Another Stupid Rant
What a tangled web we weave when we first practice bureaucracy.
I think that one of the key career skills that the Savannah College of Art and Design is trying to teach me is to navigate wholly unnecessary bureaucracy. They touch on it in classes, but they know that the best way to teach someone something is to let them experience it. Therefore they have created twisted hoops made up of incomprehensible paperwork and endless strings of signatures from people you will never, ever meet for us to jump through. Face to face civility is of course out of the question.
What I hate is that I plan on adding to it all by issuing an official contract with two solid pages full of small typed legal clauses with every free-lance deal I broker. Unfortunately, we live in a world governed by the few truly evil people that are our neighbors. We can't trust them. They will steal our pants off our asses if we don't stay vigilant. For instance, if I don't have a two page legal contract, many publishers would be more than happy, verbal agreement or not, to use my artwork and pay me absolutely nothing and give me no credit. Some might claim that they own the intellectual rights of my work and then sue me if I use it without their written consent. These are the sharks that I hope to gain a decent living from. To protect myself from the bad ones I have to protect myself from everybody. And that includes you.
© 2005 all rights reserved by Steve Haske.
I think that one of the key career skills that the Savannah College of Art and Design is trying to teach me is to navigate wholly unnecessary bureaucracy. They touch on it in classes, but they know that the best way to teach someone something is to let them experience it. Therefore they have created twisted hoops made up of incomprehensible paperwork and endless strings of signatures from people you will never, ever meet for us to jump through. Face to face civility is of course out of the question.
What I hate is that I plan on adding to it all by issuing an official contract with two solid pages full of small typed legal clauses with every free-lance deal I broker. Unfortunately, we live in a world governed by the few truly evil people that are our neighbors. We can't trust them. They will steal our pants off our asses if we don't stay vigilant. For instance, if I don't have a two page legal contract, many publishers would be more than happy, verbal agreement or not, to use my artwork and pay me absolutely nothing and give me no credit. Some might claim that they own the intellectual rights of my work and then sue me if I use it without their written consent. These are the sharks that I hope to gain a decent living from. To protect myself from the bad ones I have to protect myself from everybody. And that includes you.
© 2005 all rights reserved by Steve Haske.
posted by Stephen "Steve" at 11/30/2005 04:59:00 PM
3 Comments:
I would totally use and abuse and not pay you. That reminds me. I need to get my diabetes tattoo this winter. I figure I'm 27 now so I'm old enough to have thought it through over the last 10 years and I really really do want to have it. But the only thing stopping me is a really cool design. So I will send you a check for $10 if you design a cool medic alert design that also says "diabetic" in it. I'll email you a picture of what I am kind of looking for. And marigold could try too! I'll send $10 dollars to each of you if you can each come up with 3 designs and then I can just pick which one I want. Isn't that I good idea? Look, you are a paid artist!
Posted by mandypants
I think that life is full of wholly unnecessary bureaucracy. This is how bureaucrats ensure their jobs. Who is going to create and type up those forms? It's their security. They make themselves necessary.
Posted by robin
I totally agree...the project I'm supposed to be on at work now is being held up because the parties involved can't agree on line 1057 of clause 632.6...the project managers are literally emailing one paragraph of legal nonsense back and forth, changing one word each time.
But guess what? it was an issue that was unresolved before everything went ka-blooey after Katrina, and we totally did get screwed on the fee!
Moral of the story is always check line 1057 of clause 632.6
Posted by sara