By Ruth Vitale

Creativity entertains, inspires, challenges and amuses audiences across the globe. It gives rise to extraordinary works of art that enrich our lives, ignite social change, and provide millions of jobs. Creativity is the backbone of our culture and our economy.

At CreativeFuture, our goal is to educate and mobilize the creative community to speak up about the value of creativity in the digital age.

We embrace legitimate digital access to all our creative works where, when, and how audiences want them. Thanks to incredible innovations in digital distribution, the creative community is working every day to expand audience access to creative works through a broad array of new digital platforms and services.

These new, legitimate distribution business models expand audience access to content in ways that reward creativity and hard work.

But they are undermined by illegal pirate sites.

We’re not talking about a couple of kids in a basement – that’s a common misconception. In fact, nearly every pirate website operates to make a profit, and many of them make millions of dollars a year from others’ stolen creative works. It’s the people behind these websites and their funding sources that we need to focus on.

CreativeFuture’s goal is to unite our global creative community in this effort – from individual creatives, to companies large and small, majors and independents. Today we announced a large and growing list of Coalition and Creative Partners [press release].

We hope that you will join all of us in building a future that expands the reach of creativity and rewards hard work.

Ruth Vitale has been at the forefront of independent film production and distribution for 30 years, including as Founder and Co-President of Paramount Classics and as President of Fine Line Features [full bio].