A/HRC/23/34 challenge for artists is to enjoy freedom including from their sponsors, whether State or private. (a) Restricted access to State support and cuts in financial support 71. State cultural policies need to take artistic freedoms into consideration, in particular when establishing criteria for selecting artists or institutions for State support, the bodies in charge of allocating grants, as well as their terms of reference and rules of procedure. The system in place can help to avoid undue government influence on the arts. 72. Reconciling public intervention and freedom is not an easy task. The pivotal factor is ensuring that the system as a whole is neutral. In this regard, policies developed on the basis of a “principle of pluralism” may be worth exploring as a good practice.44 The “arm’s length principle”, whereby independent experts, in particular peers, are mandated for a limited time period to allocate funds and grants, also seems a good guarantee against undue political influence. Another way of supporting the arts without interference with regard to content is through improving the social status of artists, in particular their social security, which seems a widely shared concern amongst them. 73. Criticism over publicly funded artworks made by Government, Parliament, or any group, remains part of the debate. However, financial cuts and harsh criticism against cultural institutions or specific artworks may also be a cover for censorship. 45 As one observer stresses, “When state authorities threaten to withdraw financial support from certain cultural institutions while giving preference to others whose political views are closer to their own, they are engaging in a violation of freedom of speech.”46 “Market censorship” (b) 74. Private art institutions may enable critical, unconventional, controversial and “avantgarde” art works to be displayed or performed. However, the adverse consequences on artistic freedoms of the increasing weight of corporate sponsorship need to be assessed. Cultural producers and artists refer to the existence of a “censorship by the market”, arising in particular when cultural industries are basically market-oriented, public funding is under pressure and alternative distribution is minimal. 75. The following are of particular concern: (a) corporation consolidation within all branches of cultural production, which frequently results in de facto monopolistic control; and (b) the incorporation of media, arts and entertainment holdings into corporate empires, and their impact on artistic freedoms and on people’s access to the arts. 47 Whole chains of production of artworks, in particular in the area of music and movies, are controlled from creation to distribution by particular corporations. Companies may have control over bookstores, concert halls and cinemas. This may lead to situations where, for example, music bands’ protests against war plans resulted in their songs being removed from hundreds of radio stations controlled by a media conglomerate, very large consumer retailers censoring any CD labelled “Parental Advisory”, and musicians and record companies agreeing to create a “sanitized” version of lyrics for particular megastores. The recent refusal by a major private digital distributor to publish an e-book containing several photographs of nude hippies is another example. 48 The drastic reduction in the number of independent book and music stores in comparison to chain and megastores, which “have 44 45 46 47 48 16 Céline Romainville, p. 10; submission from Romania. Submission from the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) . Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Project Democracy: Fighting for the Ground Rules, p. 15. Robert Atkins, Svetlana Mintcheva, Censoring culture, op. cit., p. xix. Submissions from Denmark and the Council of Danish Artists.