by Adam Huttler, CEO of Fractured Atlas From March 1, 2017 through August 31, 2017, I’m going to be stepping away from all day-to-day Fractured Atlas management responsibilities. We’ve taken to calling this my “sabbatical”, but to be honest I kind of hate the term.

Clockwise from top left: Sarah Carson, Sriram Emani, Erica Taylor, Jess Peterson. Event featured Adam Huttler and Courtney Duffy as panelist and moderator, respectively by Courtney Duffy, Robert W. Deutsch Arts & Technology Policy Fellow at Fractured Atlas What better day than February 14 to celebrate our love for creative entrepreneurship? Last Tuesday, Adam Huttler and I joined four arts entrepreneurs for a Capitol Hill panel hosted in conjunction with the Congressional Arts Caucus, and in collaboration with Public Knowledge. In addition to Adam, our talented panel consisted of the following entrepreneurs:

Credit: Tim O’Brien, Source Last month, I met a lovely white woman from Texas at a friend’s Women’s March afterparty. Our conversation didn’t begin with politics — she’s the director of a Montessori school and avid biker, I’m an education policy hobbyist and avid biker — so things were going well. And then, out of the blue, she makes a casual comment about wishing she didn’t have to make the trip to Washington to protest.

14 Unabashedly Feminist Artists and Groups

Searching for purpose in our work and life Me and my mom Today would have been my mom’s 68th birthday. Instead, my family lost her four years ago to brain cancer. Near the end of her life, my parents were preparing to retire and downsize to a smaller home. As an apartment dweller ever since I graduated from college nearly 20 years ago, I had more than a handful of boxes containing my belongings still stashed in their basement all these years later. I began that rite of passage where one needs to reduce their entire pre-adult existence into a small box that will fit in the back of a small closet inside of a small New York City apartment.

by Courtney Duffy, Robert W. Deutsch Arts & Technology Policy Fellow at Fractured Atlas Source: Flickr Event will feature Founder/CEO as panelist and Deutsch Fellow as moderator Fractured Atlas has a history of supporting artist innovation and entrepreneurship — our mission is to remove practical barriers to creative expression, after all. We’re not alone: the arts and culture sector is a $699 billion industry, and arts-related businesses employ nearly 3 million American workers. In this spirit, we’ve teamed up with the Congressional Arts Caucus and Public Knowledge to sponsor a conversation on Capitol Hill in celebration of arts entrepreneurship (RSVP here) on February 14. I will moderate a panel discussion with five entrepreneurs in the arts space — including our own Adam Huttler — who have disrupted the worlds of fashion, music, technology, animation, and design. Over a catered lunch, the panelists will discuss the challenges they’ve overcome, as well as policy opportunities to bolster the creative economy moving forward. Joining Adam at the event are the following entrepreneurs: Sarah Carson, Founder and President of Leota Sriram Emani, Co-Founder and CEO of Raga Labs Jess Peterson, CEO and Creative Producer of Mighty Oak Erica Taylor, Co-Founding Partner of Tinsel & TWINE The event, which we are hosting in conjunction with Congressional Arts Caucus co-chairs Rep. Louise Slaughter and Rep. Leonard Lance, and in collaboration with Public Knowledge, will take place in Cannon House Office Building (Room 121) at noon on Tuesday, February 14. We’d love to see you there! Be sure to RSVP. Have questions you’d like our panelists to be asked? Post them on Twitter using #ArtsEntreLunch. You can find Courtney on Twitter @cduffy90.

Attention artists and arts organizations in New York State: the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) has posted guidelines for its 2018 funding cycle! Before I share Fractured Atlas’s timeline, let’s go over some important details about the application process and eligibility:

14 Artists and Creative Projects from, by, and for Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen The Statue of Liberty on Ellis Island in New York City President Trump signed an executive order on immigration which indefinitely banned Syrian refugees from entering the United States, suspended all refugee programs for three months and blocked citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries (Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen) from entering the country.

Here’s the good news. Your company has core behavioral values! Here’s the bad news. They might not be ones you want, ones you’re particular proud of, or ones you would print on a t-shirt even to wear on laundry day. Every organization — and every individual, for that matter — has core behavioral values. Values that define and drive the way we act, inform our work and decision-making, and signal to the world in a calling card of sorts, this is what’s important to us.

Source: keepwatchstayfree.org Lessons from the SOPA/PIPA Battle Are Relevant As Ever by Courtney Duffy, Robert W. Deutsch Arts & Technology Policy Fellow at Fractured Atlas On Wednesday, January 18, 2012, major Internet websites united to protest censorship and defeat SOPA/PIPA. Five years later, it’s as important as ever that we — both the arts community and the Internet community at large — rededicate ourselves to the principles of Internet freedom. Join the conversation on Twitter by using hashtags #InternetFreedomDay, #SOPA, and #PIPA. Remind me exactly what happened. Five years ago last week, more than 50,000 websites made their homepages dark, uniting to protest both censorship and threats to Internet freedom posed by two bills in Congress: the House version, the Stop Online Piracy Act (“SOPA”), and the Senate’s Protect IP Act (“PIPA”). Participating websites included such recognizable names as Google, Amazon, Reddit, Craigslist, Wikipedia, and more. The move made Congress take notice, resulting in the failure of both bills. What was wrong with SOPA and PIPA? While the bills claimed to protect copyrighted works from piracy, their enforcement mechanisms would have had a dangerous effect on the Internet power balance, promoting censorship. The proposal was essentially a “guilty until proven innocent” model — it would have been easy, for example, for an organization to claim copyright infringement against a competitor in order to shut down the competitor’s website. Even if the accused party was innocent, they would need to pay expensive legal fees to defend themselves. It’s important for us to note that we at Fractured Atlas believe wholeheartedly in copyright law, as well as the importance of artists being fairly compensated for their work. We simply felt strongly (and still do) that the solutions proposed in SOPA and PIPA were tremendously flawed and posed dangers to the constituency of artists that we serve. Did Fractured Atlas speak out against SOPA and PIPA? We’re proud to say that we did — in fact, we were the first major national arts services organization to take a stand. Adam Huttler, our founder and CEO, urged in a letter to Senate leadership to consider other solutions and avoid passing PIPA. We were soon joined by a number of other arts organizations, who together signed onto a second letter to Senate leadership. The coalition consisted of friends like Dance/USA, OPERA America, Theatre Communications Group, and Chorus America, among others. Our efforts were part of a large coalition of Internet defenders, large and small, that spoke out against this harmful potential legislation. Has anything major happened in this space between then and now? In February 2015, the Federal Communications Commission adopted strong rules to protect net neutrality. This victory was largely a result of yet another large-scale advocacy effort that caught the attention of policymakers — 4 million people submitted official comments in support of strong open Internet rules. What does this mean to the arts and Internet communities today? As has historically been the case when the D.C. power balance shifts to a new party, the Trump administration and Congressional Republican majority will put forth their own broadband policies. There is a strong possibility of new FCC commissioners overturning the net neutrality rules, as well as other rulings made over the last several years that could resemble the frameworks of SOPA and PIPA. As artists and Internet users, we must actively keep ourselves informed about these developments, and vigilantly defend an Internet that allows for continued creativity and innovation on an even playing field. Where can I find more information? A new Medium post called “Keep Watch, Stay Free,” is chock full of additional resources. You can also check out this video about the blackout, along with articles from TechCrunch and BoingBoing. You can find Courtney on Twitter @cduffy90, and join the conversation by using hashtags #InternetFreedomDay, #SOPA, and #PIPA. Courtney Duffy is the Robert W. Deutsch Arts & Technology Policy fellow at Fractured Atlas, a nonprofit technology company that helps artists with the business aspects of their work. To learn more about Fractured Atlas, or to get involved, visit us here.