Hacker Cinema
Sita Sings the Blues
2008 · Film · 82 min
Directed by Nina Paley
AnimationDramaMusicRomanceFantasy
Utilizing the 1920s jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw, the epic Indian tale of exiled prince Ramayana and his bride Sita is mirrored by a spurned woman's contemporary personal life, and light-hearted but knowledgeable discussion of historical background by a trio of Indian shadow puppets.
7 positive1 neutralfrom 8 commenters
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8 comments on Hacker News
It's not just about 'yay free music', though it would absolutely impact streaming services.
This would have a huge impact on remixers, hip hop beat track artists, original music creators, and people who cover old standards.
The way it is now, it's difficult enough for creative people to use the music that falls under free use as it is.
For example, an animator used Annette Henshaw recordings from the 20s that were no longer under US Copyright, and spent over 9,000 hours creating animation that synced up to the music, only to still end up in a copyright battle over the recordings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sita_Sings_the_Blues#Copyright_problems
Check out the movie, it's pretty fab, https://archive.org/details/Sita_Sings_the_Blues , but would it exist under the new CLASSICS act? I doubt it.
Youtube already removes ad revenue/or the music for videos that use some recordings of music from the 30s and 40s using the Content ID system of ownership (not copyright).
and that doesn't even cover how passing this act would affect companies, artists, people who've been using these works as the basis of their work for years.
Will they have to get multiple retroactive mechanical licenses? https://www.harryfox.com/license_music/what_is_mechanical_license.html
Or will the record companies just claim their works/revenue from the works?
See also: the mess that was Sita Sings the Blues. EDIT: I mean the copyright issues, not the movie itself obviously.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sita_Sings_the_Blues#Copyright_problems
http://sitasingstheblues.com/faq.html
This contract echoes the story of Nina Palin's attempt to get her Free (creative-commons share-alike) movie "Sita Sings the Blues" on netflix streaming without DRM. Netflix refused. They even refused to let her put a title-card at the start of the movie telling viewers that the movie was free to download from other sources.
http://blog.ninapaley.com/2010/04/23/turning-down-netflix/
Three years later she went full CC-0 (public domain) with the movie because the hassle of dealing with other entities who simply couldn't understand the share-alike license was too much.
http://blog.ninapaley.com/2013/01/18/ahimsa-sita-sings-the-blues-now-cc-0-public-domain/
For anyone considering watching her movie - Roger Ebert rated it very highly.
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/sita-sings-the-blues-2009
It's used for a lot of legal videos as well, like Sita Sings the Blues http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/wiki/index.php?title=SitaSites#bittorrent also Vodo uses BT to distribute their movies. http://vodo.net/ Revision3 used to run their own tracker with only their own videos listed, but there was some legal trouble so they shut it down. I'm seeding Geocities from http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=GeoCities but that's pretty niche :) I'm also seeding a bunch of videos from a hacker conference (CC licensed).
"The majority of developers don't understand the nuances of copyright law; and, so OSS code is often mis-integrated and mis-attributed. I hazard most times an honest developer is informed of their missteps, they handle it similar to how we're seeing here."
What you just said, if it's true, is a problem.
The basics of copyright aren't hard (if you didn't write what you're including, you have to have permission to include it). Even dealing with the basic software licensing options (NewBSD/free-for-all/CC; OldBSD/free-with-attribution/CC-BY; GNU GPL/free-share-alike/CC-SA; etc.) aren't that hard (the CC folks have done a good job of coming up with easily understandable terms that capture the spirit).
It's not until you get into the real esoterica (largely in music and movies, IMO) that you have to really understand things at a weird level (I still don't quite understand where things went wrong for Sita Sings the Blues).
While this may be an easily fixed error, what should we be doing to make sure people "get" basic copyright law as part of the software development profession? More than that, what do we have to do to get people to think in terms of simple fairness: I should give credit to others for their work.
I'm not sure what I think about the article, but: If you haven't seen Haley's movie Sita Sings The Blues, you are missing out on one of the coolest and funniest movies of 2008, and it's available for free downloading/torrenting.
The Internet is people. It's a much less formal place for interaction than something like a bureaucratic corporate system. But both are just people, and good things come from people.
Nina Paley released Sita Sings The Blues under Creative Commons because nobody was able to watch her film because studios like Sony Pictures passed her up. Roger Ebert called it one of his favorite films. It's a hilarious and moving movie that I wouldn't have seen if it hadn't been placed online.
Nina Paley isn't the Internet. She's an animator. But the Internet is where she released her movie. I'll also say that it's better than anything Sony Pictures has released in a long, long while. (sitasingstheblues.com for the interested.)
The movie has a rave review from Ebert http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/12/having_wonderful_time_wish_you.html.
The creator is also accepting donations, to help cover the creation costs (especially for the song licensing fees) at http://questioncopyright.org/sita_distribution.
And a direct link to the downloads: http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/wiki/index.php?title=SitaSites You can get it in up to 1080P with completely free codecs. I love this women.
I think it would have been wiser for the creator to wait until she had DVDs ready to sell (a few more weeks) before releasing this movie. I'll bet a lot of people (myself included) loved the movie and would be happy to shell out $10-$20 for a DVD to support her, but could forget about it in a few weeks.
I also liked this quote from the home page:
The old business model of coercion and extortion is failing. New models are emerging, and I'm happy to be part of that. But we're still making this up as we go along. You are free to make money with the free content of Sita Sings the Blues, and you are free to share money with me. People have been making money in Free Software for years; it's time for Free Culture to follow.