluded from our current systems of support, and most importantly, the solutions they say they want.