Thank you for the VARA links. Interesting reading. I worked for so many years in Hollywood under the TV studio system, that the notion of retaining rights to the work I produced is alien to me; I simply have no rights, unlike a novelist, screenwriter (under certain circumstances) and, so it seems, a fine artist. Well and good.
I still think there's room to make this issue of display for non commercial use easier for patrons, so I'm going to pursue it. Stop listening when you're bored with me :-)
It seems to me, wearing a patron hat, that I would be happy to exchange droite de suite (a piece of any profits made on resale--royalties, if you will) for permission to post on a website, or use an image of the work to actually sell it. I think it's also reasonable to give an artist the right to terminate our agreement if he/she doesn't like where the image is posted.
With that in mind, on future ACEO's that I post, I am going to include wording that indicates that a blanket non-commercial license is available should a patron want it. Upon inquiry, I'd make that license available to ship with the work when it sells. Included in that license will be a contract for droite de suite of 25% of any future profit on the work (however that is defined) in exchange for permission to display and use the work in a non-commercial way.
There's obviously lots of room for personal tailoring here, but my point is, as artists we may as well set the terms under which we permit display of our work up front. Because the reality is, not many here are going to spend the money to litigate me placing my collection of ACEOs on a website for copyright violation. $10 sale, $10,000 lawsuit. As a practical matter, these things are pretty much out of our hands when we ship the art.
So, I'm suggesting a friendly way of framing this "conversation" with patrons before the fact. Artists can make such an agreement seem like a real win for the patron. Remember, they are customers, and one still wants to develop a business even whilst protecting ones rights.
Ok, that's all I'll say on this now. If no one else thinks this is worthy of further discussion, I'll lie down. 🙂 But if you do, I think we could benefit by discussing ways to come up with a release that is reasonably boilerplate looking, with room for us as individual artists to custom make it to our liking.
Cheers!
Thom
