Filmmaker Marine Lormant Sebag has released The Revolution Will Be Animated, a twenty-minute documentary presenting multiple viewpoints on copyright in the digital age, focusing on Nina Paley, 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 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 is itself released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License. Spread the word.