Loomio
Tue 27 Mar 2018 7:25AM

CultureBanks®: Forum/Meetup

LM Liam Murphy Public Seen by 114

A Meetup group based in Norfolk for creatives who want to think about their work as part of a cultural commons and enhance their earnings potential. https://www.meetup.com/CultureBanking-Norfolk/

LM

Liam Murphy Wed 6 Jun 2018 11:01AM

Feedback from CultureBanking Meetup on 31st May at Friends Meeting Hall, Norwich:

It was felt by all that what CultureBanking actually IS needs clearer explanation. As it's not possible to move forward without a standalone answer to this, I have resolved to try to finance/resource the creation of a short graphic video to explain the process for www.culturebanks.com, but for now I have composed a 4 step explanation below which is followed by a real scenario which was discussed in the Meetup:

ALL COMMENTS WELCOME!

(begins)
4 steps of CultureBanking®: (Commons Based Peer Production)

  1. Work is CultureBanked®:

Artist/rights holder puts a ‘work’ into ‘common stock’ by (a) using a process such as this: https://www.registeredcommons.org/about and (b) attaching a Peer Production or ‘CultureBanked®’ license. This opens a ‘Culture Banking Account’.

  1. CultureBanks® creates this as a distributed ledger of common stock ‘rights’ which can be collectively accessed and used by the public - for personal or commercial use - provided they adhere to CultureBanking® (Peer Production) terms...

  2. CultureBanks® also holds a fund for contributions made to enable its registration and management of common stock hash codes, time-stamps and incomes. ( I realise this is a complex undertaking - at first just creating the legal precedent and relying on honesty with later collections potential will suffice. The reason it’s ‘CultureBanks® plural is that this may be best done in a distributed way by users around ‘commons of interest’ - see 'Tony and David' example below).

  3. An 'Open Coop' is established to manage and administer the funds or ‘CultureBanks®’ using ‘Open Value Accounting’ methods (eg, open collective.com).

--
A real proposal was made by two artists (one a community theatre producer and one a professional visual artist): David suggested he would be having a ‘cul’ of paintings. This might involve disposal of much material. He explained that this was a very personal process for him and that he would be reluctant to just ‘give this material away’. Tony suggested if he would donate, or sell to him, he might hold an auction of the works to finance some of his community theatre work: We discussed how this arrangement might work under a peer production or CultureBanking agreement:

The way this might have worked in our ‘Tony and David’ example is that David (after much soul searching!) gave Tony 20 paintings to enter into an auction under a CB® license. The license stipulated that Tony could keep 50% of the sales value for his ’Local Theatre Commons' and return 50% to David. 5% from the incomes of each would return to CultureBanks® ('The Bank’). Any future rights would also be CultureBanked® (‘Banked’) and so if any other users wanted to co-produce, say, cards and prints, from the art work, they would be free to do that, paying agreed fees to ‘The Bank’, from which the Local Theatre Commons may withdraw (for an agreed time) according to its account balance. This arrangement may last for up to 70 years according to copyright law or as agreed.

Note:

Creative Commons licensed goods could be included in this stock (there is a massive opportunity currently with Flickr’s sale etc.), provided that some legal adjunct or schedule was created and signed by CB rights holders which would create an additional clause that no platform extracting private or shareholder profits, or which was not co-owned by licensors or ‘users’ would be permitted to carry the stock or benefit financially from it, unless payment was made to the commons or CultureBanks® under agreed terms. This might encourage the formation of platforms which respect Creative Commons and monetise them…