Why pay for it when you can get it free?

One man's prudent financial management
is another's lack of a spirit of generosity ...

"Rolling Stone: Obama Hits Up Designers to Work for Free -- On Jobs Poster" is the striking headline of this article by Ken Wheaton on the Ad Age Blog, kindly drawn to my attention by Creative Barcode's ever-attentive Maxine Horn. The essence of this piece is that Rolling Stone, the now veteran title which supplied both good taste and attitude to a generation of college students in the 1960s and 1970s, has criticised the Obama for America movement for turning to unpaid crowd-sourcing for a jobs poster. The original piece states, in relevant part:

"The Obama campaign has more than $60 million cash on hand. In an economy this bad, you'd think a presidential campaign that flush would be happy to pay good money for a talented designer to create a campaign poster. But the folks at Obama campaign have taken a page from the Arianna Huffington book of economic exploitation and called on "artists across the country" to create a poster ... for free. 

And here's a bit that might strike a sour note with many ad-agency folks out there: Even if you don't win the contest, Obama for America, according to the fine print, owns your intellectual property".

Wheaton concludes with the observation that

"members of the design and ad community did a great deal of free work for Obama in 2008. But at the time, [Obama] was selling hope and change to people eager to buy. With too much of that change going in the wrong direction, this time they're eager to get paid--especially if the campaign in question is sitting on a war chest that makes it "the 1%" of the political field."

Prudent IP managers are probably nodding their heads in approval at the notion of Obama for America controlling the IP rights of losing designers as well as winning ones, to avoid any of the hassles and embarrassments of allegations by losers at a later stage that any part of their designs have been appropriated in whole or part for campaign purposes -- but wouldn't a short-term exclusive licence to use for the purposes of the campaign be just as efficacious, and create a good deal more goodwill? And wouldn't some sort of prize or compensation send out a positive message concerning the value placed by the Obama administration on the creative industries?

But the last word goes to Maxine:

"The same happens in the UK where public sector in particular often insists not only in speculative creative work to be submitted in tenders but also that IP rights are assigned to the commissioning government agency as a condition of tendering, irrespective of whether the contract is awarded or not. This is largely a stipulation only applied to the design, advertising and architecture sectors

How can we have an IPO office which spends millions of tax-payers' money on encouraging SMEs  to protect and exploit their IP and for which it gains revenue -- if other government department take IP off of the same SME sector through its unfair procurement policies?

And likewise how can the government stand on platforms and take PR plaudits for crowing about the value and growth of the creative industries when they themselves are stifling growth and potentially damaging the same sector through unfair procurement policies?

It’s surely got to change!".