Sita's Blues, lessened
Reihan told us a few weeks ago about the copyright troubles for Nina Paley and her animated film Sita Sings the Blues. Those troubles aren’t over, but you can watch the whole film online here — at least for now. It’s pretty amazing, as Roger Ebert has already explained.
I trust Nina’s use of the word “decriminalize” as a stand in for paying the music copyright holder is offensive to everyone else as it is to me; and I look forward to the day when someone uses her work, and then takes umbrage at having to pay for the rights.
These aren’t troubles. This is a selfish person who didn’t consider what she was doing before she did it. She used a piece of music she couldn’t afford the rights to because she never anticipated that what she made would be of any commercial interest to anyone. Now that there is commercial interest she’s boo hooing “Wow, everybody. It’s really really expensive.”
But this might be the worst:
“The way artists always make money: donations, commissions, grants, patrons, speaking fees. Indie distributors can’t pay anywhere near what it cost me to make the film ($80,000 + $50,000 to clear rights + $160,000 living expenses over the years I made the film + my TIME)”
She made a film that she doesn’t know how to make a profit on, and now we’re supposed to cry foul because the entity who own the right to the song she used is a better business person than she is. Wonderful.
— Tony Comstock · Feb 27, 10:28 PM · #
Tony, did you notice how skillfully I avoided rendering an opinion on the legitimacy of her complaints? Pretty smooth, if I do say so myself.
— Alan Jacobs · Feb 27, 10:47 PM · #
You are a smoothy indeed, Alan. That’s why I love you.
As it happens, just yesterday I wrote a wistful post about how much I miss working with music in my films. There are good creative reason why I don’t use music in the films I’m making now. There are better business reasons. With your indulgence:
http://www.comstockfilms.com/blog/tony/2009/02/26/music-soothes-the-savage-beast/
— Tony Comstock · Feb 27, 10:53 PM · #
Considering that the currrent “entities” (good word) that now own the rights to these songs because they and their colleagues persuaded Congress to pass ex post facto laws extending the copyrights, I have a hard time describing their current situation as good business practises. Persuading governments to legislate to your advantage and to the disadvantage of others rarely attract the approval of people who support free markets or limited government.
Nina currently plans to release her film under a creative commons license, which illustrates how the current efforts to “extend” and “secure” government granted monopolies actually drive increasing numbers of creative people away from the copyright regime and into the realm of free culture.
— John Spragge · Feb 28, 11:59 PM · #
Lemme see if I’m understanding you, John.
When I invest my time, talent and money to create a film, photo, movie, book etc, other people have the natural right to use my creation, and it is only through the act of government granted monopoly that I retain control over my work? What a strange understanding of property rights you have.
Here’s what the destruction of copyright is going to do. (It’s coming, whether I or anyone else likes it or not. I don’t know why people bothers “fighting” copyright. But if it makes you feel useful, be my guest.)
Artist like Nina will release their work with no claim to rights, because there won’t be any rights such as we presently know them. She will pay her rent by either waiting tables, doing work for advertisers, or doing work for people who have the ability to physically control their intellectual property long enough to make creating it a profitable endeavor.
Whether or not this will be a better landscape for creative people or a poorer landscape, who can say. But here are some things to consider:
Musicians will make their money exclusively from performance and (perhaps) licensing to advertisers and those who can physically control their work product.
Independent film will mostly die (it’s mostly dead already.) Almost all movies will be Hollywood majors that can make money in theatrical release.
Books and magazines? Mostly adios. Information that is not timely will be without value.
Newspapers will have a resurgence, or at least what will look like a resurgence after the present collapse is over. Distribution will be digital, with a focus on timely local news.
Radio with thrive. The most succesful radio is more akin to a live stage performance than recordable culture.
Theater will have a resurgence. The work product remains under the complete physical control of the producers.
Whether or not I or Nina can thrive or even survive in this new environment, who knows. I’m certainly planning for the possibility that I will not be able to. Fortunately I know how to do other things, some of which maybe be of some commercial value, so there’s some hope I may be able to keep my house and pay for my daughters’ braces.
— Tony Comstock · Mar 1, 01:12 AM · #
Assuming you live and work in the United States, then after a period of time specified by statute, other people will get the right to use your work. If you don’t like that, don’t blame me; take it up with James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and company. They, not I, wrote the following into the enumerated powers section of the United States Constitution:
Note that the grant of rights contemplated has a purely instrumental basis; the authors of the US constitution contemplated no “natural” rights of artists, or their heirs, or corporations claiming to represent them eighty years and twenty-five copyright extended years on. Copyright exists in American law to make ideas and works of literature and art available to the public.
When you argue that the digital revolution will “destroy” copyright, please note that first, few if any of the rights that will disappear existed before the age of mechanical reproduction of performances, and second, those who extract rents from expanding their “rights” can only do so because other people give up theirs. I haven’t seen any evidence of the RIAA, which makes substantial use of the web for promotional purposes, offering to pay Sir Tim Berners-Lee for the privilege. In fact, if all of the people who had a reasonable copyright claim or patent claim on all of the technology that makes modern films and distribution possible, I doubt that any appreciable rents would exist for anyone to collect.
— John Spragge · Mar 1, 06:11 AM · #
If you would prefer to think of the artist’s creation is the property of the state, with a limited lease granted by the state to its creator, you are certain entitled to hold that opinion. My own opinion is that the rights to that creation belong to the creator, and that there is some overriding general benefit to be found in stripping the creator of those rights after a certain period of time. I have no interest in debating which of these views is conservative or constitutional or morally correct.
In any case, it doesn’t matter. Whatever one’s arguments and interests, intellectual rights as they have been understood in the modern era are coming to an end. I expect information exchange in the area of technological development come to look much more like medieval guilds than the (comparatively) free exchange of ideas we enjoy today. Business are quite unlike artist in as much as they do not undertake creative activities for the small hope that they might see their names writ large across history.
Artist are less like this than most people think, at least the good ones. Talent and energy will move towards those places where it can be rewarded; to those places where talented artist can make enough money to enjoy luxuries like a roof over their heads, food and clothing for themselvs and their children, and perhaps even the chance to save against an uncertain future.
And so we lurch into our copyright free utopia. Now that Nina fully understands there no money to be made, I don’t expect we’ll see her pour the time and effort she put into Sita into any upcoming project (or did you think she put years of her life and tens of thousands of dollars into the project in the hopes of giving it all away?)
I’m sure she’ll still have a trinket or two to share with us; when she when she’s not too busy with her agency work, or waitressing, or whatever she’s going to do to pay the rent. Maybe she’ll go into interior design. The balance between remuneration and portability of ideas is still tenable, and probably will remain so.
— Tony Comstock · Mar 1, 02:20 PM · #