copyleft Archives - Page 15 of 18

Back from Nerd Central

And crazy busy. Chicago and Urbana and Ebertfest were great, amazing, beyond my ability to emotionally comprehend, I’ve never had a week like that before. Then to top it off, Sita won Best Narrative Feature at the Indian Film festival of Los Angeles, and moved to #1 on Critical Consensus. That’s just nuts.

Anyway, it was great being back in Urbana, my hometown, where nerds are made as well as born. I was raised nerd, by nerds, and it’s only a fluke that I appear to be an artist; my heart belongs to nerd-dom. Want proof? Here I am visiting family friend, genius, and art-supporter Theo Gray at Wolfram Research:
My Free Culture activism is nerdy too, inspired as it is by the Free Software movement. Theo doesn’t like it, and made fiercely pro-copyright arguments as only a proprietary software nerd can.

For contrast, here’s a picture of me with Richard Stallman in New York:

Whose side am I on, anyway? The side of NERDS!

With a name like AWESOMEPEDIA, it’s gotta be AWESOME

Understanding Free Content

Content is an unlimited resource. People can now make perfect copies of digital content for free. That’s why they expect content to be free â€” because it is in fact free. That is GOOD.

Think of “content” â€” culture â€” as water. Where water flows, life flourishes.

Containers â€” objects like books, DVDs, hard drives, apparel, action figures, and prints â€” are not free. They are a limited resource. No one expects these objects to be free, and people voluntarily pay good money for them.

Think of “containers” â€” books, discs, hard drives â€” as jugs and vessels. These containers add utility to and increase the value of the water. If you can get water for free in the public river, great â€” that doesn’t reduce the value of vessels. Quite the contrary: when rivers flow, the utility and value of water vessels increases.

free vs not free; use the unlimited resource to sell the limited resource

Read the rest of this articleâ€¦

Sita DVD announcement list

We’re almost done authoring the Sita Sings the Blues DVD packaging and getting an order fulfillment service to ship it. Meanwhile, here’s something to do: sign up here with just your email address, and we’ll send you an mail with ordering information as soon as it’s ready.

Because the “content” is free – you can download it all online – what we’re actually selling is DVD packaging, not the film itself. This includes a nicely printed full color recycled cardstock “eco” case, and a silkscreened “pre-downloaded” DVD with the film and various features like subtitles, the trailer, and some video interviews of me ranting about copyright. The DVD is a nice package, a real object, and you can actually own it – it’ll still be there even if the internet (or your connection to it) disappears.

We’re planning two “Official” editions of the DVD packaging. The basic consumer version will be about $20:

Then there’s the Artist’s Edition, which will be about $100. This will be a more elaborate package – 6 panels instead of 4 – numbered and signed by me. This edition will be limited to 4,999. Why 4,999? Because for every 5,000 DVDs sold, I have to make additional payments (beyond the $50,000 I have already paid) to the corporations that hold copyright monopolies on some of the music used in the film. I don’t believe culture can be owned, and I’ve released my film under a free license to ensure that it can never be similarly trapped, but as long as the government enforces these monopolies, I must count DVDs.

The cover art isn’t final but will be in a few days. I could use the “happy Sita” image on the artist’s edition, and the “artsy Sita” on the consumer version. Leave your suggestions now or forever hold your peace. Thanks!

MY OFFICIAL POSITION ON COPYRIGHT

Now that I’m a full-time free culture activist, some have expressed the concern, “You don’t think there should be any copyright at all! You want to take away my right to protect my intellectual property!”

Let me assure you this is not true.

I completely support your right to copy-restrict your works. The more you copyright (restrict access to) your work, the more wide-open the field is for free culture like Sita Sings the Blues. Open-licensed work has a tremendous competitive advantage over copy-restricted work. So by all means, please “protect” your “property.”

See you on the other side of success!

Copying Isn’t Theft

UPDATE: can anyone arrange this as a show tune? I originally heard it in my head as a show tune, but I’m musically illiterate. See the growing links list of awesome covers here.

Feel free to remix, re-record, or otherwise re-make this song so I can animate to it.Full interview on Thirteen.org.