[00:00.000 --> 00:00.720]  With culture.
[00:02.660 --> 00:03.640]  Where to start?
[00:05.100 --> 00:15.820]  I think I'll start with this little cartoon, a different cartoon than the one that you just saw, which if I had finished this in time would be at the beginning of all Sita DVDs, but it's not.
[00:16.000 --> 00:17.620]  You all have seen this FBI warning, right?
[00:18.480 --> 00:21.540]  Okay, well, here's our version of it.
[00:21.720 --> 00:22.780]  And I hope that there's sound.
[00:22.900 --> 00:24.860]  There should be sound coming from the laptop at this point.
[00:29.210 --> 00:29.630]  Oops.
[00:30.010 --> 00:30.290]  Hey.
[00:30.670 --> 00:31.090]  Boink.
[00:37.210 --> 00:39.030]  Copying is not theft.
[00:39.710 --> 00:42.430]  Stealing a thing leaves one less left.
[00:42.650 --> 00:45.110]  Copying, it makes one thing more.
[00:45.310 --> 00:47.150]  That's what copying's for.
[00:47.930 --> 00:49.690]  Copying is not theft.
[00:50.130 --> 00:52.810]  If I copy yours, you have it too.
[00:53.170 --> 00:55.490]  One for me and one for you.
[00:55.830 --> 00:57.650]  That's what copies can do.
[00:57.650 --> 01:02.970]  If I steal your bicycle, you have to take the bus.
[01:03.630 --> 01:08.510]  But if I just copy it, there's one for each of us.
[01:08.910 --> 01:11.010]  Making more of a thing.
[01:11.350 --> 01:13.870]  That is what we call copying.
[01:14.430 --> 01:16.690]  Sharing ideas with everyone.
[01:17.090 --> 01:20.570]  That's why copying is fun.
[01:30.730 --> 01:31.170]  Okay.
[01:31.990 --> 01:34.750]  So you all are welcome to use that.
[01:34.990 --> 01:35.550]  It is free.
[01:35.730 --> 01:36.490]  You can remix it.
[01:36.550 --> 01:37.790]  You can do whatever you want with it.
[01:38.970 --> 01:40.610]  Anyway, how do I make money?
[01:41.030 --> 01:44.770]  I will get to that in the second half of this long slideshow.
[01:45.350 --> 01:49.310]  But because they said I have 55 minutes, I'm going to show you the whole thing of.
[01:50.910 --> 01:51.310]  Okay.
[01:51.710 --> 01:55.750]  So this is a G, I don't know, a pedigree chart that I made.
[01:57.510 --> 02:00.490]  I'm of an age where a lot of people have children.
[02:00.570 --> 02:02.970]  I myself don't, and I'm not interested in that.
[02:04.390 --> 02:05.690]  But I've talked to a lot of people.
[02:05.810 --> 02:06.270]  Thank you.
[02:07.290 --> 02:09.990]  This is one of the... Other people will throw tomatoes at me.
[02:10.570 --> 02:15.770]  In order to understand people who do, though, I think a lot about, like, and I ask them a lot of questions.
[02:16.710 --> 02:23.030]  And one of the answers that comes up is, like, leaving a legacy and, you know, all my values are going to be passed on.
[02:23.190 --> 02:25.450]  And who I am, my identity is going to somehow be passed on.
[02:26.190 --> 02:27.810]  Artists have this approach to art as well.
[02:28.410 --> 02:29.510]  But I thought about it.
[02:29.710 --> 02:33.970]  And, you know, a kid has half of your genes.
[02:34.530 --> 02:36.290]  And the way I did this is just with fonts.
[02:37.170 --> 02:39.490]  So this font is half the size of this font.
[02:39.750 --> 02:43.130]  And then their kids will have half of those genes.
[02:43.410 --> 02:45.730]  And then their kids will have half of those genes and so on and so on.
[02:45.810 --> 02:48.870]  So as you go towards infinity, it gets pretty dispersed.
[02:49.870 --> 02:51.590]  Likewise, our ancestry.
[02:52.330 --> 02:55.390]  You know, I have half of my mother's genes, half of my father's genes.
[02:56.270 --> 03:00.990]  Less, again, with my grandparents and on and on back to, you know, way over here.
[03:01.910 --> 03:02.830]  Who knows, right?
[03:02.830 --> 03:06.790]  We can just, you know, I cannot track my own ancestry back to the apes.
[03:07.010 --> 03:08.350]  My understanding is that Mormons can.
[03:08.610 --> 03:09.430]  But I can't.
[03:10.290 --> 03:14.410]  I just have this sort of vague, like, well, this is everyone or the cosmos or something like that.
[03:14.590 --> 03:18.690]  So my idea is that the same is true of culture.
[03:18.910 --> 03:21.730]  The difference is that culture does not reproduce sexually.
[03:22.630 --> 03:31.630]  So this is a very liberal interpretation or this is a sort of gross, crude application of the metaphor to culture.
[03:32.190 --> 03:34.950]  But all strains of culture have heritages.
[03:35.530 --> 03:42.370]  And even today I've talked to people who have said, well, your intellectual property, if it's yours, if you made it, you own it.
[03:43.510 --> 03:45.990]  But there is nothing that's mine.
[03:45.990 --> 03:47.070]  I didn't invent anything.
[03:47.230 --> 03:48.110]  I didn't invent English.
[03:48.430 --> 03:49.690]  I didn't invent music.
[03:49.810 --> 03:55.070]  I didn't invent the musical idioms that I live in, which have evolved from other kinds of music long in the past.
[03:55.310 --> 03:57.050]  I certainly didn't invent the Ramayana.
[03:57.270 --> 03:58.670]  I have no business locking that up.
[04:00.370 --> 04:03.470]  I didn't invent, whoops, painting techniques or anything.
[04:03.650 --> 04:05.150]  All these things that have gone into my work.
[04:05.150 --> 04:06.110]  I did not invent them.
[04:06.230 --> 04:08.530]  All I did was recombine things that already exist.
[04:09.670 --> 04:15.370]  Because you're hackers here, I'm sure you notice there's an analogy with code, right?
[04:15.670 --> 04:22.350]  Like, you don't just, you know, spontaneously come up with a program that just exists in its universe by itself.
[04:22.350 --> 04:30.570]  You use existing languages, and for the program to have any relevance, it has to be able to work with existing things.
[04:30.710 --> 04:31.870]  And the same is true of culture.
[04:32.430 --> 04:34.790]  Culture that's completely original, nobody would understand.
[04:34.970 --> 04:35.630]  It wouldn't be in English.
[04:35.650 --> 04:37.170]  It would be totally incomprehensible.
[04:37.330 --> 04:39.090]  It would basically appear like noise.
[04:42.610 --> 04:46.410]  Anyway, this first part is about where Sita Sings the Blues came from and its ancestry.
[04:47.350 --> 04:51.010]  This is a painting of Valmiki, supposedly the author of the Ramayana.
[04:51.010 --> 04:53.110]  And for those who don't know, you know what?
[04:53.190 --> 04:58.210]  I think I should just escape out of this and show you the trailer for Sita Sings the Blues so we know what I'm talking about.
[04:59.110 --> 05:00.510]  That would be a good idea.
[05:03.530 --> 05:04.170]  Sita trailer.
[05:04.330 --> 05:06.050]  Okay, so I'm going to show you another clip now.
[05:06.230 --> 05:07.190]  Sorry, I should have done that before.
[05:08.170 --> 05:08.810]  Here we go.
[05:08.930 --> 05:09.810]  I hope the audio is up.
[05:11.310 --> 05:12.670]  But you know what Sita does then?
[05:12.870 --> 05:18.090]  How she actually is able to tell these people where she drops her jewelry along the way, right?
[05:18.090 --> 05:18.210]  Right.
[05:19.050 --> 05:20.870]  And that's how they were able to find it.
[05:21.370 --> 05:23.310]  It went all the way up to Lanka.
[05:24.450 --> 05:24.850]  Thousands of miles.
[05:24.850 --> 05:26.770]  How many times did she drop the jewelry?
[05:26.830 --> 05:28.730]  She was wearing a lot of jewelry in the forest.
[05:29.630 --> 05:30.390]  She lost jewelry.
[05:30.650 --> 05:31.110]  I mean, no.
[05:31.490 --> 05:36.450]  Remember, she's not wearing any jewelry because she left everything before she left Ayodhya and she came.
[05:36.590 --> 05:37.250]  Oh, she left everything.
[05:37.390 --> 05:37.790]  Yeah, she did.
[05:37.790 --> 05:37.950]  Right.
[05:38.030 --> 05:40.190]  She just came in her sanyasi clothes.
[05:40.370 --> 05:41.710]  Don't challenge these stories.
[06:52.400 --> 06:52.980]  Okay.
[06:54.980 --> 06:55.700]  Thank you.
[06:56.900 --> 07:00.840]  So that's the trailer for a feature film.
[07:00.960 --> 07:01.960]  It is a feature film.
[07:02.060 --> 07:05.000]  I completed the feature film in 2008.
[07:05.740 --> 07:06.520]  Anyway, back to this.
[07:06.600 --> 07:09.140]  It's based on the ancient epic, The Romayana.
[07:11.160 --> 07:12.300]  Do-do.
[07:12.920 --> 07:13.420]  Hello.
[07:14.240 --> 07:14.880]  Yes.
[07:15.120 --> 07:15.420]  No.
[07:16.040 --> 07:16.540]  No.
[07:18.720 --> 07:19.900]  Slide show.
[07:20.620 --> 07:21.200]  Okay.
[07:21.520 --> 07:28.400]  So the Romayana was, according to legend, written by Valmiki, the sage, thousands of years ago.
[07:28.660 --> 07:32.580]  Here he is being inspired by Brahma, the god of creation.
[07:33.680 --> 07:46.320]  And not only is Valmiki in the Ramayana and in Sita Sings the Blues, but also this whole style of painting is a sort of convention of art.
[07:47.500 --> 07:52.080]  In Sita Sings the Blues, one of Valmiki's many incarnations is this.
[07:52.180 --> 07:58.140]  This picture itself is a collage and it has like 20 different elements that came from different places in it.
[07:59.400 --> 08:07.600]  This is a canonical image of Vishnu, another god, rubbing his feet is Lakshmi, and there's Brahma again coming out of his navel.
[08:08.040 --> 08:11.020]  There are zillions of paintings like this.
[08:11.120 --> 08:12.400]  He's reclining on the Naga.
[08:12.740 --> 08:18.620]  This is just, you know, when people paint Vishnu like this, it is not considered copyright infringement.
[08:18.720 --> 08:20.360]  It's like, this is how you know it's Vishnu.
[08:21.360 --> 08:23.500]  And then here he is in Sita Sings the Blues.
[08:25.000 --> 08:27.820]  This is a Indonesian shadow puppet.
[08:29.100 --> 08:31.420]  There are shadow puppets in Sita Sings the Blues.
[08:31.640 --> 08:41.100]  The designs are generally hybrids of shadow puppets from Indonesia and Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, and India.
[08:42.760 --> 08:53.100]  And this is a poster for the television series of the Ramayana, which was made in the 1980s in India, and it has displaced older Ramayanas.
[08:53.300 --> 08:55.080]  It's become the canonical Ramayana.
[08:55.340 --> 09:07.340]  And that is a cultural phenomenon of itself, because it has actually displaced, like people now consider this the true Ramayana.
[09:07.540 --> 09:09.700]  If it's in the TV show, it's real.
[09:09.960 --> 09:13.220]  And if it's not, then it's, you know, a lie.
[09:13.220 --> 09:16.960]  And I've gotten a lot of hate mail from people saying, this never happened in the Ramayana.
[09:17.320 --> 09:20.660]  And then I have a stack of books where, yes, this happened.
[09:20.920 --> 09:21.860]  Or whatever.
[09:22.060 --> 09:24.700]  It's in pre-television Ramayanas.
[09:25.880 --> 09:29.720]  Here's a still from a clip from the show.
[09:30.480 --> 09:34.700]  And then, you know, I can show you these clips.
[09:35.000 --> 09:36.100]  I'll show you some better clips.
[09:36.400 --> 09:38.840]  In Keynote, these videos actually play.
[09:38.840 --> 09:42.120]  But Keynote turns out to be incompatible.
[09:42.420 --> 09:46.660]  Like, even my Keynote presentation hasn't played on Keynote computers.
[09:46.840 --> 09:50.900]  So this is a backup that I did in OpenOffice, which does not play video.
[09:51.420 --> 09:54.900]  Here's Hanuman, the monkey warrior, peeking over a wall.
[09:55.480 --> 09:58.160]  And now, actually, I will show you what this clip is.
[10:00.020 --> 10:01.140]  Stay tuned.
[10:01.820 --> 10:02.000]  Whoa!
[10:03.080 --> 10:04.080]  Command line.
[10:06.520 --> 10:07.080]  Okay.
[10:07.820 --> 10:08.180]  Hanuman.
[10:08.180 --> 10:13.480]  All right, so, from the TV show, which fortunately someone uploaded to YouTube.
[10:13.680 --> 10:15.860]  And by the way, the TV show is like 80 hours long.
[10:16.440 --> 10:17.800]  It's very, very stretched out.
[10:17.880 --> 10:19.140]  My film is 80 minutes long.
[10:19.320 --> 10:20.680]  So you can...
[10:20.680 --> 10:23.880]  That should be an indication of how my approach was different.
[10:24.900 --> 10:29.500]  But anyway, this is from the TV show that refers to...
[10:29.500 --> 10:31.380]  This is like a cousin of Sita Sings the Blues.
[10:31.600 --> 10:36.120]  Because they both, in some ways, were influenced by older texts of the Ramayana.
[10:36.120 --> 10:38.420]  And this is Hanuman Finding Sita.
[11:14.150 --> 11:17.830]  And this is Hanuman Finding Sita.
[11:20.590 --> 11:21.870]  Not as an actor.
[11:26.910 --> 11:27.990]  It goes on and on.
[11:28.310 --> 11:28.870]  So...
[11:28.870 --> 11:29.590]  Hi, Su is really helping us to breathe.
[11:30.070 --> 11:36.170]  So you are afraid and we're learning...
[11:36.170 --> 11:36.690]  And
[11:47.170 --> 11:51.950]  I can2, basically, Where the person has to run along.
[11:51.950 --> 11:53.390]  Do it in any way, or we're talking to you...
[11:53.390 --> 11:54.450]  That is exactly what they're looking at.
[11:59.340 --> 12:02.040]  Still in the direction of the Gen Fabian...
[12:02.040 --> 12:11.340]  And this is basically Hanuman peeking over a wall, looking at the pure and chaste Sita as she waits for her beloved Ram to rescue her.
[12:12.020 --> 12:18.280]  I had never seen the TV show when I made the equivalent bit in Sita Sings the Blues.
[12:18.720 --> 12:20.300]  But you will see similarities.
[12:20.740 --> 12:23.720]  Granted, the similarities go by after about five seconds.
[12:24.140 --> 12:25.780]  But just watch the beginning of this.
[12:25.920 --> 12:29.580]  Remember, I had not seen that other clip I just showed you.
[12:45.750 --> 12:49.770]  When night is creepin' and I should be sleepin' in bed.
[12:52.550 --> 12:56.530]  If you were peepin', you'd find that I'm weepin' instead.
[12:59.530 --> 13:02.950]  My lovin' daddy loved his baby again.
[13:03.290 --> 13:06.430]  Said he'd come back, but he forgot to say when.
[13:07.110 --> 13:08.690]  Okay, that goes on.
[13:08.830 --> 13:12.450]  But, you know, you've got the same Hanuman peeking over the wall and Sita's languishing there.
[13:13.050 --> 13:16.150]  And that was taken from the text.
[13:17.270 --> 13:18.650]  I will also show you...
[13:20.410 --> 13:21.730]  Robin, this is... Oh, yes.
[13:23.330 --> 13:23.770]  Whoops.
[13:24.230 --> 13:28.070]  When I did finally see the TV show, because I saw some of the... Whoops.
[13:28.530 --> 13:28.810]  Uh-oh.
[13:29.030 --> 13:30.430]  I hope that's not gonna do... Okay, good.
[13:31.870 --> 13:35.190]  I did finally watch it as research in the midst of this film.
[13:35.190 --> 13:40.950]  And there are... Ultimately, the TV show did end up directly inspiring some things and Sita sings the blues.
[13:41.270 --> 13:48.450]  For example, this gratuitous zoom, which is all over...
[13:50.210 --> 13:56.310]  And also the... The reaction shot sound effects.
[13:59.750 --> 14:01.150]  Gratuitous zoom.
[14:02.990 --> 14:03.530]  Gratuitous zoom.
[14:15.030 --> 14:17.810]  Uh... And there is a scene in Sita sings the blues that pays homage to that.
[14:18.650 --> 14:20.470]  Which I will show you.
[14:20.570 --> 14:24.890]  Okay, it goes on like that with more gratuitous zooms and sound effects on the reaction shots.
[14:25.890 --> 14:29.910]  Uh... And there is a scene in Sita sings the blues that pays homage to that.
[14:30.930 --> 14:32.030]  Which I will show you.
[14:35.260 --> 14:35.660]  Whoops.
[14:36.000 --> 14:36.220]  Hello.
[14:40.920 --> 14:41.320]  Hello.
[14:41.540 --> 14:42.900]  Oh, nice.
[14:44.340 --> 14:45.840]  Let's see if it works now.
[14:50.720 --> 14:54.040]  And so, Ravan also comes in and says, What can Ram do for you?
[14:54.160 --> 14:54.600]  Blah, blah, blah.
[14:54.720 --> 14:55.300]  That I can't.
[14:55.460 --> 14:58.120]  That I can't, but she's still... Ram will come here and...
[14:58.120 --> 15:00.680]  You still have one last chance, because once he comes here...
[15:00.680 --> 15:03.140]  You know, your ass is grass.
[15:05.420 --> 15:07.240]  I love you, Sita.
[15:07.580 --> 15:09.720]  You must be my wife.
[15:10.220 --> 15:10.760]  Never.
[15:11.220 --> 15:12.740]  I love only Rama.
[15:15.760 --> 15:19.240]  I am the chaste and virtuous wife of another man.
[15:21.100 --> 15:25.240]  I belong to Rama as the rays belong to the sun.
[15:27.540 --> 15:33.600]  Give me back to Rama, or you shall soon hear his mighty bow that resounds like Indra's thunderbolt.
[15:39.360 --> 15:42.720]  So, in some ways, that's the most Indian part of the whole film.
[15:44.600 --> 15:45.120]  Okay.
[15:45.120 --> 15:45.240]  Okay.
[15:45.900 --> 15:49.260]  Now, how can I find my slideshow?
[15:50.840 --> 15:52.040]  Ah, there we go.
[15:59.920 --> 16:00.360]  Slideshow.
[16:00.860 --> 16:01.860]  Thanks for your patience.
[16:02.980 --> 16:03.940]  Okay, I showed you that.
[16:04.080 --> 16:08.940]  Now, that song, Daddy Won't You Please Come Home, was sung by Annette Hanshaw.
[16:08.940 --> 16:10.800]  This is a picture of Annette Hanshaw.
[16:10.920 --> 16:14.820]  And she was a big radio star and recording star in the U.S.
[16:14.920 --> 16:16.260]  in the late 1920s.
[16:17.040 --> 16:18.040]  More pictures of her.
[16:18.200 --> 16:19.080]  She was actually quite big.
[16:19.200 --> 16:21.940]  By the time I heard her, she was extremely obscure.
[16:22.100 --> 16:28.580]  And I heard her on, you know, a record collector had old Annette Hanshaw records.
[16:28.580 --> 16:31.480]  And I happened to be in his apartment and he played them.
[16:31.660 --> 16:32.560]  I'd never heard it before.
[16:33.500 --> 16:34.560]  But she was big.
[16:35.360 --> 16:37.120]  There's a magazine story about her.
[16:39.080 --> 16:45.560]  And that, the reason I included that music was it tells the same story as the Ramayana.
[16:45.740 --> 16:56.960]  So this epic from thousands of years ago has this story and this old jazz from the United States, probably by people who had never encountered the Ramayana, was telling the same story.
[16:57.560 --> 17:01.580]  There were things going on in my own life that also reminded me of this story.
[17:01.840 --> 17:04.980]  So I was really struck by how universal this story was.
[17:08.480 --> 17:09.400]  And what?
[17:09.700 --> 17:10.140]  Oh, yes.
[17:11.380 --> 17:19.760]  So back to this picture, you know, things that are alive, they move through time, right?
[17:19.840 --> 17:20.740]  They move through us.
[17:21.140 --> 17:25.660]  You know, all the genes in history or whatever, the whole history of life moves through us.
[17:25.660 --> 17:27.800]  And then into the future.
[17:28.780 --> 17:29.980]  And same with culture.
[17:30.320 --> 17:35.420]  So our entire cultural history, bits of it, you know, we inherit them.
[17:36.360 --> 17:38.060]  In artists, they recombine.
[17:38.060 --> 17:41.660]  And then, if they are to be alive, they go out into the world.
[17:42.360 --> 17:43.800]  It's not a dead end here.
[17:44.200 --> 17:45.540]  They keep moving.
[17:45.640 --> 17:46.700]  They're just moving through us.
[17:46.780 --> 17:47.600]  They're bigger than us.
[17:48.660 --> 17:51.240]  And then they are going to be diluted and so on.
[17:51.940 --> 17:53.220]  They are not property.
[17:55.060 --> 17:56.080]  Property is dead.
[17:56.280 --> 17:57.260]  Things that you own are dead.
[17:57.480 --> 17:59.740]  And I'm totally cool with, like, owning this stuff.
[18:00.100 --> 18:03.320]  You know, owning this podium or owning this key chain or something like that.
[18:03.440 --> 18:04.140]  These things are dead.
[18:04.340 --> 18:08.880]  But things that are alive, when you own them, they can't move forward.
[18:08.880 --> 18:10.260]  Their life cannot continue.
[18:11.180 --> 18:13.200]  So Seed to Sing the Blues is not intellectual property.
[18:14.240 --> 18:22.720]  Unfortunately, those Annette Hanshaw songs that were made in the 1920s, those are property.
[18:22.720 --> 18:24.200]  Or at least they're locked up by copyright.
[18:24.500 --> 18:27.920]  They were supposed to be at the very latest in the public domain by the 1980s.
[18:27.920 --> 18:34.720]  But Congress has been retroactively extending copyright repeatedly so that nothing from that era is entering the public domain.
[18:35.280 --> 18:42.860]  And, in fact, as a rule of thumb, you can just assume that nothing that was made prior to 1923 will ever be in the public domain.
[18:42.860 --> 18:47.300]  Because, apparently, Congress has carte blanche to continually, retroactively extend copyright.
[18:48.900 --> 18:52.120]  Annette Hanshaw's voice, the copyrights on those were never renewed.
[18:52.120 --> 18:53.920]  So they expired earlier.
[18:54.500 --> 18:56.500]  So her voice is in the public domain.
[18:56.500 --> 18:59.020]  It's what she's actually singing that's locked up.
[18:59.480 --> 19:04.880]  And I was aware of this, but I did not realize how difficult it would be to actually clear the rights.
[19:06.460 --> 19:07.660]  This is the Constitution.
[19:07.660 --> 19:08.960]  You're probably familiar with it.
[19:09.040 --> 19:18.860]  There's a clause in the Constitution to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.
[19:19.240 --> 19:20.780]  That's what copyright is for.
[19:20.940 --> 19:22.980]  It's for authors and inventors.
[19:23.620 --> 19:25.160]  And it's for limited times.
[19:25.160 --> 19:26.900]  Now it's 2010.
[19:27.220 --> 19:28.880]  And who owns this stuff?
[19:29.100 --> 19:32.500]  Well, it's not writers and inventors.
[19:32.820 --> 19:33.660]  It's Warner Chappell.
[19:34.000 --> 19:35.000]  It's EMI.
[19:35.300 --> 19:35.700]  It's Sony.
[19:35.700 --> 19:42.780]  And in fact, if you really want to know who owns culture, you can go to sitasingstheblues.com slash license dot html.
[19:43.420 --> 19:47.560]  And we actually have a chart of who owns these things and, you know, what percent.
[19:47.560 --> 20:02.620]  So, for example, you know, any given song might have, like, three owners who each own, like, you know, one might own 17%, and one might own 80%, and one might own 12%, and it doesn't add up to 100%.
[20:04.280 --> 20:06.140]  And apparently that's not important to them.
[20:07.660 --> 20:09.020]  And by the way, you are free.
[20:09.160 --> 20:10.300]  Sita thinks the blues is free.
[20:10.460 --> 20:11.300]  The content is free.
[20:11.440 --> 20:20.000]  So you are welcome to, you know, you can duplicate DVDs that we have, or you can download it and make your own DVD and you can sell that.
[20:20.740 --> 20:22.400]  Sell to your heart's content.
[20:22.660 --> 20:30.940]  However, you must pay money for each copy sold to these entities, because the whole film is free except those old songs.
[20:32.880 --> 20:34.840]  It comes out to about $2 per disc.
[20:35.060 --> 20:38.920]  So anyway, that was a little clog in the life of the film.
[20:39.040 --> 20:47.560]  And actually, if I had been a good filmmaker, I would have just never made the film in the first place or censored the film.
[20:48.200 --> 20:50.000]  It's not legal to share for free, by the way.
[20:50.080 --> 20:54.720]  A lot of people think that I freed the film because I couldn't get licenses.
[20:55.160 --> 20:56.460]  I actually did get licenses.
[20:56.520 --> 21:03.060]  I ended up paying $50,000 plus the step deal, which means you have to pay about $2 a disc for each additional disc sold.
[21:03.820 --> 21:05.860]  There's a good incentive to give it away for free, right?
[21:07.420 --> 21:10.380]  But I did legally clear it and decriminalize the film.
[21:10.480 --> 21:12.620]  If I hadn't done that, it would be illegal to share for free.
[21:12.620 --> 21:25.860]  So as far as I understand, the difference between non-commercial copyright infringement and commercial copyright infringement is that non-commercial copyright infringement you can face up to five years in jail, and commercial you face up to ten years in jail.
[21:26.180 --> 21:27.080]  That's the difference.
[21:27.400 --> 21:29.560]  But yes, I had to pay through the nose.
[21:29.560 --> 21:46.120]  It was also about $20,000 in bargain basement legal fees for this, including lots of lawyers who are working pro bono, but it still came out to about $20,000 in transaction costs to pay $50,000 for work that was supposed to be in the public domain in the 80s.
[21:48.060 --> 21:48.700]  Oh, yes.
[21:48.880 --> 21:51.160]  So this picture is like, okay, now it can go out in the world.
[21:51.360 --> 21:52.700]  Now it is going out in the world.
[21:52.880 --> 21:53.960]  What are some things that happened?
[21:54.160 --> 21:55.340]  Well, things like this.
[21:55.520 --> 21:57.580]  This is what I would consider fan art.
[21:57.840 --> 21:59.940]  Somebody is selling this card on their website.
[22:00.180 --> 22:01.140]  Is this hurting me?
[22:01.260 --> 22:02.560]  No, I think it's sweet.
[22:04.420 --> 22:13.220]  Nobody has told me that they have not bought a Sita DVD or any Sita merch because they got this card from somebody else online.
[22:14.480 --> 22:21.020]  This is an article about a fashion show in Bangkok.
[22:21.680 --> 22:33.440]  So shortly after Sita's free release, some haute couture designer in Bangkok called his spring 2009 line, Sita sings the blues, and apparently played the movie on the catwalk.
[22:33.920 --> 22:35.480]  And they didn't need my permission.
[22:35.660 --> 22:38.880]  You can see that the clothes are not so nice.
[22:39.200 --> 22:44.460]  So we didn't, you know, if I'd like the clothes, I would have been like, yes, I'll help promote your clothes.
[22:44.620 --> 22:46.860]  But, you know, they're good for them.
[22:47.520 --> 22:48.520]  Does it hurt me at all?
[22:48.660 --> 22:49.780]  No, it doesn't hurt me at all.
[22:49.900 --> 22:50.580]  I think it's really cool.
[22:50.700 --> 22:52.200]  More people know about Sita sings the blues.
[22:54.180 --> 22:58.140]  This is a Reuters photo that I don't have permission to use, but I'm using it anyway.
[22:59.240 --> 23:02.500]  And this is a character from my movie.
[23:02.640 --> 23:07.080]  This is Ravana, which showed up in some festival in, I think, Hyderabad.
[23:07.380 --> 23:11.460]  Somebody made a giant, probably, paper mache sculpture of it.
[23:11.520 --> 23:12.900]  This is called the Festival of Laughter.
[23:13.900 --> 23:16.560]  I learned about this when somebody said, hey, look at this photo.
[23:17.060 --> 23:18.700]  And I think that's really cool.
[23:18.960 --> 23:19.660]  Does it hurt me?
[23:19.800 --> 23:20.900]  No, it does not hurt me.
[23:22.160 --> 23:26.480]  This is a poster of every single frame of Sita Sings the Blues.
[23:26.720 --> 23:28.860]  And this is a project of Bill Cheswick, who is here.
[23:29.420 --> 23:34.660]  He came up with this great way to make posters of every single frame of a film.
[23:35.040 --> 23:38.120]  The problem is that he can't do it without a filmmaker's permission.
[23:38.680 --> 23:49.740]  So we could be having these awesome film posters, but the process of actually getting the permission to make them is quite an obstacle to doing them.
[23:50.140 --> 23:53.840]  Luckily, you didn't need explicit permission for Sita Sings the Blues.
[23:54.160 --> 23:57.520]  The license I used on Sita Sings the Blues is a share-alike license.
[23:57.880 --> 23:59.740]  It is Creative Commons share-alike.
[24:00.300 --> 24:08.080]  And I'll just mention right now that a little peeve of mine is that people refer to seven different licenses as just Creative Commons licenses.
[24:08.480 --> 24:12.540]  And these are very different from each other, the licenses that Creative Commons offers.
[24:13.120 --> 24:18.240]  Many of the licenses that they offer are not compatible with each other, and most of them are not free licenses.
[24:18.420 --> 24:19.680]  Most of them are very restrictive.
[24:20.400 --> 24:29.300]  The share-alike license, which is what I use, is the closest cultural equivalent to the free software license to the GNU public license.
[24:29.660 --> 24:35.300]  And it permits and encourages any use, anything you want to do with the work you can do.
[24:35.380 --> 24:39.000]  There's only one restriction, which is you cannot prevent others from doing the same.
[24:42.260 --> 24:44.420]  This was a cool thing that came of it.
[24:44.820 --> 24:47.560]  There's a project, the Monkey Electric Bicycle Wheel.
[24:48.220 --> 24:51.080]  Star Simpson, who I've never met in real life, was working on it.
[24:51.560 --> 24:55.680]  And this is a, I guess, a strand of LEDs.
[24:56.220 --> 25:01.300]  When the bike, they put them on a bike spoke and when the wheel spins, it actually shows video.
[25:03.640 --> 25:07.580]  And they were just looking for moving graphics that would work with it.
[25:07.680 --> 25:15.740]  But of course, they could not use anything that had, you know, even Creative Commons stuff that had no derivatives or non-commercial restrictions on it.
[25:16.080 --> 25:18.360]  Luckily, Sita Sings the Blues didn't have those restrictions.
[25:19.140 --> 25:22.160]  I think it is awesome to have Sita Sings the Blues on a bike wheel.
[25:22.320 --> 25:27.960]  And in my in my happiest dreams, they would actually ship these things with Sita Sings the Blues on it.
[25:28.240 --> 25:29.800]  I don't know what's going to happen with that, though.
[25:30.140 --> 25:31.400]  But anyway, it's really cool.
[25:31.760 --> 25:32.820]  For me, it's inspiring.
[25:33.580 --> 25:37.260]  I would benefit not at all from prohibiting people from doing this.
[25:37.680 --> 25:45.740]  And even though they're not paying me directly, I am benefiting, well, just, you know, directly from just thinking it's really cool.
[25:45.920 --> 25:49.000]  And indirectly, it's beneficial to my work, getting my work out there.
[25:50.800 --> 25:55.440]  Now, I will tell you about how I actually get money doing all of this.
[25:57.380 --> 25:58.220]  Oh, cool.
[25:58.440 --> 25:59.540]  I'm doing okay on time.
[26:00.060 --> 26:03.080]  So this is the Sita Sings the Blues free distribution project.
[26:03.660 --> 26:06.200]  By free, what do I mean?
[26:06.340 --> 26:07.780]  I don't mean free as in free beer.
[26:08.080 --> 26:10.640]  I mean free as in free speech.
[26:11.200 --> 26:14.300]  This crowd is probably one of the few crowds who knows what I'm talking about.
[26:15.040 --> 26:18.000]  And the model is that content is free.
[26:18.580 --> 26:19.700]  Zeros and ones are free.
[26:19.840 --> 26:22.540]  And here's a river of zeros and ones.
[26:22.940 --> 26:25.300]  And, you know, the water flows.
[26:25.680 --> 26:26.760]  Life is nourished.
[26:27.060 --> 26:28.100]  Things stay alive.
[26:28.260 --> 26:32.180]  You know, if you close off water, you get stagnant water and mosquitoes and algae.
[26:32.400 --> 26:37.100]  So the more the water flows, the healthier it is, the healthier the environment is, and so on.
[26:37.300 --> 26:37.740]  It's free.
[26:39.280 --> 26:40.960]  Containers, however, are not free.
[26:41.560 --> 26:43.300]  Here are some examples of containers.
[26:43.560 --> 26:45.860]  You have a computer, a disk, a book.
[26:46.040 --> 26:47.340]  These are physical things.
[26:47.560 --> 26:50.320]  You know, these are things that you might consider dead.
[26:50.620 --> 26:55.280]  Like the content in them is alive, but the container is not alive.
[26:55.280 --> 26:55.940]  It's property.
[26:55.940 --> 26:56.600]  That's fine.
[26:57.420 --> 26:58.540]  They are not free.
[26:59.040 --> 27:02.480]  Economists also use the term rivalrous and non-rivalrous.
[27:02.480 --> 27:09.800]  So the zeros and ones, if the zeros and ones in your computer look like the zeros and ones in my computer, this does not hurt me.
[27:10.000 --> 27:13.160]  If you actually take my computer, that hurts me.
[27:13.300 --> 27:16.640]  But if the pattern on my computer, whoops, that's non-rivalrous.
[27:17.220 --> 27:21.480]  Everyone in the world can have that pattern on their computer and nothing is taken away from me.
[27:23.120 --> 27:30.680]  So we use the unlimited resource to sell the limited limited resource, or we use the non-rivalrous good to sell the rivalrous goods.
[27:32.340 --> 27:39.900]  Again, rivalrous goods being DVDs, pins, t-shirts, actual things, things that you can actually own.
[27:40.020 --> 27:41.880]  And when you own them, you can exchange them for money.
[27:42.360 --> 27:43.320]  Makes a lot of sense.
[27:44.120 --> 27:48.540]  The more the film is promoted, the more value those containers have.
[27:48.760 --> 27:54.620]  So if nobody had heard of Seat This Things the Blues, I would not be selling very many Seat This Things the Blues t-shirts or DVDs.
[27:55.700 --> 27:59.060]  Luckily, that all happens for free because I freed the film.
[28:00.200 --> 28:03.620]  At Seat This Things the Blues.com we have lots of links to where you can watch it.
[28:03.840 --> 28:09.040]  I do not host, I do not pay one penny for hosting the video files.
[28:09.720 --> 28:16.300]  It's posted on archive.org, it's on YouTube, people are bit torrenting it back and forth, but I don't have to actually control it.
[28:16.460 --> 28:18.380]  And that means I don't have to pay anything for hosting it.
[28:18.560 --> 28:23.360]  The decentralized distribution means that everybody who's sharing it is bearing that cost.
[28:25.760 --> 28:39.400]  Let's see, it seems the last I checked, which was I guess Tuesday, it's been downloaded almost 200,000 times from archive, almost 350,000 times from YouTube.
[28:39.880 --> 28:42.380]  And I have no idea how much it's been bit torrented.
[28:42.460 --> 28:43.700]  I know it's been bit torrented a lot.
[28:43.820 --> 28:56.900]  In fact, every time a new DVD distribution comes out, I check, you know, Google blog search and just Google searches and somebody thinks that, you know, they've pirated the DVD and they're sharing it now and isn't that exciting.
[28:57.360 --> 29:01.680]  But that's actually a major part of its distribution is people just sharing it with each other.
[29:02.000 --> 29:06.440]  I don't have any controllable metrics.
[29:06.860 --> 29:10.480]  Like I don't have any clear way to keep track of how much it's been shared.
[29:11.500 --> 29:17.080]  All I check is like how many hits when I, when I do searches on Seat to Sings the Blues, how many hits come up.
[29:17.180 --> 29:20.460]  And it's, it's been about this number, about 89,000.
[29:21.300 --> 29:21.900]  Is that right?
[29:21.980 --> 29:25.960]  Yeah, about 89,000, which is pretty good since it used to be zero, right?
[29:28.400 --> 29:28.760]  Money.
[29:29.420 --> 29:30.240]  I love money.
[29:30.360 --> 29:32.980]  So all those, all that promotion, I don't get any money directly from that.
[29:33.100 --> 29:35.760]  But that sort of sets the stage for how I do get money.
[29:38.140 --> 29:41.840]  Strangely enough, most of my money has come from direct donations.
[29:42.380 --> 29:45.180]  Now that's, that's a weird thing to say.
[29:45.340 --> 29:47.520]  That's not like a normal business model.
[29:47.660 --> 29:53.280]  It's not really business, but then art, art isn't really the same as commerce.
[29:53.460 --> 29:55.880]  I mean, I'm not selling something that I own.
[29:55.980 --> 29:56.920]  I am giving something.
[29:58.240 --> 30:00.260]  And my audience is supporting me.
[30:00.740 --> 30:04.240]  The more people that see the film, the more they can connect with it.
[30:04.360 --> 30:09.060]  And in many cases, people, people download the film for free, they watch it.
[30:09.440 --> 30:17.160]  And because I make it as clear as possible that donations are welcome, it's still a little bit difficult for them to find how to make donations, actually.
[30:17.380 --> 30:18.600]  But I wish it were clearer.
[30:18.740 --> 30:21.080]  I wish there were actually a donation button on the YouTube page.
[30:22.500 --> 30:25.340]  But a lot of them watch it and then say, I enjoyed that.
[30:25.440 --> 30:26.160]  Here's 10 bucks.
[30:26.380 --> 30:31.260]  That's what I would have paid for the DVD, or that's what I would have paid for a movie ticket or something like that.
[30:31.480 --> 30:33.820]  I think our average contribution is, in fact, $10.
[30:34.420 --> 30:36.760]  And this is the questioncopyright.org website.
[30:37.300 --> 30:44.020]  Questioncopyright.org is a nonprofit, and they are the fiscal sponsor of the Sita Sings the Blues free distribution project.
[30:44.280 --> 30:46.320]  So contributions are tax deductible.
[30:48.680 --> 31:04.240]  So when I made this slideshow, which was in March, I'd gotten about $50,000 in direct donations, which is really good because that's how much I had to pay to the corporate extortionists to decriminalize the film and make it possible to share it.
[31:04.580 --> 31:07.860]  And in order to do that, I had to take out a $50,000 loan.
[31:08.200 --> 31:10.040]  So the donations paid back that loan.
[31:11.760 --> 31:14.700]  This is the Sita Sings the Blues merchandise empire.
[31:14.700 --> 31:19.720]  And this is where we use the unlimited resource to sell the limited resources.
[31:20.020 --> 31:27.100]  So we have DVDs, and CDs, and little pins, and t-shirts, and tchotchkes, and things like that.
[31:27.720 --> 31:28.640]  Rivalrous goods.
[31:28.820 --> 31:30.000]  We sell rivalrous goods.
[31:30.320 --> 31:35.140]  It is true that anybody else could also manufacture and sell these rivalrous goods.
[31:35.680 --> 31:37.700]  Does anybody really have an incentive to?
[31:38.040 --> 31:39.260]  I mean, you can all do this.
[31:39.260 --> 31:44.080]  And when I initially went out and talked about Sita Sings the Blues, filmmakers would be like, what?
[31:44.140 --> 31:45.160]  You mean I could do this?
[31:45.200 --> 31:47.860]  I could just take your film and sell DVDs of it?
[31:47.980 --> 31:48.940]  And I say, yes.
[31:49.180 --> 31:50.100]  Are you going to?
[31:50.560 --> 31:53.720]  I mean, I can tell you what a pain in the ass it is to make DVDs.
[31:53.740 --> 31:54.740]  It's a real pain.
[31:55.120 --> 31:58.080]  There's not much incentive to do it, especially when they're already available.
[31:59.900 --> 32:01.140]  But it's fine if people do.
[32:01.840 --> 32:04.660]  Anyway, this is the standard edition DVD, which is $20.
[32:06.600 --> 32:11.540]  This is the artist's edition DVD, which is signed and numbered, and it's a nice package.
[32:12.600 --> 32:13.620]  Drink some water.
[32:13.900 --> 32:18.680]  People are basically paying for the physicality of it, because again, the content is free.
[32:18.940 --> 32:25.860]  And the packaging, and it says pre-downloaded DVD, so you're really paying for the packaging, and we make that very clear.
[32:26.140 --> 32:35.860]  But just as people pay money for limited numbered art prints, this is basically the packaging of the artist's edition is a limited numbered art print.
[32:36.720 --> 32:37.780]  And it's $100.
[32:38.340 --> 32:42.120]  And people say, well, what's the difference between the standard edition and the artist's edition?
[32:42.260 --> 32:43.300]  And the difference is $80.
[32:45.440 --> 32:46.040]  Okay.
[32:46.540 --> 32:48.400]  This is the creator endorsed mark.
[32:54.610 --> 32:59.230]  And you'll notice that mark on these DVD packages.
[32:59.670 --> 33:05.750]  This is a brilliant alternative to copyright that Carl Fogel came up with.
[33:06.550 --> 33:11.030]  And the idea is that, yes, everybody is free to copy and share the content.
[33:11.330 --> 33:21.050]  But if you are sharing money, or if you've somehow worked out a deal with the artist, usually involving sharing money, then you can display this creator endorsed mark.
[33:21.410 --> 33:26.430]  So when I negotiate contracts with Sita Sings the Blues, I'm not negotiating the rights.
[33:26.690 --> 33:29.690]  Everybody has the right to distribute Sita Sings the Blues.
[33:29.870 --> 33:31.550]  Everyone has the right to broadcast it.
[33:31.770 --> 33:34.890]  Everyone has the right to sell it and make derivative works, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[33:35.130 --> 33:38.610]  But I don't necessarily endorse all of those distributions.
[33:39.570 --> 33:50.090]  And if a seller, you know, a big motivation, it turns out, for people to buy things associated with the work of art is to have a connection with the artist.
[33:50.750 --> 33:53.530]  They want to know that their money is reaching the artist.
[33:53.890 --> 33:58.030]  I've heard over and over again, people say that they will not buy CDs in stores.
[33:58.030 --> 34:01.790]  They will only buy a CD from the band itself when they go to one of the band's shows.
[34:03.650 --> 34:10.410]  There is a sort of profound goodwill that audiences have towards artists that they like.
[34:10.530 --> 34:11.770]  They really want to support artists.
[34:11.890 --> 34:18.130]  That is, in fact, why people justify copyright is because they believe that's the only way artists can get money.
[34:18.650 --> 34:19.950]  It's not the only way.
[34:20.110 --> 34:21.250]  It's not even a good way.
[34:21.390 --> 34:25.670]  It's actually a good way for big corporations to consolidate their power.
[34:26.010 --> 34:29.310]  But it's really not working out as a way for artists to get money.
[34:29.770 --> 34:32.230]  The creator-endorsed mark works much, much better.
[34:32.910 --> 34:34.990]  And nobody's freedom is infringed.
[34:36.670 --> 34:46.410]  So, in March, I myself had made $45,000 from the store, the online store, merch sales.
[34:46.910 --> 34:53.310]  Sita has conventional distributors for the 35 millimeter film prints, which are heavy and a pain to manage.
[34:54.090 --> 34:55.790]  Shadow distribution is one of them.
[34:56.910 --> 34:57.650]  GKids is another.
[34:58.590 --> 35:01.550]  In France, there's a company called Eurozoom.
[35:01.930 --> 35:04.970]  In German-speaking Switzerland, it's Filmferle Gruppe.
[35:06.070 --> 35:09.750]  And so far, I have only gotten $3,000 from conventional distribution.
[35:10.170 --> 35:13.810]  Now, accounting is a nightmare for conventional distribution.
[35:14.950 --> 35:25.830]  It has actually shown... I mean, I know that I'm owed more than $3,000, but all of these distributors have not actually done their accounting yet to tell me how much.
[35:26.070 --> 35:29.550]  So, even though more is coming, I have no idea of how much it is.
[35:29.630 --> 35:30.690]  I couldn't put it in this report.
[35:30.950 --> 35:32.910]  So, so far, $3,000 for me.
[35:34.530 --> 35:37.630]  There are other DVD distributors, endorsed DVD distributors.
[35:37.790 --> 35:38.850]  Film Caravan is one.
[35:39.530 --> 35:42.990]  Their distribution is the one you get on Amazon.com.
[35:43.730 --> 35:46.870]  And they share some percentage with me.
[35:47.190 --> 35:52.350]  But the outlets that they sell theirs through also take percentages.
[35:52.690 --> 35:55.590]  So, if it's sold through Amazon, there's whatever Amazon sells it for.
[35:55.730 --> 35:57.370]  And Amazon takes, I don't know, 50%.
[35:57.370 --> 36:03.070]  And then the actual publisher of it takes, let's say, 50%.
[36:03.070 --> 36:04.650]  And then Film Caravan takes 50%.
[36:04.650 --> 36:06.510]  And then I get some percentage of that.
[36:06.710 --> 36:09.950]  So, with all the middlemen, what ends up reaching me is very small.
[36:10.470 --> 36:16.070]  This is one reason that filmmakers are in anguish and hate their distributors and things like that.
[36:16.310 --> 36:21.130]  It's not a big problem for me because this isn't... I have... I didn't give them a monopoly.
[36:21.770 --> 36:29.110]  So, my endorsed distributors don't have a monopoly and people are free to get DVDs directly from me and also make donations to me.
[36:29.450 --> 36:32.070]  And if my distributors screw up, it doesn't hurt me.
[36:33.890 --> 36:34.950]  This is IndiePix.
[36:35.050 --> 36:38.330]  That's a downstream distributor that Film Caravan made a deal with.
[36:38.550 --> 36:40.710]  So, again, another layer of middleman.
[36:43.490 --> 36:45.830]  Anyway, this is also an accounting nightmare.
[36:45.850 --> 36:48.010]  And I really don't know how much I'm owed at this point.
[36:48.150 --> 36:49.790]  But so far, I've gotten $5,500.
[36:51.610 --> 36:52.570]  Not sure how.
[36:52.870 --> 36:54.030]  It has been broadcast.
[36:54.530 --> 36:58.110]  It's broadcast several times on the local PBS affiliate, Channel 13.
[36:58.650 --> 37:00.490]  And it's broadcast in Australia.
[37:00.630 --> 37:03.330]  I don't remember the name of the Broadcasting Corporation.
[37:03.630 --> 37:04.370]  Maybe it's ABC.
[37:05.970 --> 37:12.910]  It's really hard to get broadcasters to broadcast it because they have their standard approach to contracts.
[37:13.110 --> 37:16.370]  And when something is free, they don't know what to do with it.
[37:16.630 --> 37:18.950]  Like, they just don't... it does not compute.
[37:19.350 --> 37:21.490]  They think that it has to be rights, right?
[37:21.610 --> 37:23.530]  Like, every contract they have is for rights.
[37:24.730 --> 37:28.370]  This is really frustrating because most of the time they just give up.
[37:29.490 --> 37:34.030]  So it's actually been broadcast a lot less because it's free.
[37:34.370 --> 37:37.430]  Now, in the future, I think it will be broadcast much, much more.
[37:37.570 --> 37:49.750]  But we're in this real gradual transition period where many distribution channels have no apparatus to accept anything free.
[37:51.870 --> 37:55.290]  So anyway, the most... I've only gotten $4,000 from broadcast.
[37:55.730 --> 37:57.590]  And these are voluntary payments, by the way.
[37:57.750 --> 37:59.470]  These are endorsed broadcasts.
[37:59.890 --> 38:02.610]  People can, of course, broadcast it without my endorsement.
[38:02.670 --> 38:05.390]  And I wish they would because I really wish the film would get out more.
[38:06.890 --> 38:07.370]  Books.
[38:07.770 --> 38:10.530]  Two different publishers approached me, big publishers.
[38:11.030 --> 38:13.190]  It would be really cool to do a movie.
[38:15.750 --> 38:30.350]  So they wanted to take the movie that you could do absolutely anything you want with, except restrict other people's ability to do the same.
[38:30.570 --> 38:33.090]  And they wanted to restrict other people's ability to do the same.
[38:33.190 --> 38:35.710]  So I did not sign any contracts with them.
[38:36.830 --> 38:39.310]  And I am still looking.
[38:39.590 --> 38:46.170]  I am still looking for a pop culture publisher that would do open licensed works.
[38:46.510 --> 38:51.410]  There are definitely publishers that do open licensed works, but they tend to be tech publishers like O'Reilly.
[38:52.670 --> 38:59.730]  It was like so close and yet so far trying to negotiate with the pop culture publishers.
[38:59.930 --> 39:00.850]  They're like way behind.
[39:01.490 --> 39:08.910]  It kind of breaks my heart that software and the rest of culture are so separate from each other, because they're really not that different.
[39:09.090 --> 39:09.710]  They're just culture.
[39:10.550 --> 39:14.730]  The same principles apply to software and the rest of the cultural world.
[39:14.890 --> 39:17.370]  But anyway, book has not happened yet.
[39:17.690 --> 39:24.770]  I should mention that all of the source files for Sea to Sings the Blues, all the animation files, which unfortunately I did in Flash, but can't change that now.
[39:25.390 --> 39:27.990]  Those source files are all on archive.org.
[39:28.130 --> 39:37.190]  So anybody who uses Flash, any animator, you are welcome to download those files, make a graphic novel, make a new movie, make a TV series, make a game, whatever you want.
[39:37.410 --> 39:38.910]  They're all vector files.
[39:39.130 --> 39:46.930]  Oh, and I should add that we would love it if those files could somehow migrate to an open format.
[39:47.170 --> 39:55.270]  So there are open vector animation programs or just vector still art programs, but Flash is not compatible with them.
[39:57.070 --> 40:02.710]  So man, a migration tool would be really, really good because I would like these things to be as free as possible.
[40:03.650 --> 40:05.270]  Anyway, no money from publishing.
[40:07.370 --> 40:07.770]  Zero.
[40:08.550 --> 40:09.470]  What is this?
[40:09.870 --> 40:10.270]  Festivals.
[40:10.690 --> 40:12.670]  So the film has been in a whole lot of festivals.
[40:13.390 --> 40:16.330]  And when it's in festivals, it means it can win awards.
[40:16.730 --> 40:31.970]  Now, when distributors take films, the first thing they do is they keep it from being at any more festivals, because they believe that those festivals would, you know, that people going to the festivals, you know, all those people would pay to see it in a theater if they just weren't seeing it in the darn festival.
[40:32.250 --> 40:34.770]  So they then keep the movie out of the festival.
[40:34.970 --> 40:36.030]  I didn't have that problem.
[40:36.330 --> 40:39.190]  And I've gotten more than $12,000 in awards income.
[40:41.170 --> 40:45.670]  This cinema, Central Cinema in Seattle, they did exactly what I wanted.
[40:46.070 --> 40:48.510]  This is what I hope the future looks like.
[40:48.650 --> 40:52.930]  They downloaded the film at high resolution, they projected it, they sent me some money.
[40:54.690 --> 40:58.730]  Apparently, their audience was happy to know that I was getting some of the money.
[40:58.870 --> 41:03.790]  So it made good audience relations for them to be sharing money with me.
[41:04.050 --> 41:04.830]  It was great.
[41:06.130 --> 41:08.310]  There are festivals that have screening fees.
[41:08.910 --> 41:10.570]  Other cinemas have done this as well.
[41:10.770 --> 41:14.770]  And it's simply voluntary sharing, like, you know, just share some money with me.
[41:15.550 --> 41:17.890]  And I've gotten more than $12,000 from that.
[41:18.350 --> 41:24.010]  So the grand total I've gotten is $132,000.
[41:24.430 --> 41:29.450]  Actually, more than that, by now, it's probably more like $135,000 for a free film.
[41:30.070 --> 41:34.890]  And most of that is what I call gift income.
[41:35.170 --> 41:37.350]  So donations and store profits.
[41:37.610 --> 41:46.210]  In the store, it's hard to say, I truly believe that people buy merchandise from the store, partly because the merchandise is cool, but partly because they want to support me directly.
[41:47.350 --> 41:50.870]  The screening fees were voluntary, and the awards were voluntary.
[41:51.070 --> 41:51.770]  Those were all gifts.
[41:52.510 --> 42:01.170]  It's the publishers, it's the theatrical distributors, and the DVD distributors, the people in the film business that treat it like a commodity.
[42:01.590 --> 42:02.790]  And I've gotten a lot less from that.
[42:02.930 --> 42:05.610]  Although it's probably actually grossed more as a commodity.
[42:05.610 --> 42:06.870]  I have netted less.
[42:08.150 --> 42:09.170]  Here's a pie chart.
[42:10.970 --> 42:14.850]  So, you know, much more gift than commodity income.
[42:15.870 --> 42:22.530]  Because the store income maybe couldn't rightly be called gift, I blocked it off.
[42:22.630 --> 42:25.190]  But still, it's a big chunk.
[42:25.350 --> 42:28.430]  Like most of the income I get is related to people's goodwill.
[42:29.290 --> 42:31.090]  And that is related to luck, right?
[42:31.270 --> 42:31.650]  Luck.
[42:31.810 --> 42:34.550]  People say, oh, you're just so lucky and this would not work for anyone else.
[42:34.730 --> 42:38.790]  Well, luck is about being in the right place at the right time.
[42:39.350 --> 42:45.550]  And the whole point of the free license is that the film gets into as many places at as many times as it possibly can.
[42:45.750 --> 42:50.070]  So my opportunities for luck are vastly increased just by the free license.
[42:51.410 --> 42:52.830]  This is a quote from Tector.
[42:53.010 --> 42:54.930]  Connect with fans plus reason to buy.
[42:55.410 --> 42:56.910]  That's how artists make money now.
[42:57.070 --> 43:03.230]  Not from hoarding the content, but from actually having good relations with the fans.
[43:03.490 --> 43:06.450]  And sharing your work with fans is beneficial for everybody.
[43:06.610 --> 43:09.070]  The fans distribute the work and they support you.
[43:09.250 --> 43:09.890]  It's awesome.
[43:11.290 --> 43:13.190]  I'm not even going to go there and you've seen this.
[43:13.910 --> 43:15.470]  I would rather go to questions now.
[43:15.750 --> 43:21.650]  So I'll just go to questions if anyone has any questions in our last 10 minutes.
[43:23.550 --> 43:25.010]  Yes, bring up the lights.
[43:26.250 --> 43:26.990]  Testing one too?
[43:27.370 --> 43:27.490]  Yeah.
[43:27.830 --> 43:27.970]  Okay.
[43:28.630 --> 43:30.950]  So two questions sort of mingle into one.
[43:31.950 --> 43:34.570]  When you started out, you said you got a $50,000 loan.
[43:34.750 --> 43:39.850]  How did you justify taking on that kind of risk when you had no idea this would be so wildly successful?
[43:40.830 --> 43:48.750]  And when it got to the point when you released it out into the wild, how did you get it out initially to the point where it would spread and become successful?
[43:48.950 --> 43:49.130]  Yeah.
[43:49.430 --> 43:53.250]  Well, the film actually cost me about $200,000 before that $50,000.
[43:53.750 --> 44:00.410]  And I justified that $50,000 because I needed people to be able to legally share the film.
[44:00.670 --> 44:03.390]  If I hadn't done that, people could have illegally shared it.
[44:03.490 --> 44:08.550]  And I know a lot of filmmakers who are just like, please, pirates, please just pirate my film illegally, please.
[44:09.250 --> 44:12.610]  But at this point, I was working with questioncopyright.org, the nonprofit.
[44:13.210 --> 44:25.650]  And I wanted to use the film to bring attention to these issues and making it legal to share and also documenting how difficult it was just to make this work legal to share was part of the project.
[44:26.010 --> 44:27.430]  I was just committed at that point.
[44:27.430 --> 44:28.350]  I had nothing to lose.
[44:29.950 --> 44:31.770]  And the other question was...
[44:31.770 --> 44:37.430]  How did you, when you had finished this film, get it out there and get people sharing it, get people talking about it?
[44:37.470 --> 44:37.770]  Yes.
[44:38.250 --> 44:45.530]  Well, for the first year, the film was actually at film festivals, but I couldn't legally share it any other way.
[44:45.530 --> 44:50.770]  So as soon as it was legal to share it... Well, actually, you know, I blogged about this whole process.
[44:51.150 --> 44:54.250]  So as I was making the film, I was posting clips of it.
[44:55.290 --> 44:58.570]  Then it got some attention in film festivals.
[44:59.770 --> 45:05.050]  But when it was time to really free it, I put it on archive.org and told everyone, just told everyone.
[45:05.270 --> 45:09.250]  And at this point, people who were interested in the free culture issues were following my story.
[45:09.730 --> 45:12.070]  And this was not anything manipulative on my part.
[45:12.270 --> 45:17.490]  I was just like, I cannot believe that the law is this bad.
[45:17.790 --> 45:18.770]  And I was writing about it.
[45:18.830 --> 45:23.070]  I was going nuts, because it really seemed like my only option was to kill the film.
[45:23.850 --> 45:25.230]  And I was very upset about this.
[45:25.350 --> 45:27.990]  So I guess I just organically turned into an activist.
[45:28.510 --> 45:33.070]  And we put it on archive and asked people to share it as much as possible.
[45:33.110 --> 45:34.790]  And they shared it, and they shared it, and they shared it.
[45:34.830 --> 45:37.090]  And it's just been this nice, steady increase.
[45:38.190 --> 45:38.730]  Thank you.
[45:39.650 --> 45:42.010]  Hi, I have two questions for you, ma'am.
[45:42.510 --> 45:46.650]  First, I wanted to know what you thought of Kickstarter and the idea of distributed patronage.
[45:47.150 --> 45:48.250]  Oh, it's a great idea.
[45:48.610 --> 45:57.650]  My thing with Kickstarter, though, is Kickstarter is good for projects that somebody would not make unless they had the money first.
[45:59.850 --> 46:07.810]  My motivation for making art, it's like, if there's something I have to make, I'm going to make it come hell or high water, I'll go in debt, you know, I'll steal, whatever.
[46:07.810 --> 46:14.750]  Uh, so having the money in advance, um, doesn't affect many projects.
[46:14.850 --> 46:16.490]  Although I have since thought of some.
[46:16.630 --> 46:23.690]  For example, I would really like someone to catalogue all my old newspaper comic strips so that we can share those freely as well.
[46:24.010 --> 46:25.330]  Um, they all need to be scanned.
[46:25.710 --> 46:27.370]  People are welcome to reproduce them.
[46:27.590 --> 46:28.790]  Uh, but they're a mess.
[46:29.190 --> 46:33.030]  Uh, and this is something that, you know, I've already done the art part of it.
[46:33.290 --> 46:39.070]  But yeah, I would love to raise money to pay somebody to, you know, scan all of those.
[46:39.230 --> 46:40.310]  So it would be very useful for that.
[46:40.830 --> 46:49.130]  And I was also wondering if you thought if, uh, more of the share like, um, license was used, if you might, if you think shovelware might come back, shovelware discs.
[46:49.490 --> 46:51.210]  I don't know what shovelware is.
[46:51.530 --> 46:58.250]  Oh, it used to be like walk out like a, a computer store and there'd be like a $2 thing with 50,000 programs on.
[46:58.790 --> 47:00.930]  I'm wondering if you thought it might happen with media too.
[47:01.570 --> 47:02.510]  I have no idea.
[47:02.830 --> 47:03.910]  I'll have to think about that.
[47:04.010 --> 47:04.990]  I'll have to look up shuttleware.
[47:05.530 --> 47:05.870]  Thank you.
[47:06.130 --> 47:06.190]  Yeah.
[47:06.290 --> 47:06.470]  Thanks.
[47:07.590 --> 47:07.730]  Hi.
[47:08.050 --> 47:09.550]  Um, it was a, it was an interesting talk.
[47:09.830 --> 47:16.150]  Um, I'm from a field where it's like, I look at stuff like this, but I'm in like the video game field, which is very much bloated.
[47:16.610 --> 47:28.230]  And my question is, is that especially considering that you had to actually like pay money to get it to the level where you could freely distribute it and stuff like that, that do you think that maybe the reason why a lot of companies don't use this is because,
[47:28.230 --> 47:32.130]  while you are definitely spending lots of money, you're, would be classified as small.
[47:32.290 --> 47:33.750]  Is it because it's like too big?
[47:33.930 --> 47:39.090]  Do you think basically these media, which has conglomerated, need to defragment in order to use something like this?
[47:39.250 --> 47:41.350]  Um, no, I don't think it's because of size.
[47:41.490 --> 47:49.310]  I think it's because, um, all of the businesses, all the media businesses that exist and have existed for the last couple hundred years have had monopolies.
[47:49.530 --> 47:50.750]  That's been their business model.
[47:50.950 --> 47:55.410]  So they are not able to even conceive of how they would do business without the monopoly.
[47:55.410 --> 47:57.650]  And they are not willingly going to surrender it.
[47:57.830 --> 48:02.890]  In many cases, the monopolies are harming these businesses, but they're still not letting go of it.
[48:03.490 --> 48:06.910]  Um, and yeah, this could, this could work for larger size things.
[48:07.210 --> 48:10.250]  I'm a, I'm an independent artist, so I know how it works for an independent artist.
[48:10.490 --> 48:16.530]  But, uh, the writer, Terry Hancock, who writes for Free Software Magazine, is actually working on a larger collaborative project.
[48:16.710 --> 48:20.210]  And he's writing a lot about how he thinks this can work for bigger projects.
[48:20.870 --> 48:21.310]  Interesting.
[48:21.590 --> 48:22.730]  Thank you, and good luck in the future.
[48:22.830 --> 48:23.070]  Thank you.
[48:25.690 --> 48:26.130]  Hi.
[48:26.490 --> 48:36.090]  Um, I'm interested in, uh, uh, your thoughts on, uh, Jaron Lanier's criticism of your movie in general, and Free Culture as a movement.
[48:36.290 --> 48:37.950]  Um, you said generalized criticism?
[48:38.390 --> 48:39.250]  Um, who's...
[48:39.250 --> 48:41.310]  Jaron Lanier... Oh, Jaron Lanier's!
[48:41.430 --> 48:41.850]  Jaron Lanier's!
[48:41.870 --> 48:43.330]  The guy thinks that you're doing things wrong.
[48:43.530 --> 48:44.810]  Oh yeah, I know, I know.
[48:45.010 --> 48:46.490]  Um, I disagree with him.
[48:48.210 --> 48:51.930]  Well, me, well, me too, but I'm just more, like, interested in your specific points.
[48:52.170 --> 49:03.770]  There was a WNYC, um, uh, I got to do a radio, uh, debate with him, but it was unfortunately only 15 minutes, and he didn't have any good responses to anything I said.
[49:03.910 --> 49:05.690]  And he said, oh, there's a cat on me.
[49:05.770 --> 49:07.390]  Oh, this cat's distracting me.
[49:08.050 --> 49:09.450]  Um, and you can look it up.
[49:09.590 --> 49:11.210]  Just look up Nina Paley, Jaron Lanier.
[49:11.450 --> 49:14.330]  But, um, no, I think... I don't... Thanks.
[49:14.530 --> 49:19.610]  I don't, uh, none of his arguments are making any sense at all to me.
[49:19.790 --> 49:23.710]  Um, and I guess you'd have to, you know, let's have a debate, you know?
[49:23.850 --> 49:25.470]  Bring him next year, and we can talk.
[49:25.670 --> 49:26.550]  We can have a panel.
[49:26.750 --> 49:28.110]  I would love to do that.
[49:29.430 --> 49:29.790]  Thanks.
[49:32.690 --> 49:45.910]  Uh, I've, uh, uploaded video to, uh, Google and, um, uh, Vimeo, and, uh, I've tried to, uh, to, uh, archive.org, but I have been unsuccessful.
[49:47.110 --> 49:50.530]  Uh, I'm not sure how else to ask the question.
[49:50.530 --> 49:51.710]  How did you do it?
[49:52.010 --> 49:53.010]  Oh, you mean long?
[49:53.310 --> 49:54.650]  The really long video?
[49:54.850 --> 50:10.870]  Well, I, I tried, I tried a one gig, uh, file, uh, uh, uh, I, I FTP'd it, uh... Yeah, if the files are really big, um, actually, uh, I sent a hard drive to archive.org, uh, because they knew about the project, and it was gonna take far too long.
[50:11.150 --> 50:20.610]  Because you can actually, um, archive.org hosts many different file sizes of Sita Sings the Blues, including the 150 gigabyte, or no, it's like it's 100 gigabyte.
[50:21.130 --> 50:22.370]  I don't know, it's a lot of gigabytes.
[50:22.810 --> 50:26.210]  Uh, the same file that I used to make the 35 millimeter negative.
[50:26.210 --> 50:29.910]  So you can get it at that quality if you're patient enough to download it.
[50:30.190 --> 50:35.770]  Um, I was not patient enough to upload it, so I just sent them a hard drive, and they were kind enough to upload it for me.
[50:36.090 --> 50:38.510]  Same thing with, uh, uh, YouTube.
[50:38.970 --> 50:45.070]  Um, somebody at YouTube wanted to put the whole film up for animation day, and our regular account wouldn't allow that.
[50:45.170 --> 50:46.730]  And I was like, here, here's a hard drive.
[50:46.870 --> 50:47.470]  You do it.
[50:47.650 --> 50:48.830]  So that's not scalable.
[50:49.050 --> 50:50.530]  I'm afraid that that doesn't help you at all.
[50:50.710 --> 50:55.050]  But that is, in fact, how I was fortunate enough to get around those nasty gates.
[50:55.050 --> 50:57.390]  You had a special arrangement with archive.org.
[50:57.570 --> 50:57.850]  Yes, yes.
[50:58.050 --> 51:01.070]  They wouldn't do that for... Well, try it, man.
[51:01.490 --> 51:01.950]  They're cool.
[51:02.150 --> 51:02.770]  Contact them.
[51:02.990 --> 51:05.350]  You just send an info at... Yeah, send me an email.
[51:05.350 --> 51:06.830]  Start with that and tell them your issue.
[51:07.010 --> 51:08.230]  Would you take it this way?
[51:08.250 --> 51:08.370]  Yeah.
[51:08.590 --> 51:09.010]  Okay, thanks.
[51:09.090 --> 51:09.270]  Totally.
[51:10.550 --> 51:17.450]  Yeah, I mean, there are just, there are just limits on, you know, how fast and how practical it is to upload huge files.
[51:19.030 --> 51:23.470]  What didn't make any sense to me, it gave every indication to be...
[51:23.470 --> 51:23.590]  I'm sorry.
[51:24.130 --> 51:27.850]  ...successfully uploaded and, but then after a half an hour and...
[51:27.850 --> 51:28.470]  Yeah, contact them.
[51:28.690 --> 51:29.450]  I'll try again.
[51:31.550 --> 51:32.750]  Yeah, hi, it's me again.
[51:33.110 --> 51:33.470]  Hello.
[51:34.570 --> 51:35.710]  So, a follow on.
[51:35.830 --> 51:38.430]  We were talking about promoting the film and how you got it out there.
[51:38.890 --> 51:43.490]  And you said you did a lot through your activism and the controversy that generated.
[51:43.890 --> 51:49.810]  If you're going to do this again for your next film or your next five films, try to reproduce a success.
[51:50.010 --> 51:50.750]  How do you go about it?
[51:50.750 --> 51:52.130]  I have no control over that.
[51:52.350 --> 51:53.270]  I'm just freeing everything.
[51:53.670 --> 51:57.930]  And the fact is that most people who see Seat to Sings the Blues don't actually know about the controversy.
[51:58.230 --> 52:08.090]  The people that initially seeded it, you know, the people that initially put it on BitTorrent, they knew they were ready to go because they were advocates of file sharing, but it's filtered all over the place.
[52:08.310 --> 52:18.190]  And there's actually huge interest in it just from, you know, they see from people who are Hindu or second generation Indian Americans or people interested in music.
[52:18.410 --> 52:19.890]  And there's a lot of interest in it.
[52:20.070 --> 52:23.130]  But if you're going to do a sequel to Seat to Sings the Blues...
[52:23.130 --> 52:23.550]  I'm not going to.
[52:23.830 --> 52:24.230]  But...
[52:24.230 --> 52:26.990]  Or another animated film or something else.
[52:27.170 --> 52:29.230]  Well, I've made three animated shorts and they're all free.
[52:29.410 --> 52:30.130]  I free everything.
[52:30.390 --> 52:35.650]  It's like, the whole way of doing it is let other people push it and be patient.
[52:36.050 --> 52:41.970]  So it can take a really long time, but I'm not doing the work any favors by locking it up.
[52:42.230 --> 52:47.670]  And if it's free for people to share, at least there's the possibility that at some point they will share it.
[52:47.810 --> 52:49.970]  And at some point, it will have a life, even if not right away.
[52:50.470 --> 52:57.190]  So your philosophy with these other shorts has been just put it out there, let people share it, and see what takes hold and see what springs out of it.
[52:57.410 --> 52:57.670]  Yes.
[52:57.690 --> 53:04.150]  Are you trying to do any kind of organized, you know, distribution campaign telling large groups of people about it?
[53:04.350 --> 53:04.610]  No.
[53:05.290 --> 53:05.650]  No.
[53:05.770 --> 53:06.790]  And I'm not selling the content.
[53:07.010 --> 53:17.810]  In fact, for one of my recent shorts, the copying is not theft video, we've only come up with our first piece of related merchandise, which is the copying is not theft pin, which you can buy at the QCO table downstairs.
[53:18.290 --> 53:21.690]  And I'll take... Okay, one minute for your question.
[53:22.010 --> 53:22.470]  Okay.
[53:23.690 --> 53:44.730]  Considering the licensing of the music was the largest expense, considering that you are not making any money by directly, I may say, the movie being broadcast, or at least you are making very little money through things like that, what if you have pirated the music?
[53:46.130 --> 53:47.830]  You mean, what if I'd used the music illegally?
[53:48.130 --> 53:48.410]  Yes.
[53:48.730 --> 53:49.990]  What kind of problems...
[53:49.990 --> 53:52.550]  Well, then it would be illegal for anybody to copy the movie.
[53:52.790 --> 53:54.310]  Yeah, but people would do it anyway, I mean...
[53:54.310 --> 53:57.590]  Some people would do it anyway, but I want lots of people to do it.
[53:57.750 --> 54:04.350]  I think that, you know, people who are willing to break the law, God bless them, I love them, they're at like the forefront of this.
[54:04.550 --> 54:08.050]  But most people, most people are not.
[54:08.230 --> 54:14.390]  And this is my attempt to show everyone that sharing is wholesome and healthy and good.
[54:14.390 --> 54:14.450]  I love it.
[54:14.950 --> 54:15.790]  Thank you.
[54:18.990 --> 54:19.950]  Thank you.
[54:19.950 --> 54:19.970]  Thank you.
[54:20.210 --> 54:20.650]  Thank you.
[54:20.650 --> 54:21.190]  Thank you.