Update: The $3,000 fundraising goal has been met! Any additional funds over the goal means more minibooks printed, which means lower per-book costs. POOPERTY FOR THE PEOPLE!

Here’s my first quilt ( a small one, 29″ x 17.5″) which I finished last night. It’s for my Momz, who requested “a nude with all the bells and whistles.”

Everything I learned from teh interwebs, which is full of quilting information and many good videos. I especially like the web site & videos of Leah Day, who makes free motion quilting look much easier than it is. Leah shares her videos and knowledge freely, which works – I’m a fan now, and spent over $250 at her online quilting store. It’s a business model I’m familiar with.

Speaking of business models, there’s an argument made by copyright advocates that no one would do anything creative without monetary (or monopoly) incentives:

My past few weeks exploring quilting confirms this is absolutely not true. In less than a month of getting myself set up with a sewing machine, fabric, threads, and other supplies, I’ve probably shelled out $1,000. It started with an inexpensive sewing machine ($250), but then I needed special feet for it, and cutters, and an iron, and pins, and threads, and batting, and fabric, and a sewing table, and IKEA drawers to hold all this stuff, and on and on. And that was being budget-conscious; I could easily spend a lot more. In fact I really, really want a longer machine with more space under the arm; unfortunately those cost about $3,000.

I’m not alone: tens if not hundreds of thousands of Americans pay for the privilege to create, not the other way around. Most quilters are not paid; most actually give their work away, to family, friends and charities. That’s folk art, people: it’s not done for money. And yes, it is art.

It’s very much like filmmaking, which is now a folk art.

“The film business has never been a business. It’s always been a hobby.” –someone whose name I don’t remember at a film conference I attended last year

Even setting aside independent film productions, which are hobbies in business clothing, most people spend more on video cameras and computers than they’ll ever get back selling their work. With the spread of cheap animation software, animation is now a folk art too. With the rise of print-on-demand self-publishing, novel-writing is also becoming folk art (Pirates of Savannah by Tarrin Lupo is what I’d call a folk art novel). All the super-elite arts of the 20th Century are becoming folk art.

Would I still like to make money with this? Yes, I would. But I’ve already spent plenty of money with no promise of monetary return. It’s been worth it so far, because learning has been exhilarating. Hopefully traditional folk arts, like quilting, will continue to gain respect as “real” art, even as “real” arts are adopted by the masses. I confess I would like to sell original pieces, if I keep making them. It’s really up to my Muse.

After the jump are some pictures of the making of “Eve,” which took 3 days (4 if you include the day I designed it):

taping the paper together

Cutting out the paper pieces.

I placed the paper pieces on fabric using bits of double-sided scotch tape, which I removed before ironing.

Paper & tape removed; fabric pieces assembled on "French Fuse" and ironed. I would have preferred to do them as applique on a solid blue ground, but I didn't have enough double-sided fusey stuff ("steam-a-seam 2", which I still haven't tried). I did however have a yard of French fuse.

Basting the 3-layer "sandwich."

I sewed the pieces down as best I could using a free motion zig zag stitch.

Beginning to add quilting texture.

Everything's textured in except the blue background.

Back of the quilt-in-progress. The fabric bunched up early on, and I forgot to put the pressure foot down a few times. It's far from perfect, but hey! It's my first quilt, OK?

Quilting done; now to bind those raw edges.

The finished, bound quilt. And by quilt I mean small wall hanging. It's approximately 29" x 17.5". And no, it's not squared off. It was painful enough binding the thing, I don't know if I'm going to have the patience to square a quilt, which involves soaking it, carefully measuring it, stretching it, pinning it to blocks (which I don't have) and letting it dry overnight.

My new work space. I hope my neighbor doesn't get too annoyed by the sound of the sewing machine, which is currently placed against our shared wall.

Hour-long video here.

Q. Who owns culture?
A:

Q. How do you make money?
A:

Q. How many people have seen Sita Sings the Blues?
A. I can’t know for sure, but as of today it’s been downloaded 258,744 times from archive.org, viewed 403,421 times at youtube (full movie) plus another 183,649 (installments); it’s been shared widely via torrents, screened at festivals and cinemas and libraries and classrooms, and otherwise copied all over the world. Googling “Sita Sings the Blues” today yields about 2,620,000 results. Sitasingstheblues.com enjoys about 193,000 visits a month.

Q. How much have you received in donations so far?
A. About $50,000.

Q. How much have you received in profits from the Sita Merchandise Empire?
A. About $45,000 for me as of March 2010. The store opened in March 2009, so that represents one year’s income. The store grossed about $83,000 during that time.

Q. How much have you made from theatrical screenings?
A. About $9,000 for me. I estimate box office gross was about 8x that much, or approx. $72,000, but that’s a gross estimate.

Q. How much have you made from other DVD distributors?
A. About $6,000 so far, which represents a small portion of gross DVD sales from other distributors. Our own DVDs which we offer at the Sita Merchandise Empire are accounted as store income, above.

Q. How much have you made from broadcast?
A. Only about $4,000 so far. Most broadcasters’ legal departments can’t wrap their heads around an open licensed movie. Happily New York’s PBS Affiliate Channel 13 embraced it, as did Link TV. Broadcasters, please show the movie!

Q. How much have you received from voluntary payments from cinemas and festivals?
A. About $12,000. I don’t use copyright to compel payments, but many venues share revenue of out decency and a mission to support artists, rather than legal threats.

Q. What other income have you gotten from the film?
A. Amazingly, $12,500 in Awards money. It still boggles my mind.

Q. So how much money did you personally make releasing a Free film under an open ShareAlike license?
A. In the film’s first year, I got about $132,000. I’ve received more since then.

Q. How much did the movie cost you to make?
A. $270,000: a $200,000 budget plus $50,000 to license the old songs via a “step deal” sufficient to decriminalize it for Free sharing, and another $20,000 in bargain-basement legal transaction costs. So I’m not in the black yet, but I am no longer in debt.

Q. How much would you have made had the movie not been Free?
A. When I was still trying to sell conventional monopoly rights to distributors in 2008, the highest advance I was offered was $20,000; I was told by one reputable distributor that the most I could expect in my wildest dreams to make in a 10-year contract was $50,000, and more realistically I could expect about $25,000.

Watch the video:

Nina Paley at HOPE 2010 – entire talk from Nina Paley on Vimeo.

In addition to physical DVD rentals, Netflix offers subscribers instant electronic delivery: streaming movies over the Internet to Mac, PC, Wii, PS3 and Xbox players. Many subscribers conveniently find new titles through this service. It’s just the sort of distribution channel that benefits a small film like Sita. They also pay producers, and don’t demand exclusivity. It’s a good deal all around, except for one problem: DRM.

DRM, or Digital Restrictions Management, is technology “to control use of digital media by preventing access, copying or conversion to other formats by end users.” At best DRM reduces the functionality of computers; at worst it invades privacy and adds surveillance and malware. DRM End User License Agreements (EULAs) force users to surrender rights well beyond what copyright restricts.

In the last few years DRM has grown increasingly pervasive, with little-to-no press coverage. Consumers passively accept it, as proven by Apple’s new “everything-DRM” device, the iPad.

Creators, too, are accepting DRM as a fact of media distribution; offered no alternatives, they lose their ability to even imagine alternatives. DRM, like rights monopolies, is said to be made for creators. But like copyright, DRM is designed to benefit Big Media conglomerates, not artists.

If this type of invasion of privacy were coming from any other source, it would not be tolerated. That it is the media and technology companies leading the way, does not make it benign. (link)

A few weeks ago a content aggregator called Victory Multimedia contacted FilmKaravan:

Netflix has shown interest in carrying your title “Sita Sings the Blues” for Electronic Delivery.  For a 12 month license period they are offering $4,620.00.  You would received $2310.00 no later than 60 days after the Netflix title release date and the balance of $2310.00 will be paid 6 months after the initial payment.

First I asked (Filmkaravan to ask the aggregator to ask Netflix) if Netflix could make a DRM exception for Sita. Unfortunately no such option currently exists in Netflix’s electronic delivery system. Possibly no other filmmakers have even asked for such an option. iTunes used to offer only DRM music, but eventually enough people – including savvy “content providers”? -  demanded DRM-free channels that they now offer DRM-free music for sale along with Defective options (all iTunes movies carry DRM). Filmmakers lag far beyond musicians in understanding the Internet, so it may be a while before Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, and other online distributors allow our “content” in their channels without adding malware and spyware to our films.

I still wanted Sita to be in Netflix’s on-demand system. I want as many people to see Sita as possible; surely many viewers now rely on such a convenient delivery system to explore new films. Anyone who became a fan of Sita this way might still find the film’s web site, and learn how to download a free copy for themselves. Although Sita’s site states:

You are not free to copy-restrict (“copyright”) or attach Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) to Sita Sings the Blues or its derivative works.

I could still grant special permission to Netflix to add DRM to Sita. I asked if I could add a card to the front of the movie stating simply:

Download and share this film from:

sitasingstheblues.com

The aggregator responded this was not possible, due to a Netflix “no bumpers” policy.

Looking back, I was conflicted because it was hard for me to see the DRM on Netflix’s streaming service as problematic. It’s not as though Netflix is telling anyone they’re “buying” the movies they stream; they’re just “renting” them. “Rental” already implies restrictions and limited use terms. They’re just trying to make the Internet work like the physical world, imposing artificial scarcities to resemble the natural scarcities of physical DVD rentals. We can accept natural scarcities; why not accept artificial ones?

I was so conflicted, I asked my “Facebook friends” for advice. Responses were pretty split. Only a few knew what DRM was, but understood I could be compromising my principles by endorsing its use. Was that compromise significant? Was it time to “rise above my principles”?

Facebook, being a walled garden whose “business model is spying,” is problematic itself; obviously I use it anyway, although I don’t expect it to be around in a few years unless it opens up. Two of my moral guidestars don’t use it out of principle, and I emailed them for advice. Richard Stallman wrote,

I faced the same sort of question today: whether to approve release of my biuography with DRM for the iBad. I said no, because the fight against DRM is my cause, and the iBad is the most extreme attack against computer users’ freedom today.

It is self-defeating to try to promote a cause by supporting a direct attack against it.  Lesser forms of participation in things that you hope to eliminate can be overlooked, but Netflix is something we must specifically fight.  The example you would set by giving in would undermine everything….

We launched an action against Netflix.  We tell people, “Don’t be customers of Netflix.”

So I learned Netflix DRM was “real” DRM, rental or not. DefectiveByDesign.org asks people who rent physical DVDs from Netflix, to protest their DRM-laden electronic delivery service.

It was John Gilmore’s email that hit me where I live:

Don’t post your film via a DRM service.

Insist that Netflix is free to release it without DRM, but they cannot release it with DRM.

Creators keep knuckling under to these media middlemen who push DRM onto end users for their own lock-in reasons.  Like Apple. Like CDbaby.

It will take pushback from creators to change this.  Be the change that you want to see….

I’ve been the “change I want to see” in regards to copyright monopolies. People told me I’d lose everything by copylefting Sita, including all hope of professional distribution. But in fact, some professional distributors became willing to distribute Sita without claiming monopolies over it, and we’re all fine.

I’d still love Sita to be offered through Netflix’s online channels; if they ever offer DRM-free video-on-demand, I hope they remember Sita Sings the Blues.

For now, people will just have to obtain Sita by visiting the vast big Internet outside of Netflix. Most of the Internet still isn’t enclosed by Netflix, or Amazon, or iTunes. Most of the Internet is still Free; I’m doing what little I can to keep it that way. I’m sad to lose the potential viewers who may have found Sita through Netflix’s electronic delivery. But maybe some of those Netflix subscribers will discover the rest of the Internet because of my tiny act of resisting DRM.

Women’s Laxmi shirts in “currant”

Stainless steel water bottles!

And lots of other men’s and women’s shirts, DVDs and CDs, and accessories for your scarce-goods-consuming pleasure.

Hooray! The complete Sita Sings the Blues movie is now available FREE for the iPhone, rather than for $3.99. The former price was required because for every copy of Sita “sold,” I had to pay almost $2 to extortionate corporate licensors. 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. They’re all Promotional Copies. No sale, no license fee. To support Mars Yau, who created the app, and me, who created the movie, you can buy the Sita Wallpaper App for $.99. And of course you can always donate to the Sita Distribution Project.

If you have an iPhone please rate the app highly (5 stars? if that doesn’t violate your conscience) to help it spread.

People seem to want to believe that just freeing works is some magic recipe for success. It isn’t. But since people crave simple business models, I came up with one this morning:

Quality
Freedom
Money
______
Any Two = success

A very good (Quality) film can succeed if it is Free (Freedom) OR has a big promotional budget (Money). A Free film can succeed if it is very good (Quality) or, if it’s not so good, it has lots of paid promotion (Money, because if it’s not good people won’t promote it on their own initiative). A film with lots of Money will succeed if it’s good (Quality) or if it’s Free. Imagine how much further a crap film could go if it’s not only heavily advertised, but Free to share too.

With only one of these properties, a film is unlikely to succeed. If a film is very good but neither Free nor Moneyed, no one will hear about it and it won’t have a chance to become popular. A Free film that sucks won’t go far. A Moneyed film will garner attention only as long as it’s being promoted; once ad spending stops, audience attention goes away.

With all three of these elements, you’ll have a success the likes of which the world has never seen. Moneyed productions have yet to be Free, but maybe someday, for some reason, someone will pour tons of cash into promoting a Free, Quality production. Of course if it fails, that will be due to insufficient Quality, which can’t really be measured and for which no one wants to take responsibility. If someone wants to try this experiment with Sita Sings the Blues, which is already considered “good” and is forever “free,” be my guest!

Given the financial dire straits of the independent film industry, filmmakers should really be looking at Free, because they’re unlikely to have Money. And everyone, always, should be focused on Quality, no matter what business model they prefer. Except Quality is a mystery, and worrying about it does not lead to better Art. But if you happen to luck into some Quality, you know what to do now.

I don’t have an iPhone, but you kids that do can now watch Sita Sings the Blues on it for $3.99, thanks to Mars Yau.

Why so expensive? Well, $1.712 per “copy” (argh!) goes to these giant faceless corporations licensors that contribute nothing to culture. The breakdown is as follows:

List Price: $3.99
After Apple‘s 30% cut: $2.79
Profit after paying $1.712 (License fee): $1.07

So I will get 50% of the profit: $.535 (fifty-three and a half cents) per copy – less than one third what the corporate extortionists licensors get. A better way to support me is to just watch the movie for free on the web and then send me a donation. I certainly endorse this project, but I wish there were a way to support Mars Yau’s valuable service – bringing the film conveniently to the iPhone – without supporting anti-social Big Media corporations more.

The director of Sita Sings the Blues, Nina Paley, had to pay $50,000 to use old songs in her animation movie. She then put the movie online for free and turned herself into a free-culture activist. Composer Jaron Lanier was a digital pioneer in the ’90s, but in his new book he claims that open-source is destroying creativity and fostering vicious behavior. They join us to debate the pros and cons of free love in art-making.

Sita Sings the Blues site
More about Jaron Lanier [NY Times]

Attention being the most valuable, and most limited, resource there is for humans. It’s more limited than money; you can’t just print more. People don’t “consume” art, they attend to it.

Meanwhile, here’s a little thing on Sita’s distribution model in the Wall Street Journal.