The Changing Climates in Arts Publishing Forums were held at the Bradley Forum at the University of South Australia, in Adelaide on Saturday 9 May and the CAL auditorium, 223 Castlereagh Street, Sydney on Saturday 27 June.

PROGRAM - Adelaide 9 May 2009

Chair Professor Pat Hoffie, Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, artist and writer.

SESSION ONE 9.30 – 11am (90 mins)
Content creation in the recession we didn’t need to have

• Staying relevant: Artlink
Art writing for general readers on complex issues relating to current questions in art and society, national and global, 29 years on. Its future depends on its ability to adapt.
Stephanie Britton AM, Executive Editor of Artlink magazine [10 mins].

• Lean, mean and living dangerously
The health of art writing: who does it, who reads it, who buys it, who publishes it? Journals of debate and record, archives of change. What does the world need now?
Joanna Mendelssohn, art writer, book author, critic, curator, Assoc Prof at COFA, lecturing in professional practice and art writing [20 mins].

• The Digital Challenge to Carbon
Getting content on blogs, e-books, online publishing, Print on Demand and mobile technology. Print addiction vs environmental sustainability.
Sean Cubitt, Director Media & Communications Program Univ of Melbourne, writer and commentator. [15 mins].

Artlink Changing Climates in Arts Publishing Forum - Sean Cubitt from Stephen Hooper on Vimeo.

Respondent panel: chair Pat Hoffie (Queensland College of Art)
• Lisa Havilah Director Campbelltown Arts Centre, curator, publisher [7 mins].
• Bonnie Hart former editor Eco Voice magazine which moved from print to online in 2005 [7 mins].
• Ianto Ware, zine publishing activist and Joshua Fanning, editor Merge magazine [7 - 10 mins].

Tea and Coffee break 11 – 11.20

SESSION TWO 11.30 – 1pm (90 mins)
Surviving Interesting Times: getting organised

Progressing or regressing
The challenge of  a new model for copyright - Creative Commons. Whose interests are being served by allowing ideas to be shared and re-used? Who is using it and does it work?    Amanda Matulick Editor Filter magazine, Australian Network for Art and Technology  [12-15 mins].

Journeys into hybridity : collaboration or death by photoshop?
The Artwork in the age of Re-mix culture. How fair is fair use? Primary and secondary reproduction of printed and online imagery morphs into new ‘tertiary’ hybrid works. Attitudes to creativity in a new fluid world.
Zina Kaye, artist, House of Laudanum, Sydney [12-15 mins] - via video conference.

Collecting your money: unpicking the nuts and bolts
• Original content, first publication rights; authors’ and artists’ digital rights: online versions of print; legal rights of copyright owners, permissions and obligations, resale royalties. Royalties to visual artists through copying print and online material.
Bill Morrow IP specialist lawyer [12-15 mins].

Respondent panel: chair Janet Maughan (lawyer and art writer)
• Keith Gallasch, editor Realtime magazine [7 - 10 mins].
• Danni Zuvela, researcher, writer and curator of experimental sound and image events [7 - 10 mins].

Lunch 1 – 2.00 pm

SESSION THREE 2.15 – 3.15pm (60 mins)
One door opens, another closes

Freedom of Expression
The new conservatism and changes in community standards. Censorship and the Government work on new Charter of Human Rights. Proposed Internet censorship.  Sedition laws and the common good. Implementing Codes for use of images of children in the aftermath of the Bill Henson affair.
Tamara Winikoff Executive Director National Association for the Visual Arts [15 mins].

Read it: digitise it
The global rush to digitise libraries and for global access to documents and texts. Where is arts publishing in this race? The Google libraries judgement and possible implications for artists, art writers and publishers.
Zoe Rodriguez, lawyer, Copyright Agency Ltd [15 mins].

Respondent panel: chair TBC
• Dr Donald Brook philosopher and art writer, Emeritus Professor, author of The Awful Truth about what Art is. [10 mins].
• Margaret Hosking Arts Librarian, University of Adelaide Barr Smith Library [10 mins].

3.15 - 3.45pm Tea and coffee break

SESSION FOUR 3.45 – 5.00 pm (75 mins)
Artists at Work - singular lives

Netting the big and little fish:
Monographs and biographies, approaches to artists biographies: lives, reputations, bad behaviour and canonisation. History, accuracy and commercial publishing.
Daniel Thomas AM, Emeritus Director Art Gallery of SA, writer, historian and scholar [15 mins].

Respondent panel : chair Ian North artist, writer, curator.
• Djon Mundine OAM, Indigenous writer and curator, Campbelltown Arts Centre [10 mins].
• Tess Allas online Indigenous writer and editor of DAAO (Dictionary of Australian Artists Online) [10 mins].
• Joanna Mendelssohn, art writer, book author, critic, curator, biographer, Assoc Prof College of Fine Arts, University of NSW. [7 mins].

WRAP UP
Audience discussion on topics raised during the day. [30 mins]

 

PROGRAM - Sydney 27 June 2009

Chaired by Dr Colin Rhodes, Dean, Sydney College of the Arts

Registration: Coffee and cakes: 10:30am

SESSION ONE 11 - 12:30pm

CONTENT CREATION IN THE RECESSION WE DIDN'T NEED TO HAVE

Staying relevant: Artlink
Art writing for general readers on complex issues relating to current questions in art and society, national and global, 29 years on.  Its future depends on its ability to adapt
Stephanie Britton AM, Executive Editor of Artlink Magazine [10 mins]

Lean mean and living dangerously
The health of art writing: who does it, who reads it, who buys it, who publishes it?  Journals of debate and record, archives of change.  What does the world need now?
Joanna Mendelssohn, art writer, book author, critic, curator, Assoc Prof and COFA, lecturing in professional practice and art writing [20 min]

The digital challenge to carbon
Getting content on blogs, e-books, e-print, online publishing, Print on Demand and mobile technology.  Print addiction vs environmental sustainability.
Sean Cubitt, (recorded presenation) Director Media and Communications Program, University of Melbourne [15 min]

    Respondent Panel:
    Tim Wallace, editor Ecologic online magazine [10 min]
    Tess Allas, online writer and editor of Storylines on DAAO (Dictionary of Australian Artists
    Online) [10 min]
    Ianto Ware, Zine and DIY activist [10 min]

Questions 10 min

Lunch 12:30 - 1:15pm

SESSION TWO 1:15 - 2:30pm

SURVIVING INTERESTING TIMES: GETTING ORGANISED

Progressing or regessing
The challenge of a new model for copyright - Creative Commons.  Whose interests are being served by allowing ideas to be shared and re-used?  Who is using it and does it work?
Elliott Bledsoe, Program Manager Creative Commons [12 mins]

Journey into hybridity: collaboration or death by photoshop?
The Artwork in the age of Re-mix culture.  How fair is fair use? Primary and secondary reproduction of printed and online imagery morphs into new 'tertiary' hybrid works.  Attitudes to creativity in a new fluid world.
Zina Kaye, artist, House of Laudanum [12 mins]

Going Once, Going Twice, Gone... The Story of the Australian Resale Royalty Scheme
The new resale royalty scheme: the principles, the Australian legislation, how it will work in practice, the role of the collecting agency, what the implications are for the art market, the controversies.
Joanna Cave, CEO Viscopy [12 mins]

Copyright collection: powering up
Royalties to writers and others providing a long term income stream for creatives.  How it works.  What's new in the business and law of copying print and online material.  Wholesale digitisation and the washup from the Google settlement.
Zoe Rodriguez, Copyright lawyer, Copyright Agency Ltd [12 min]

    Respondent Panel:
    Danni Zuvela, works with experimental and avant-garde moving images through historical
    research, writing and curatorial activites [10 min]
    Linda Jaivin, author of eight books, essayist, translator and playwright  [10 min]

Questions 10min

Tea break 2:30 - 2:45pm

SESSION THREE 2:45 - 4:15pm

ONE DOOR OPENS, ANOTHER CLOSES

Freedom of Expression
The new conservatism and changes in community standards.  Censorship and Government progress on new Charter of Human Rights.  Proposed Internet censorship.  Sedition laws and the common good.  Implementing Codes for use of images of children in the aftermath of the Bill Henson affair.
Tamara Winikoff, Executive Director, National Association for the Visual Arts [15 min]

Read it: Digitise it
The global rush to digitise big and small libraries in order to gain global access to documents and texts including those non-profit exhibition spaces.  Will most of this digitised material be fodder for the internet?  The Google libraries judgement and possible implications for artists, art writers and publishers.
John Shipp, Librarian, University of Sydney [15 min]

    Respondent Panel:
    Lisa Havilah, Director Campbelltown Arts Centre, curator, publisher [8 min]
    Andrew Frost, The Art Life [8 min]
    Ross Harley, Head School of Media Arts, College of Fine Arts, University of NSW [8 min]

WRAP UP
Audience discussion on topics raised during the day [15 min]

 

 Question and Answer Transcript: 

Question:

This is actually a question about those of us who are interested in transitioning from print to the online environment. I've been to a few copyright agency introduction sessions that you do for the industry. And always the message is that with digital rights, it's a bit of murky waters, and things are a bit unclear still. Has that changed and all? And are things are clearer now about...

 

Answer from Zoe Rodriguez: 

Digital's certainly not all settled yet. It's a fairly new Right in Australia. It came in, in 2001 -- the Communication Right. It's not unsettled in the sense that it is established as a right that belongs to creators, like copyright does for publication, or photocopying or any of that. The business models that will underpin digital are still developing. We've heard that across the day, today, what copyright licence model you choose to use, whether you see your creation as a loss leader [12:26]  for other sorts of stuff that you choose to merchandise, or whether you see the value just in your creative output. I think people need to think about that.

 

In terms of straight CAL work, we are in the process of establishing what fees are licensees will pay for digital use. Just like back in the '80s -- we had a big problem with what page rate do you set for a photocopied version of a work used in a school. We're facing the same thing now with digital. How much is a digital copy of a page worth, or a communication? Does it matter whether it's an artwork as opposed to a piece of straight text; as opposed to multimedia works?

 

So those sorts of things, yes, they haven't quite settled yet. But they will. We're in a case now really just because schools and CAL can't work it out between ourselves. And I think it's because we just don't know. We're in front of the Copyright Tribunal, going to get an independent arbitrator to say, 'All right, here are the rates we'll start with'. We'll work from there.

 

Question:

Is there a timeframe?

 

Answer from Zoe Rodriguez:

In terms of that court case that will settle rates for different sorts of uses in the online environment, we're in the Copyright Tribunal now. I think we just had a listings hearing, which is when you set down a set of court dates. And we'll have our first serious thing later this year. It will probably take another couple of years. That's the nature of litigation and court based determination.

 

Question:

I was curious as to what the status was of Creative Commons Licences under copyright law?

 

Answer from Zoe Rodriguez: 

Creative Commons licenses are simply that they exist only because copyright law exists. All their terms relate to copyright law. They're just one licensing model. There's nothing terribly earth shattering about it. The thing that Creative Commons does is I think by the use of fairly user friendly symbols. People who attach them to their works understand what they're saying people can do with them. And people who then go to use their works, say, 'Oh right, okay. As long as I attribute the writer, I can send this on to my friend, and I don't have to worry about infringement', for instance.

 

If somebody violates the terms of Creative Commons Licence or any other copyright licence that you apply to a work, subject to -- I don't know if you remember back to my presentation, but I said, 'Here are all the exclusive rights of the copyright owner. They were publication, communication, adaptation, performance...' -- they are the exclusive rights of the author. They are however subject to exceptions. The Government and educational statutory licenses, for example, have the fair dealing exceptions and the library copying exceptions. But should anybody go outside the terms of the licenses applied, or the exceptions that exist under the act which you can shelter from some of those exclusive rights, then you have a right of infringement of copyright. You either talk to the person who's infringing, and try to negotiate an agreement. Or you can go to court and sue for damages, and you'd have to demonstrate damages.

 

Comment from Joanna Mendelssohn:  

This is actually a follow from Andrew's Amazon story, and anybody who's ever published online should keep a regular eye on Amazon, just to see if their name turns up. Because I found, much to my surprise, that a book review I published in the Journal of Australian Studies online, was available on Amazon for sale. And fortunately what Amazon have, is the little sort of comments, you know, you can comment on this book. So I commented, 'This is a breach of my copyright. Please destroy this immediately'. [audience laughs] ‘This is freely available at the following url'. And strangely enough it disappeared.

 

Question: 

Why don't writers and artists publish and sell through their own payment system? For example, why doesn't Andrew do some back reviews about the Venice Biennale, and publish them -- use PayPal to fulfil the payments?

 

Answer from Andrew Frost:

I've never, ever actually considered doing that. The blog has had a PayPal button on it for four years, and I think we've had three or four donations in that time.

 

Comment from Zoe Rodriguez:

Can I suggest that for users of copyright content and for owners of copyright content, that often that very transactional, really one-to-one dealing in downstream users of their works once they've being published, aren't really efficient. And that's why they don't do it because of what Andrew's just said to you. That's the whole reason CAL exists. It would be totally onerous and burdensome if every time a school wanted to use any copyright work, they had to go to every single copyright owner. Similarly for the copyright owners, if every time a school wanted to use one page or two pages of their work, they had to negotiate an agreement with that school -- absolutely unworkable. Administratively, totally inefficient.

 

There might be some people who manage to do it, and online seems to be perhaps a way that that could develop. But it's CAL's experience that people like us to manage those rights because they don't have the time. And we're here to create efficiency.

 

Question from Joanna Mendelssohn: 

So there's the 'Long Tail' theory -- does anyone know about that -- which is selling things over time so they might have very small residual sales, but it happens over a long period of time. So eventually you make money. Also isn't the internet a global audience, I mean a bigger audience for those sales? I guess that's what Cory Doctorow's attempting with his books. But I just wonder if anybody's tried it in Australia?

 

Answer from Zoe Rodriguez: 

I could tell you that under CAL licences, for some uses of our members' works, some of the collections, people have phoned up and said, 'Surely my works have been used. I'm published all over the place'. And you go in, you check up their account, and there might be $14 that's been collected over three years from different distributions. We wait 'til they've accumulated $50 before we'll make a payment automatically. If they demand that $14 of course we pay it. But it costs more to send that sort of amount out, than we collect for it. So it's not efficient.

 

Answer from Tamara Winikoff: 

Often, as has been said earlier in the day, artists are not in a very powerful negotiating position, and can often be required to sign -- as Andrew's example showed us -- to sign contracts which are actually disadvantageous to them, but may even be in contravention of copyright law. In that case, presumably the contract prevails?

 

Answer from Zoe Rodriguez: 

There has a long judicial enquiry into copyright and contract, and whether the Copyright Act trumps a contract or a contract, the Copyright Act. I don't think that we finally decided in Australia where you have one at play and the rights owner doesn't quite get it. However all those default positions over ownership, you can not [unclear]  [00:06:07.00]  them through contract. That's for sure. And I think then you're leading to a next thing about the unfair bargaining power. That's another reason that CAL and other collective agencies exist, because we are in a negotiating position that would be better than our individual rights owners would be. And I'm thinking back to copyright and contract. I suppose we say, then contract trumps the act.

 

Question [for Andrew Frost]:  

In terms of having the blog, did you have visual material up there, so you had images of artists work -- and how did you deal with getting fees for that or permissions, or because it was a blog and you weren't earning any money, were you free to use, because it's promoting people's work?

 

Answer from Andrew Frost:  

For a very long time we always wrote to the artist or the gallery for permission to use the work, and that permission was granted in every single case except one. And I'm talking probably hundreds of examples. It became so time consuming that we felt fairly confident under fair use provisions that we could use it, and operate it on the basis that if anyone objected, we would remove it. And no one ever did.

 

Question [for Andrew Frost]:  

With your series on ABC TV which is a great thing to see -- just out of interest, was it yourself or the ABC in terms of -- I think each series was three episodes -- which, whilst it's a great thing to have on TV, seems to be quite short. Was that the ABC's decision? I can't see why they couldn't have funded more episodes and see more of it, you know, keep it going?

 

Answer from Andrew Frost: 

The answer to that is that the length of the series was determined by the number of Tuesdays in a month that weren't occupied by Jennifer Byrne and the Book Program [audience laughs].

 

It's a really complicated answer. There's a series of fiefdoms within the ABC who have control over the schedule, and timing, all that sort of stuff. And Sunday Arts on Sunday afternoon is sort of their traditional flagship arts show. They developed Tuesday night to 10 o'clock as a timeslot. And the first series of 'The Art Life', we were approached to find out whether we were interested in putting together ideas, a proposal for a series of some kind, which we did. But then it took 18 months to go from initial conversation to actually shooting it, because the time slot wasn't available.

 

So if you can imagine all those, like, there's 5,000 people who work for the ABC, all vying to get their programs on television. There's only so many hours in a broadcast day when anyone's probably willing to watch, let alone actually get your space on the show.

 

They have had a much more broader and I think more all-encompassing kind of approach to creating new arts TV. Now I don't want to be promoting the ABC here, but to give them their due, over the last two or three years I think you would agree that there has been a much higher visibility of arts on the ABC, not just in 'The Art Life' but also in Marcus Westbury series, 'Not Quite Art'. Also in a whole slew of half hour documentaries they've made on various artists. Theme shows like the 'Anatomy' series that was on recently, and so on.

 

Having not ever made any television before making the first series, it's just been a huge learning curve -- and getting an idea of how to use the form and what you can do within the constraints of both the ABC, and the program, and the half hour format, and all that kind of stuff.

 

So to answer your question, there is a chance within the next 18 months or so. There will be another series of The Art Life, and there may even be hour long episodes. But it all depends again on programming, and all of those weird inconsistencies. And all I can say to you is that if you value what we've done, write to the ABC and tell them. You would not believe how much good that can do. If you like something you see, send them an email and tell them.

 

Comment from Tamara Winikoff: 

The Art Censorship Guide was funded by CAL from that fund that Zoe was talking about it, apart from me wanting to thank CAL, is that we actually tried to scope what the possibility of getting funding for this document might be. And from every other funding agency, both public and private, people said, 'Gosh, it's a great idea, but we feel it'd be a bit uncomfortable for us to be associated with it' So, good on you, CAL.