[2]

Sita Sings the Blues is now available FREE for the iPhone [2], rather than for $3.99. The former [3] price was required because for every copy of Sita “sold,” I had to pay almost $2 to extortionate corporate licensors [4]. That’s a flat fee; doesn’t matter what the sale price is. So selling Sita apps for the customary $.99 would result in a huge loss for me, since I’d be paying far more than that to the licensors.

The solution of course was to make it FREE (gratis) [2]. They’re all Promotional Copies. No sale, no license fee. To support Mars Yau [5], who created the app, and me, who created the movie, you can buy the Sita Wallpaper App [6] for $.99. And of course you can always donate [7] to the Sita Distribution Project [8].

I'm especially gratified by app develope Mars Yau's correct use if the Creator Endorsed Mark [9]. It's displayed prominently on the free app, indicating my authentic endorsement of this particulr distribution. On the $.99 Wallpaper app, he applied the "50% supports the artist" version:

 

Read more … [1]

[10]

Question Copyright welcomes two new members: legal interns Kat Walsh [11] and Victor Cohen [12], who will be working with our counsel Karen Sandler [13].

Victor is a third-year student at Brooklyn Law School, and has worked with the Brooklyn Law Incubator and Policy (BLIP) Clinic [14] helping to defend artists against copyright infringement suits. Kat is in her last semester at the George Mason University law school, focusing on copyrights, patents, and trademarks, and is currently the Executive Secretary of the Wikimedia Foundation [15], where she has been a board member since 2006.

You'll see their names appear more and more here in the coming months, as they take a hand in current and upcoming projects. Welcome, Kat and Victor!

Read more … [10]

[17]

A lot of our work at Question Copyright happens in small chunks, because the issues and myths surrounding copyright are so numerous and interconnected that it's usually best to disentangle them and try to deal with them one by one. (That's what the Minute Memes [18] project is all about, for example.) Slowly, brick by brick, we're trying to strengthen the idea that sharing culture is a human right.

But sometimes it's nice to just come right out make the case all at once too, through straightforward, rigorous reasoning. The article below from Danny Colligan [17] is a resource we've long needed: an "article of reference" that lays out the arguments against copyright restrictions in a thorough, well-organized and well-referenced way. Each section in this article is meant to be linked to (just hover over a section title to see its link name), the article as a whole is a great read from beginning to end, and the references [19] section is a treasure trove. For any open-minded skeptics of copyright reform out there, this is the perfect place to start — if you've been wondering how people could possibly object to copyright, the answer is below.

What We Lose When We Embrace Copyright

by Danny Colligan

Table of contents

• Scope of this article [20]
• Introduction [21]
• What is copyright? [22]
• What is copyright not? [23]
• A brief aside on computers and computer networks [24]
• Why copyright is detrimental to society [25]
  
  • Copyright enforcement necessarily entails monitoring of all computer communications, and therefore the destruction of online privacy [26]
  • Copyright law criminalizes a large percentage of the population [27]
  • Copyright law chills academic research [28]
  • Copyright law's reach already extends to many things, and is expanding with no end in sight [29]
  • Copyright law creates a corporate information police, undermining accountability and due process [30]
  • Copyright law erodes the public domain and free culture [31]
  • Copyright law poses large economic costs to society [32]
  • Copyright law prevents the Internet from fulfilling its promise [33]
  
  
• Conclusion [34]
• Responses [35]
  
  • "But how will X make money?" [36]
  • "Couldn't we tweak copyright law?" [37]
  • "Aren't your complaints actually about DRM?" [38]
  • "What about the advantages of copyright?" [39]
  • "Is anyone actually advocating Deep Packet Inspection on the Internet, or is that just a straw man you set up?" [40]
  • "Doesn't copyleft depend on copyright?" [41]
  
  
• References and Further Reading [19]
• Acknowledgments [42]
• License [43]
• Version [44]

Scope of this article

This article is intended for a general audience. No technical nor legal background is assumed. Also, I only examine American copyright law here.

Introduction

With the advent of computers and computer network technology, copyright law has become increasingly relevant in the average American's life. One of the themes in the relationship between technology and law has been that law frequently lags behind technology. Copyright law, however, goes even further — it plainly contradicts the realities of modern technology. Specifically, computers and computer networks copy information, often without the explicit consent of any person, and copyright law criminalizes such copying. This mismatch of legality and reality poses devastating consequences.

Read more … [16]

Note: All Creative Work Is Derivative, by Nina Paley, is the second meme of our Minute Memes [18] series. It was supported by a grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation [46].

Message: All Creative Work is Derivative.

Why: Copyright control extends not just to verbatim copies, but to "derivative works." This has led to censorship [47] on a grand scale. For example, the seminal German silent film "Nosferatu" was deemed a derivative work of "Dracula" and courts ordered all copies destroyed [48]. Shortly before his death, author J.D. Salinger convinced U.S. courts to censor another author [49] who transformed his characters. And so on.

The whole history of human culture evolves through copying, making tiny transformations (sometimes called "errors") with each replication. Copying is the engine of cultural progress. It is not "stealing." It is, in fact, quite beautiful, and leads to a cultural diversity that inspires awe.

Released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 [50] license.

Download high resolution and OGG formats at archive.org [51].

Read more … [45]

Filmmaker Marine Lormant Sebag has released The Revolution Will Be Animated [53], a twenty-minute documentary presenting multiple viewpoints on copyright in the digital age, focusing on Nina Paley [54], author of Sita Sings the Blues and now Artist-in-Residence at QuestionCopyright.org. It's very well-made, and includes some of the best selections of Nina Paley speaking to be found anywhere. Paley talks about how she ran into copyright restrictions herself, her decision to release [55] her own film under a free license, and her experiences since taking the plunge into the audience-distribution model. The contrasting segments with well-known animator Bill Plympton (who continues to distribute his work under traditional copyright restrictions) are also worth a close look: his belief in the monopoly system is clear, and he says Paley simply made "a big mistake" in using music without first arranging permission.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but: what have we come to when an artist like Bill Plympton can say with a straight face that people should get permission to use music? One could hardly make a better case for radical copyright reform than his own words.

The Revolution Will Be Animated [53] is itself released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License. Spread the word.

Read more … [52]

[56]

We are pleased to announce that the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts [57] has given their 2009 Wynn Kramarsky Freedom of Artistic Expression Award to our Minute Memes [18] animation project. The award comes with a grant of $30,000 USD, to fund the creation of the first three memes (one of which is already available in draft [58] form).

We thank the Andy Warhol Foundation for their support, and for their recognition of copyright's effects on freedom of expression. Our application [59] to the Foundation focused on this point:

The Minute Memes project is a series of one-minute animated videos about copyright restrictions and artistic freedom, to be made by award-winning graphic artist and animator Nina Paley [54] — author of the film "Sita Sings the Blues", adjunct faculty at Parsons The New School For Design in New York City (teaching Visual Narrative), 2006 Guggenheim Fellow, and Artist in Residence at QuestionCopyright.org.

The Minute Memes are a response to widely-available videos and other materials from the copyright industry (see reference [1] [60]), in which the message is that copyright is a natural and absolute property right that trumps freedom of expression and people's ability to share and reimagine the culture around them. The Minute Memes will counteract this through visual storytelling, backed by still-image and written supplementary materials, to show how artists and audiences can thrive in a more permissive, less monopolistic environment than the one envisioned by the current copyright system.

The Minute Memes will offer an aesthetically engaging and intellectually consistent framework for considering copyright's restrictive effects. Step by step, the series will build a new frame of reference to supplant received rhetoric about copyright — received rhetoric such as the notion of "balancing" the needs of creators and the public, which assumes that the two are in opposition; the idea that copying is a form of stealing; the idea that control over copies must be bound up with attribution; etc. We have already seen anecdotal evidence that there is a need for the Minute Memes; for example, see [2] [61].

This grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation is also a kind of seed funding for the entire project, which will be a series of twelve or more memes (see the project page [18] for details). We are actively seeking funding for the other memes, as well as for other projects [62] that question and reframe copyright restrictions. If you are interested in supporting our work, or know someone who might be, please contact [63] us or donate [64].

Read more … [46]

[66]

Famed science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin recently circulated a petition [67] opposing the Google Books Settlement [68].

If you want to understand why QuestionCopyright.org exists and what we're trying to do, you couldn't ask for a more succint demonstration than this passage below from Le Guin's petition:

The free and open dissemination of information and of literature, as it exists in our Public Libraries, can and should exist in the electronic media. All authors hope for that. But we cannot have free and open dissemination of information and literature unless the use of written material continues to be controlled by those who write it or own legitimate right in it. ^{(emphasis added)}

When an intelligent, sensitive author like Ursula K. Le Guin can write something like that, apparently oblivious to the glaring internal contradiction, it's clear the time is ripe for this issue to be radically reframed [18].

"To have freedom, we must have monopoly and control.  Up is down.  Love is hate.  War is peace."

Seem odd to you too?  Join us [69].

Read more … [65]

[66]

Calling all law students (or at least the ones who weren't planning to work for the RIAA later):

We're looking for a legal intern — someone interested in learning more about copyright law and using it to promote freedom.

We have several projects right now with legal components, and expect more in the future. The responsibilities of the position will be varied, involving research in U.S. and European copyright law, non-profit law (federal and CA state), tracking legislative developments, some writing, etc. The time commitment is about five hours a week, with more available if you want it. A New York City location is ideal, but not required. There may be some limited travel, at your discretion.

The position is unpaid, but you would be working with an experienced lawyer (our counsel, Karen Sandler [13]), and we're happy to meet reasonable requirements for law school credit.

Interested? Contact us [63]. We'll keep the posting open until we get the right candidate — it could be you!

Read more … [66]

[70]

We got this submission from a performance artist who wishes to remain anonymous, for reasons that will be clear below (though we've verified that it is from a well-regarded performer). While we generally run attributed pieces, it's good to have a reminder once in a while that there are many artists who are impeded by copyright but who, for professional reasons, can't talk about it openly. When trying to measure the damage done by copyright restrictions, one must allow for the fact that creative repression is an underreported crime.

---

I have this one show which is kind of languishing, in part because I don't know what to do about the music. I developed the show over the course of a couple of years, playing around with different pieces of music as the show evolved. When I came to the point where the show was "finished" and I had found music, I was so overwhelmed at the prospect of licensing it all that I... just never did.

I showed the piece once, without doing any licensing, to a packed house and a very warm reception. I did, by the way, contact the artists who made the music in my show. They're local. And they were like, "Oh, hey, this sounds great. Yeah, go for it. But you know, it's not our permission you need."

Read more … [70]

[72]

Sita Sings the Blues will have a week-long run in New York City's IFC Film Center [72], December 25th – 31st! January 5th! January 26

This is was a full theatrical run, with 7-8 screenings a day. The filmmaker, Nina Paley will be doing Q&A after the 8:25pm shows most nights. On Monday, Dec. 28th, the conversation will be about the film's free distribution model [73] and the free culture movement.

It's kind of unbelieveable that this thing has been extended for 5 weeks. Granted, it's down to just one show a day now. But we only thought it would run one week, so this run has exceeded everyone's expectations.

Tickets are available online [72]. Here's a show schedule (click on the time to purchase tickets for that show):

Woo! [72] New showtimes - Click on the time to purchase tickets for a screening.

IFC Film Center has beautiful screens and is located at 323 Sixth Avenue [79] at West Third Street in the West Village, right at the W. 4th St. subway station [80] (A, C, E, B, D, F, & V subway lines).

Sita Sings the Blues is a terrific film; it won all those awards [81] for a reason. Please tell all your New York friends — let's pack the house!

[72]

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