[00:07.390 --> 00:08.610]  Do you tweet?
[00:09.430 --> 00:11.370]  I said, do you tweet?
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[00:38.510 --> 00:39.130]  Sweet.
[00:45.180 --> 00:46.820]  This is Phil Donahue.
[00:49.040 --> 00:55.000]  And you're listening to WBAI New York 99.5.
[00:59.430 --> 01:01.290]  And yes, it is WBAI New York.
[01:01.450 --> 01:02.770]  The time is 7 o'clock.
[01:02.930 --> 01:04.430]  Time once again for Off the Hook.
[01:09.600 --> 01:11.680]  The telephone keeps ringing.
[01:11.880 --> 01:14.200]  So I ripped it off the wall.
[01:15.040 --> 01:17.180]  I cut myself while shaving.
[01:17.780 --> 01:19.740]  Now I can't make a cough.
[01:20.480 --> 01:22.540]  We couldn't get much worse.
[01:24.660 --> 01:26.200]  Good fun diddly bonk.
[01:26.220 --> 01:27.980]  But the best expect the worst.
[01:28.580 --> 01:30.480]  I hope that's understood.
[01:30.700 --> 01:31.660]  Fun diddly bonk.
[02:05.780 --> 02:06.960]  And good evening to everybody.
[02:07.060 --> 02:08.240]  The program is Off the Hook.
[02:08.420 --> 02:10.820]  Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening.
[02:11.380 --> 02:13.640]  Joined tonight by Mike.
[02:13.840 --> 02:14.060]  Hi.
[02:14.240 --> 02:14.600]  Kyle.
[02:14.920 --> 02:15.320]  Yeah, what up?
[02:15.640 --> 02:16.120]  Dot Rhett.
[02:16.760 --> 02:16.980]  Hello.
[02:19.480 --> 02:20.040]  Yes.
[02:20.040 --> 02:20.600]  Voltaire.
[02:20.760 --> 02:20.980]  Hello.
[02:21.580 --> 02:22.440]  And Jim.
[02:22.800 --> 02:22.940]  Hello.
[02:23.660 --> 02:24.820]  Down Philadelphia, Bernie S.
[02:25.320 --> 02:26.500]  Greetings from Philadelphia.
[02:27.320 --> 02:29.600]  You sound really far away this time, Bernie.
[02:30.200 --> 02:30.580]  Far away?
[02:30.800 --> 02:34.340]  Yeah, I think the microphone on your phone really needs some adjusting, I think.
[02:34.540 --> 02:35.200]  How about now?
[02:35.480 --> 02:36.620]  Not much better, I'm afraid.
[02:37.660 --> 02:39.920]  Why don't you try banging it against the desk or something?
[02:40.040 --> 02:41.460]  That works on old-fashioned phones.
[02:41.580 --> 02:44.760]  I'm going to have to grab a headset, but I'll have it on in a moment.
[02:44.960 --> 02:45.220]  Okay.
[02:45.500 --> 02:46.500]  Please do.
[02:47.380 --> 02:48.060]  Well, okay.
[02:48.080 --> 02:48.540]  Here we are.
[02:48.680 --> 02:49.820]  We have a special guest tonight.
[02:49.820 --> 02:52.040]  We'll be getting to you in just a moment or two.
[02:52.760 --> 02:54.660]  How has everyone's week been so far?
[02:55.500 --> 02:55.900]  Cold.
[02:56.580 --> 02:57.560]  It's warm, actually.
[02:57.680 --> 02:58.880]  It's 102 degrees in the studio.
[02:59.020 --> 03:00.760]  Well, in here, but my week in general has been cold.
[03:00.760 --> 03:03.740]  It's above freezing outside, so I don't know where you're getting this cold from.
[03:04.000 --> 03:06.160]  Nothing but puddles and wetness everywhere.
[03:06.720 --> 03:07.620]  Some people are never happy.
[03:07.620 --> 03:10.420]  You know, that leads me to a big issue that I've been having.
[03:10.980 --> 03:12.760]  I've been out of touch for the last couple of days.
[03:12.920 --> 03:13.200]  You know why?
[03:13.200 --> 03:17.300]  Because in this third-world country we live in, whenever it rains, we lose connectivity.
[03:17.440 --> 03:21.140]  Or at least I lose connectivity because I don't have everything I own stuck up in the cloud.
[03:21.140 --> 03:23.280]  I keep it in a place I can access it.
[03:23.380 --> 03:29.140]  And the penalty for doing that is every time it rains, Verizon has some kind of piece of equipment that's underwater.
[03:29.740 --> 03:34.680]  And I have to make all kinds of phone calls and get them to get off their asses and do something about it.
[03:34.860 --> 03:36.240]  It's been two days and counting now.
[03:36.580 --> 03:39.180]  Every time it rains, this happens.
[03:39.420 --> 03:41.940]  And I got to tell you, it's pretty frustrating.
[03:42.160 --> 03:45.660]  Well, as you know, the internet is a series of tubes and they do tend to flood.
[03:46.340 --> 03:48.660]  Yeah, well, not in other places.
[03:48.660 --> 03:51.760]  It is, you know, wandering around other parts of the world, the civilized parts.
[03:52.360 --> 03:56.180]  Things don't go haywire every time the weather changes just a little bit.
[03:56.960 --> 03:57.880]  It's frustrating.
[03:58.120 --> 03:58.540]  You agree?
[03:58.840 --> 03:59.600]  I agree.
[03:59.940 --> 04:01.080]  I'm having a good week.
[04:01.140 --> 04:05.560]  Otherwise, I'm sorry to hear of your plight with the telephone company.
[04:05.740 --> 04:07.760]  Well, I'm sure they're getting around to it right now.
[04:07.860 --> 04:10.580]  It's just annoying because you can't keep in touch with people.
[04:10.780 --> 04:12.460]  You fall out of touch.
[04:12.660 --> 04:13.440]  And things happen.
[04:13.540 --> 04:14.020]  You miss them.
[04:14.020 --> 04:16.920]  Do they play this game at a company I used to work at?
[04:17.060 --> 04:19.840]  The internet would go out every time it rained and we'd call them to complain.
[04:19.940 --> 04:21.260]  And they'd say, oh, we'll come by in two days.
[04:21.280 --> 04:22.560]  And they'd come by and it's sunny.
[04:22.720 --> 04:24.160]  And then they'd say, there's no problem.
[04:24.280 --> 04:24.480]  Yes.
[04:24.600 --> 04:24.720]  Yeah.
[04:24.800 --> 04:25.860]  That's an old trick.
[04:26.080 --> 04:27.460]  And it's been going on for years, literally.
[04:28.360 --> 04:44.040]  But, you know, that's one of the reasons why we choose not to move the main 2600 box into a colo or put it up on the cloud somewhere, because then you have situations like what was going on a couple of weeks ago with Twitter and with subpoenas being handed down.
[04:44.140 --> 04:47.160]  And basically, somebody decides they want to search your computer.
[04:47.300 --> 04:49.940]  You don't even find out about it because you don't have access to it yourself.
[04:50.140 --> 04:59.940]  If it's inside your house, inside your apartment, inside your office, then you'll see when the feds come and execute search warrants and start reading email and copying things off disks.
[04:59.940 --> 05:04.040]  That's why, in the past, everybody wanted to run their own mail server.
[05:04.200 --> 05:06.420]  Everybody wanted to have their own website in their home.
[05:06.780 --> 05:08.480]  And we sort of lost that, you know?
[05:08.880 --> 05:10.420]  It's kind of frustrating.
[05:10.520 --> 05:10.760]  Voltaire.
[05:10.940 --> 05:11.160]  Yes.
[05:11.160 --> 05:14.600]  I can personally attest to the fact that the building that the...
[05:14.600 --> 05:15.920]  You have microphones not on.
[05:16.000 --> 05:16.220]  I'm sorry.
[05:16.220 --> 05:16.740]  Try that one.
[05:16.840 --> 05:17.120]  This one?
[05:17.280 --> 05:17.440]  Yeah.
[05:17.600 --> 05:17.820]  Yes.
[05:17.820 --> 05:26.040]  I can personally attest to the fact that the building that the server is in, the mat, the doormat says, come back with a warrant.
[05:26.780 --> 05:27.840]  It doesn't say that anymore.
[05:27.920 --> 05:28.380]  It used to.
[05:28.420 --> 05:29.240]  It used to say that, yes.
[05:29.240 --> 05:30.200]  But it's still implied.
[05:30.380 --> 05:30.640]  Whatever.
[05:30.640 --> 05:32.100]  But that's irrelevant to this.
[05:33.120 --> 05:36.260]  Yeah, I agree with the sentiment.
[05:36.480 --> 05:41.560]  It seems like a throwback anymore for someone to be serving something on their own.
[05:41.680 --> 05:50.940]  And you really want these agencies or companies, in the case of copyright violations, you really want them to speak directly to you.
[05:51.220 --> 05:59.500]  And I guess part of the fallout is that when something does happen, you have to be the point of communication, complaining about the service going down.
[05:59.680 --> 06:06.820]  But I think the tradeoff is better because you have access and you are in direct communication with the company.
[06:06.960 --> 06:14.780]  You don't receive it from a third party, an organization, that maybe their legal department isn't as good as what we saw with Twitter a couple weeks ago.
[06:15.080 --> 06:16.080]  And that kind of thing.
[06:16.360 --> 06:19.820]  So, yeah, you have to deal with certain aspects of it.
[06:19.920 --> 06:26.380]  But the tradeoff is that you get spoken to directly and you can address things and be in the know.
[06:26.920 --> 06:34.160]  Well, I guess the real question is, is there any way to keep doing this without being under the thumb of Verizon and its negligence?
[06:34.160 --> 06:38.060]  No, there isn't because I'll tell you what, we get DSL service from a company.
[06:38.240 --> 06:38.360]  Right.
[06:38.580 --> 06:44.540]  And that company has to talk to another company known as Megapath, which deals with DSL connections all throughout the city.
[06:44.760 --> 06:48.960]  And then they have to talk to Verizon, who actually own the copper underneath the streets.
[06:49.340 --> 07:00.340]  And Verizon has very little incentive to do anything because, well, you know, you could be a Verizon customer, deal directly with us, or you can keep having these accidents happen to you every single time it rains or every single time somebody accidentally clips a line.
[07:00.480 --> 07:09.380]  And I've had Verizon linemen tell me that they clip lines because they realize it's a competitor and they don't really have to do much.
[07:09.480 --> 07:16.540]  They just clip it and before you know it, they become a customer of Verizon because they get fed up with the other companies constantly losing their connections.
[07:16.540 --> 07:22.560]  It's a, you know, it's a bullying tactic and it's something that happens when one company runs a whole lot of things.
[07:22.880 --> 07:25.100]  And it's a trend we see these days.
[07:25.260 --> 07:43.460]  Do you get the sense that if they're doing anything at all through your requests up the chain of these organizations that lease or own the lines, you're single-handedly upgrading Verizon's network, you know, one outage at a time, if they're doing anything at all.
[07:43.460 --> 07:55.360]  I mean, that's the power you have as a customer, that you're putting in these requests and slowly, very, very, very slowly, things are improving and getting slightly better, more duct tape, more chewing gum.
[07:55.540 --> 07:57.940]  It's just so depressing, so depressing.
[07:58.100 --> 07:59.740]  We travel to these various places.
[07:59.740 --> 08:04.360]  We go to Slovenia where their problem is they have too much, their internet access is too fast.
[08:04.500 --> 08:05.600]  That literally is their problem.
[08:05.880 --> 08:10.800]  And what they mean by that, it means that people don't leave their homes because there's no reason to leave their homes.
[08:10.800 --> 08:18.660]  So they go to work, internet access is slower, there's no reason to meet in an internet cafe or at a hackerspace because they can do everything from their home.
[08:18.860 --> 08:22.020]  They literally have the problem of their internet access being too fast.
[08:22.160 --> 08:26.220]  And it just, it drives me crazy because we have trouble just getting online at all.
[08:26.360 --> 08:31.200]  When we're organizing the conferences at the hotel, we can't get decent lines into the place.
[08:31.440 --> 08:34.440]  They don't, they will probably never run fiber in that part of the city.
[08:34.980 --> 08:40.780]  And meanwhile, in Germany and Scandinavia and places like that, it's just, it's a given.
[08:40.980 --> 08:44.800]  It doesn't make any sense because my internet is a lot slower than in most of those countries.
[08:44.820 --> 08:48.320]  And I don't leave my house in search of more bandwidth.
[08:48.340 --> 08:51.180]  I leave my house for other reasons or sometimes I don't.
[08:51.300 --> 08:52.780]  But bandwidth has nothing to do with it.
[08:52.840 --> 08:54.820]  If you worked in an office where internet...
[08:54.820 --> 08:55.860]  Why would I work in an office?
[08:55.860 --> 09:00.200]  Okay, we see you're injecting your values onto everybody else.
[09:00.200 --> 09:07.020]  But everybody else in the world has this nine-to-five kind of attitude, or most people anyway, where they work in offices.
[09:07.240 --> 09:10.120]  And by working in offices, you tend to connect to the internet.
[09:10.380 --> 09:12.280]  And you want to have fast connectivity.
[09:12.500 --> 09:16.520]  And if it's faster at your house than at your office, why go to the office at all?
[09:16.600 --> 09:17.620]  That's the issue there.
[09:17.840 --> 09:18.400]  Hey, Manuel.
[09:18.560 --> 09:19.060]  Yes, go ahead, Bernie.
[09:19.380 --> 09:37.840]  I think you might have been having a false sense of security in thinking that if you host your own mail server, web servers, other servers in your residence, that they will just serve you with a subpoena and you can decide how you're going to handle that subpoena.
[09:38.020 --> 09:59.440]  I think if a federal law enforcement agency such as the FBI wanted the contents of your servers or someone's servers that were hosting them in their own home, and they felt that that data would be a potential risk of loss if they filed a subpoena directly to you or whoever was maintaining that in their home,
[09:59.740 --> 10:03.440]  they would just go serve one of these sneak and peek warrants.
[10:03.580 --> 10:09.840]  They'd just come in and sneak in and, you know, copy your hard drives and go away and you probably wouldn't even know about it.
[10:09.840 --> 10:16.080]  How would I not notice federal agents rummaging through my own place?
[10:16.400 --> 10:16.800]  I mean, come on.
[10:17.100 --> 10:18.420]  They wait until you're not around.
[10:18.620 --> 10:20.120]  They have people standing around.
[10:20.260 --> 10:21.680]  They do this very professionally.
[10:21.680 --> 10:24.880]  They have professional burglars working for law enforcement agencies.
[10:24.980 --> 10:27.980]  And how do they get around surveillance cameras and things like that?
[10:28.080 --> 10:28.480]  Explain that.
[10:28.700 --> 10:33.780]  They put in an old VHS of something that happened five years ago like they do on TV and I'll be fooled?
[10:34.340 --> 10:35.060]  They're very good.
[10:35.640 --> 10:37.880]  You know, I want them to go to that kind of trouble then.
[10:37.880 --> 10:38.500]  Unlimited resources.
[10:38.740 --> 10:39.820]  They have unlimited resources.
[10:39.920 --> 10:42.100]  Well, then I'm going to demand that they use their unlimited resources.
[10:42.100 --> 10:44.500]  But Bernie, yes, it's not actually true that they have unlimited resources.
[10:44.800 --> 10:47.940]  They have a lot of resources and they tend to waste them frivolously.
[10:48.120 --> 10:55.880]  But it's a lot more work to, like, sneak into someone's house when they're not home than it is to place a phone call to Facebook saying, hi, can I please have this data?
[10:55.900 --> 10:56.220]  Absolutely.
[10:56.220 --> 11:03.260]  So they only use these tactics when they really, really want the data as opposed to when they just kind of like to have it.
[11:03.660 --> 11:03.920]  True.
[11:04.080 --> 11:04.380]  Very true.
[11:04.540 --> 11:04.760]  All right.
[11:04.820 --> 11:06.560]  Well, the thing is to make it as difficult as possible.
[11:06.560 --> 11:20.720]  And I think too many of us make it as easy as possible by Twittering our entire lives or Facebooking every move we make, telling people where we are through Foursquare and all sorts of other methods that just make it easy for them to figure out what we're doing and where we are at all times.
[11:20.800 --> 11:30.520]  But then, on top of everything else, we keep all of our private information stored on some corporate computer somewhere that we don't even have access to if it were to go down or if somebody were to get in and change the password.
[11:30.720 --> 11:33.620]  And that's something that I really, I can't understand.
[11:36.560 --> 11:36.760]  Forget it.
[11:37.680 --> 11:44.080]  People had a sense that your security is something that you keep track of yourself, that you're responsible for.
[11:44.180 --> 11:45.420]  You can't entrust it to anybody.
[11:45.520 --> 11:45.760]  Voltaire?
[11:45.920 --> 11:47.480]  Well, I don't think that's true.
[11:47.620 --> 11:50.360]  Hotmail has been... people have been using Hotmail for 20 years or so.
[11:50.540 --> 11:51.720]  People have been storing...
[11:51.720 --> 11:54.980]  Not very smart people used Hotmail, I don't think.
[11:55.420 --> 11:57.700]  Hotmail was always the butt of people's jokes.
[11:57.940 --> 11:58.160]  Always.
[11:58.160 --> 12:02.760]  But Gmail, everybody embraces Gmail like it's the second coming, and I don't get it.
[12:02.840 --> 12:05.320]  I don't understand why everybody trusts Gmail so much.
[12:05.500 --> 12:06.040]  You know what happened?
[12:06.200 --> 12:07.380]  This happened to me last week.
[12:07.500 --> 12:09.480]  I was writing... I do use Gmail.
[12:09.520 --> 12:12.360]  I just don't use it for everything, and I don't use it for sensitive things.
[12:12.440 --> 12:18.780]  But I was writing a piece of email to somebody, and I basically, in the email, I said, I'm attaching something.
[12:20.360 --> 12:28.180]  And when I went to send the message, Gmail popped up this little error message on my screen saying, you said you were attaching something, but you didn't attach something.
[12:28.340 --> 12:30.480]  Are you sure you want to send this message without attaching something?
[12:30.940 --> 12:33.920]  I know Gmail scans your mail so that they can send you ads.
[12:34.020 --> 12:34.680]  Everybody knows that.
[12:34.760 --> 12:40.560]  But this kind of scared me because it wasn't scanning the mail to give me an ad that I would appreciate.
[12:40.740 --> 12:45.980]  It was scanning my mail for content and acting on that saying, oh, you meant to say this, but you actually did this.
[12:46.180 --> 12:47.440]  Well, that's a feature, not a bug.
[12:47.660 --> 12:48.380]  Yeah, right.
[12:48.380 --> 12:50.660]  Everybody defends it, but I see it as...
[12:50.660 --> 12:51.860]  Well, you can actually turn that off.
[12:52.300 --> 12:53.200]  Great, you can turn it off.
[12:53.260 --> 12:54.700]  But the point is they're doing this.
[12:54.860 --> 12:59.940]  And if they're doing it there, they can do it for all manner of reasons for any other entities as well.
[13:00.040 --> 13:02.680]  They can say, well, this person mentioned this other person's name.
[13:02.720 --> 13:03.740]  He said Julian Assange.
[13:03.860 --> 13:04.640]  He must know him.
[13:04.740 --> 13:05.580]  So here are feds.
[13:05.580 --> 13:08.300]  Here is this person's email address, and here is the contents of their hard drive.
[13:08.560 --> 13:10.000]  I'm not saying they're doing that now.
[13:10.120 --> 13:14.160]  I'm saying they're putting together the tools where it will be incredibly easy to do that in the future.
[13:14.300 --> 13:14.520]  Mike.
[13:15.660 --> 13:21.780]  There are email programs that you can run on your own computer that look for the word attached and pop up a box.
[13:21.940 --> 13:22.340]  I have one.
[13:22.740 --> 13:23.020]  Yeah.
[13:23.260 --> 13:25.060]  So it's not necessarily evil.
[13:25.280 --> 13:26.840]  No, but you're running that yourself.
[13:26.840 --> 13:27.700]  Don't you see the difference?
[13:28.020 --> 13:33.040]  I'm just saying that of all the things that Google does, many of which are very evil, this is the one you pick?
[13:33.040 --> 13:35.780]  No, this is something that just kind of slapped me across the face.
[13:35.920 --> 13:37.640]  I don't believe everybody defends this.
[13:37.860 --> 13:39.400]  Everybody thinks Google is...
[13:39.400 --> 13:39.720]  No, no, no.
[13:39.820 --> 13:40.640]  I think they're terrible.
[13:40.900 --> 13:41.140]  Well...
[13:41.140 --> 13:44.460]  I just want to criticize them for the things they do that are actually terrible.
[13:44.700 --> 13:44.780]  Okay.
[13:44.920 --> 13:45.660]  Name one of those then.
[13:45.780 --> 13:49.020]  They hand over your information to the government without informing you.
[13:49.100 --> 13:52.900]  I think that's much more terrible than popping up a box saying your email says the word attached in it.
[13:53.000 --> 13:56.060]  And don't you think it's possible that they can also say, hey, this person did this.
[13:56.180 --> 14:02.380]  Here, government, here's this information that we found out about the person because we have the ability to do so just by looking at their words.
[14:02.380 --> 14:02.940]  Yeah, sure.
[14:03.120 --> 14:04.140]  I mean, I think that's scary.
[14:04.360 --> 14:07.280]  You can run the same program, yeah, but you're not going to turn yourself in, are you?
[14:07.740 --> 14:08.300]  I might.
[14:08.520 --> 14:08.760]  All right.
[14:08.840 --> 14:10.840]  Well, I don't know.
[14:10.960 --> 14:11.380]  It's just...
[14:11.380 --> 14:15.340]  It's frightening to me how everybody trusts so many different entities.
[14:15.920 --> 14:18.480]  And in this day and age where one corporation is taking over...
[14:18.480 --> 14:20.120]  No, we just had Comcast take over NBC.
[14:20.560 --> 14:28.780]  Now, that is going to be very interesting because for the first time we have a major cable company that's going to be running a major broadcast network now.
[14:28.780 --> 14:34.320]  It's got all kinds of worries about network neutrality from all sorts of people.
[14:35.040 --> 14:36.240]  This isn't a good thing.
[14:36.680 --> 14:37.840]  Bernie, do you think it's a good thing at all?
[14:38.360 --> 14:39.180]  Absolutely not.
[14:39.180 --> 14:47.180]  I think it flies in the face of what the Obama administration promised us a couple of years ago in reigning in media consolidation.
[14:47.860 --> 14:56.860]  This is a huge consolidation of media, and I think it's bad for us consumers.
[14:57.400 --> 15:01.140]  And we just see one consolidation after another.
[15:01.780 --> 15:04.300]  I mean, how much bigger can it possibly get?
[15:04.420 --> 15:06.580]  It's really to the point of absurdity.
[15:06.760 --> 15:10.980]  Until we have a single monopoly, we can still keep consolidating.
[15:10.980 --> 15:11.560]  Yeah.
[15:12.380 --> 15:13.380]  Now, what does this mean?
[15:13.440 --> 15:17.500]  Does this mean GE doesn't own NBC?
[15:17.700 --> 15:18.460]  Universal owns NBC.
[15:18.520 --> 15:19.320]  I've lost track.
[15:19.400 --> 15:20.980]  Bernie, do you know any of this?
[15:21.400 --> 15:22.440]  Well, you're right.
[15:22.640 --> 15:23.360]  There are like...
[15:23.360 --> 15:26.280]  GE used to own NBC, but it's a crazy...
[15:26.280 --> 15:27.720]  There used to be a great...
[15:27.720 --> 15:29.020]  RCA used to own NBC.
[15:29.200 --> 15:30.660]  It used to be the RCA building in Manhattan.
[15:30.740 --> 15:31.600]  Now it's the GE building.
[15:31.680 --> 15:32.820]  Is it going to be the Comcast building?
[15:33.280 --> 15:36.060]  There is still that thing online, who owns what.
[15:36.180 --> 15:39.000]  It was a great patchwork quilt of who owned what.
[15:39.000 --> 15:42.940]  You know, it's all these companies that own each other and are linked to others.
[15:43.000 --> 15:48.300]  And you really need to see a diagram to get your mind around it, because it's pretty mind-bending.
[15:48.980 --> 15:49.480]  All right.
[15:49.520 --> 15:57.040]  Well, I think this is as good a time as any to introduce our guest, Nina Paley, who created the film Sita Sings the Blues, spoke at Hope.
[15:57.840 --> 16:00.060]  And welcome to WBAR, Nina.
[16:00.320 --> 16:00.780]  Thank you.
[16:01.300 --> 16:05.000]  This is the kind of conversation we usually have week after week.
[16:05.000 --> 16:13.100]  And I'm sure this is something that interests you as you're involved in copyright and fighting the powers that be and basically being the underdog.
[16:13.280 --> 16:17.520]  What is it that you did that got the attention of some of the people?
[16:17.520 --> 16:20.180]  Well, first, I just wanted to say something about the media consolidation.
[16:20.920 --> 16:30.280]  One of the, as that affects copywriters, how that relates to copyright, is that you have these conglomerates that own every part of media.
[16:30.280 --> 16:35.300]  They own all these so-called rights to our shared cultural history.
[16:35.380 --> 16:37.220]  They own the production studios.
[16:37.380 --> 16:39.940]  They own all the distribution channels as well.
[16:40.140 --> 16:49.960]  And that's one of the ways that copyright can effectively be enforced without ever needing to sue anybody.
[16:50.620 --> 16:52.020]  Because if you're a filmmaker...
[16:52.020 --> 16:54.180]  Okay, now I'll just say this now and then I'll explain.
[16:54.260 --> 17:05.700]  If you're a filmmaker and you want your work to get out through any media channels, you need to show these gatekeepers that you have cleared all the rights.
[17:06.020 --> 17:15.020]  So even without them suing you, they just own all the media from top to bottom, from the present all the way to 1923.
[17:16.480 --> 17:17.000]  And...
[17:17.540 --> 17:19.740]  So you can't get anywhere without their approval.
[17:19.940 --> 17:20.240]  Correct.
[17:20.400 --> 17:29.700]  So for example, if one entity owned our cultural history, but a different entity owned the distribution channels, then you could probably get in those distribution channels.
[17:29.920 --> 17:30.860]  Then it wouldn't be the same.
[17:31.940 --> 17:33.220]  It wouldn't be as difficult.
[17:33.520 --> 17:37.620]  But because they own everything, they can censor everything.
[17:37.920 --> 17:39.300]  Now, what about the internet, though?
[17:39.400 --> 17:42.280]  Does the internet give you the ability to simply bypass all of that?
[17:42.280 --> 17:43.140]  It certainly does.
[17:43.140 --> 17:46.280]  Although this year seems to be the year of breaking the internet.
[17:46.500 --> 17:49.740]  I've never seen such concerted effort towards breaking the internet.
[17:50.140 --> 17:51.840]  This year meaning the one that just started?
[17:52.200 --> 17:53.400]  Yeah, well, also beginning last year.
[17:53.480 --> 17:54.440]  I mean, those domain seizures.
[17:54.980 --> 18:00.960]  Like if they can just seize domains, then artists like me are in trouble.
[18:01.160 --> 18:04.800]  I mean, I need a free internet in order to thrive as an artist.
[18:05.000 --> 18:07.940]  Why don't we take a step back and maybe you could tell us a little bit about your work?
[18:08.060 --> 18:08.340]  Yes.
[18:08.340 --> 18:14.400]  Okay, so I made a feature film, an animated feature film musical called Sita Sings the Blues.
[18:15.480 --> 18:17.620]  It's based on the Ramayana, an Indian epic.
[18:18.080 --> 18:20.860]  I animated it, designed it, and all that sort of stuff myself.
[18:20.940 --> 18:25.160]  And it has music in it, which is sung by Annette Hanshaw.
[18:25.280 --> 18:27.040]  And she sang in the late 1920s.
[18:28.000 --> 18:29.300]  It has 10 songs by her.
[18:29.300 --> 18:34.320]  It also has original music that I commissioned and music by contemporary bands and things like that.
[18:35.440 --> 18:38.700]  When I began working on the film, I knew that it was very...
[18:39.200 --> 18:45.200]  I knew that somebody owned these songs or that you can't just use songs like that legally.
[18:45.620 --> 18:47.900]  So from the very beginning of the production...
[18:47.900 --> 18:50.640]  Actually, the first thing I did was I contacted the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
[18:50.640 --> 18:55.820]  They put me in touch with the Glushko Samuelson Intellectual Property Law Clinic of American University.
[18:56.880 --> 19:03.320]  For several years, student attorneys there researched the provenance of all of those songs while I worked on the film.
[19:03.320 --> 19:06.540]  Because I decided I was going to make the film no matter what.
[19:06.640 --> 19:10.360]  Because I felt compelled to by my muse.
[19:10.500 --> 19:10.840]  I just...
[19:10.840 --> 19:11.700]  It had to be those songs.
[19:11.720 --> 19:12.600]  I had to make this film.
[19:13.200 --> 19:14.940]  But I did want to know what I was getting into.
[19:15.920 --> 19:21.420]  It turns out that the copyrights on the recordings expired.
[19:21.420 --> 19:22.420]  They were never renewed.
[19:23.220 --> 19:28.520]  So the recordings are actually public domain everywhere in the world except possibly New York State.
[19:29.080 --> 19:34.940]  But the possibly New York State exception is minor and I'm not going to actually address that.
[19:35.040 --> 19:36.480]  It's actually broken down by state.
[19:37.340 --> 19:38.420]  It's so insane.
[19:39.020 --> 19:41.060]  Do you want me to go into this now or do you want me to go back?
[19:41.060 --> 19:43.280]  Because this is like a weird little thread off of the story.
[19:43.460 --> 19:44.320]  Show us how insane it is.
[19:44.420 --> 19:46.080]  I'm curious how insane it actually gets.
[19:46.820 --> 19:47.300]  Okay.
[19:49.800 --> 19:51.780]  So there's federal copyright law.
[19:53.120 --> 19:55.580]  But there are also state copyright laws.
[19:55.880 --> 19:57.740]  And you know that they've changed copyright.
[19:57.960 --> 20:00.000]  They're always changing copyright law federally.
[20:01.300 --> 20:04.180]  Things that aren't protected by federal copyright.
[20:04.680 --> 20:06.860]  Some of the state laws are more draconian.
[20:07.020 --> 20:09.360]  We're more draconian than the federal law.
[20:09.360 --> 20:13.900]  So the recordings were never renewed.
[20:13.900 --> 20:17.280]  And that means that they're not protected by federal copyright law.
[20:17.420 --> 20:19.240]  But there was a case...
[20:19.240 --> 20:21.540]  I can't remember the name of the case...
[20:22.180 --> 20:24.200]  With similar recordings from a similar era.
[20:25.280 --> 20:27.040]  And it went to the Supreme Court.
[20:27.160 --> 20:31.480]  And the Supreme Court said, hmm, these aren't protected by federal copyright law.
[20:31.480 --> 20:32.800]  Are they protected by anything?
[20:32.800 --> 20:39.120]  Oh, look, here's an obscure New York state law that predates any of these federal copyright laws.
[20:39.140 --> 20:40.820]  And it's far more draconian.
[20:40.820 --> 20:43.960]  So we'll just say that it's protected by that law.
[20:44.180 --> 20:47.440]  So does that mean that only people in New York state can't use this?
[20:47.580 --> 20:48.800]  Or people throughout the country?
[20:49.660 --> 20:52.500]  Technically, what it means is that if somebody...
[20:52.500 --> 20:58.340]  If I am sued, or whatever, if this becomes a legal issue, I'm going to have to ban the film in New York state.
[20:58.860 --> 21:00.100]  And how do you do that exactly?
[21:00.380 --> 21:00.900]  I don't know.
[21:00.980 --> 21:01.580]  We'll find out.
[21:02.040 --> 21:02.900]  Like, as far as this is...
[21:02.900 --> 21:04.220]  Like, we have a soundtrack available now.
[21:04.380 --> 21:07.620]  You'll notice that there are no Annette Hanshaw CDs available in the United States.
[21:07.620 --> 21:15.040]  And that's because no CD distributor, no record distributor wants to deal with being sued for having their release.
[21:15.160 --> 21:16.380]  Nobody wants to ban it in New York state.
[21:16.380 --> 21:17.140]  This is what I don't get.
[21:17.320 --> 21:24.320]  There are so many works of art, from TV shows to movies to recordings, that are sitting in vaults someplace or warehouses.
[21:24.560 --> 21:32.400]  Nobody can hear them because somebody has the rights, and they don't want to share those rights without getting a huge amount of money that nobody's going to pay them.
[21:32.540 --> 21:39.720]  So in the end, the artist is basically doomed to obscurity and to never be heard again.
[21:39.720 --> 21:40.060]  Yeah, they're dead.
[21:40.200 --> 21:41.800]  And also, those works are disintegrating.
[21:41.960 --> 21:42.200]  Exactly.
[21:42.360 --> 21:43.120]  I mean, tapes dissolve.
[21:43.320 --> 21:45.520]  And so many examples of this.
[21:45.520 --> 21:46.720]  And it really is annoying.
[21:46.720 --> 21:50.340]  At some point, I think the art has to outweigh the profit.
[21:50.640 --> 21:51.440]  It's not just annoying.
[21:51.460 --> 21:52.480]  It's tragic.
[21:52.760 --> 21:53.100]  It is.
[21:53.280 --> 21:55.340]  As an artist, I have to really echo that.
[21:55.500 --> 22:01.900]  You know, just the idea of cultural heritage like that just disappearing, you know, us losing it forever.
[22:02.160 --> 22:09.560]  You know, by people holding on to it like this, not sharing it, we're losing a valuable part of ourselves that we may never be able to regain.
[22:09.700 --> 22:15.300]  And I doubt in very many cases it's the actual artist that is insisting that this be held in a vault somewhere.
[22:15.520 --> 22:16.560]  And nobody has access to it.
[22:16.660 --> 22:19.500]  It's somebody else who has the, quote unquote, rights.
[22:20.700 --> 22:21.540]  And, you know...
[22:21.540 --> 22:22.840]  Yeah, most of the artists are dead.
[22:23.000 --> 22:25.880]  I mean, all of the artists that were involved with these recordings that I used are dead.
[22:26.200 --> 22:26.320]  Right.
[22:26.320 --> 22:29.360]  So, and then, should I continue this story?
[22:29.380 --> 22:29.660]  Yes, please.
[22:29.860 --> 22:36.760]  Okay, so, forgetting about the recordings, which as far as I'm concerned are public domain, and if it becomes an issue in New York State, we'll ban it in New York State.
[22:37.760 --> 22:42.060]  The songs that underlie the recordings, those copyrights were renewed.
[22:42.540 --> 22:44.300]  And so they're all under copyright.
[22:45.040 --> 22:45.560]  Yes.
[22:45.780 --> 22:46.680]  What does that mean?
[22:47.080 --> 22:52.300]  The recordings are not in copyright, but the song is...
[22:52.300 --> 22:52.780]  I don't understand.
[22:52.780 --> 22:57.620]  Okay, so every piece of music has at least four rights associated with it.
[22:57.640 --> 22:59.580]  You have your print rights.
[23:00.340 --> 23:01.820]  Print music, like for sheet music?
[23:02.020 --> 23:02.200]  Yeah.
[23:03.380 --> 23:11.680]  There's the mechanical rights, which is the right to release it, release the composition, a recording of the composition on audio media.
[23:12.640 --> 23:13.820]  To make a CD?
[23:14.100 --> 23:14.240]  Yeah.
[23:14.420 --> 23:14.620]  Okay.
[23:14.660 --> 23:21.780]  There's master rights, which is the recording rights, like Annette Hanshaw's voice, the actual particular singer.
[23:22.180 --> 23:29.640]  And then there's synchronization rights, which is the right to have an image with that music.
[23:31.300 --> 23:35.340]  The effect that I see this having is people saying, you know what, it's just too much trouble.
[23:35.380 --> 23:36.820]  I don't want to even make a film anymore.
[23:37.000 --> 23:38.120]  Yes, that is what happens.
[23:38.420 --> 23:39.540]  It's stifling creativity so much.
[23:39.660 --> 23:41.000]  And did it used to be like this?
[23:41.320 --> 23:42.480]  It was always like this.
[23:42.520 --> 23:46.040]  But what's different now is that now people have access to the tools to make films.
[23:46.240 --> 23:48.000]  So film is becoming a folk art.
[23:48.120 --> 23:51.420]  And this used to be an extremely elite practice.
[23:51.680 --> 23:56.720]  And again, the only entities that could practice it were also these big corporate things.
[23:56.720 --> 24:07.840]  So the whole idea of just a few gigantic corporations owning the entire chain of production to distribution makes sense for them.
[24:07.920 --> 24:09.180]  They used to run all the studios.
[24:10.100 --> 24:11.900]  I mean, they still do run all the studios.
[24:13.280 --> 24:15.060]  I want to interrupt real quick.
[24:15.200 --> 24:17.880]  I'm seeing parallels to our original conversation.
[24:17.880 --> 24:21.200]  And we're talking about consolidation of media companies.
[24:21.440 --> 24:26.780]  You know, the art of running your own server and hosting, that's being lost.
[24:26.900 --> 24:34.440]  And I think a lot of the younger generation of people don't realize, you know, the work that's involved and the advantages of doing that kind of thing.
[24:34.540 --> 24:43.480]  And in the same way with art, people are losing touch with the kinds of cultural texts, media texts that are out there.
[24:43.480 --> 24:45.760]  And I think the younger generations miss out on that.
[24:45.960 --> 24:57.920]  And yet again, the conglomerates and the big companies, basically, they get to dictate how you use or how you host things on the Internet and how you consume various parts of our cultural history.
[24:57.920 --> 24:59.600]  So I just want to draw that parallel.
[24:59.880 --> 25:01.460]  Yeah, I hate the word consume.
[25:01.680 --> 25:06.440]  I hate this idea of calling people consumers of media.
[25:06.440 --> 25:13.800]  I prefer the word attendance of media, because what you're really doing is you're giving media your attention and you are attending to it.
[25:13.900 --> 25:19.260]  Yeah, you know, whether you're talking about just the traditional media or any form of information, you can't actually consume it.
[25:19.340 --> 25:23.820]  No matter how many times you take a look at it, it is never diminished in any way.
[25:24.380 --> 25:27.760]  If anything, you only make it better because then you can tell other people about it.
[25:27.840 --> 25:29.540]  You can, you know, communicate it better.
[25:29.600 --> 25:32.040]  If anything, you're an amplifier, not a consumer.
[25:32.040 --> 25:32.580]  Right.
[25:32.760 --> 25:37.980]  And consumer also implies that people are very passive, that they're passively receiving this media.
[25:37.980 --> 25:40.020]  And of course, we live in a different world now.
[25:40.160 --> 25:41.220]  Everybody has the tools.
[25:41.520 --> 25:49.100]  Part of taking works in is often putting them back out, either by simply sharing it or by modifying it.
[25:49.160 --> 25:50.540]  Every work is derivative of it.
[25:50.620 --> 25:55.160]  Another work beforehand, and it's sort of like an evolution that you see happening throughout the ages.
[25:55.160 --> 26:01.860]  It seems like we're doing everything we can to quash that and basically just become stagnant.
[26:02.160 --> 26:02.460]  Yes.
[26:03.220 --> 26:17.640]  And what's cool about the time that we live in right now is because there are so many tools, we're in this sort of strange, out-of-control space where the laws are trying to catch up.
[26:18.000 --> 26:23.780]  The laws are trying to impose a kind of control on people that's been lost because this technology is now available.
[26:23.780 --> 26:29.000]  So you made your film, and you kind of, I guess you ignored not having some of these rights.
[26:29.220 --> 26:30.020]  Then what did you do?
[26:30.200 --> 26:30.780]  Oh, right.
[26:31.400 --> 26:32.960]  So as I was making the...
[26:32.960 --> 26:40.320]  I actually thought, you know, when I learned that I would, you know, the songs were not protected by copyright.
[26:40.460 --> 26:43.020]  I mean, sorry, the recordings weren't, but the underlying songs were.
[26:43.240 --> 26:50.740]  I thought, well, that's not going to be too difficult to clear the rights to these because I've heard so many covers of these songs.
[26:50.740 --> 26:51.900]  So it's got to be possible.
[26:51.900 --> 26:56.840]  But that was how I learned the difference between sync rights and mechanical rights.
[26:57.340 --> 27:06.700]  And, you know, if I wanted to release just the soundtrack of the film on a CD, that would have been not too difficult.
[27:09.360 --> 27:12.760]  Those mechanical rights are regulated.
[27:13.120 --> 27:14.620]  There's a standard price for them.
[27:14.620 --> 27:18.360]  It's 9.1 cents per song per unit.
[27:18.900 --> 27:23.240]  You go through a single agency, the Harry Fox agency or some other single agency.
[27:23.500 --> 27:24.680]  You don't have to...
[27:24.680 --> 27:26.700]  Like, permission cannot be denied to you.
[27:26.820 --> 27:27.580]  You pay that money.
[27:27.800 --> 27:28.580]  You're set.
[27:30.120 --> 27:34.240]  But sync rights are not regulated, and they can charge anything.
[27:34.400 --> 27:43.740]  And interestingly, all these different giant media conglomerates, whether it be Warner or Sony or EMI, they all charge the same amount, exactly the same amount.
[27:43.880 --> 27:54.080]  And that's one reason that I don't get, like, all excited when I hear about more consolidation, because it doesn't matter whether they're consolidated or not.
[27:54.120 --> 27:55.980]  They all act exactly the same.
[27:55.980 --> 27:58.220]  So there's no functional competition anyway.
[27:58.340 --> 28:01.280]  They charge the same amount for all works or all the same for each work?
[28:01.960 --> 28:03.900]  All the same for songs.
[28:03.900 --> 28:07.400]  So I had to approach all these different...
[28:07.400 --> 28:10.480]  First of all, I had to find out who owned these songs.
[28:10.700 --> 28:11.560]  Which can be difficult.
[28:11.760 --> 28:12.840]  Which is extremely difficult.
[28:12.980 --> 28:18.780]  But fortunately, I had these student attorneys at the American University Intellectual Property Law Clinic.
[28:19.060 --> 28:24.040]  So the burden fell on me to do all the research to find out who owned these things.
[28:24.060 --> 28:30.060]  Because until I did that, and until I cleared the rights, there was no way that the film would ever be in a cinema or ever be broadcast.
[28:30.560 --> 28:35.980]  Because, as I said before, all these channels are owned by the same corporations.
[28:36.600 --> 28:38.200]  So I had to go through all of this.
[28:38.560 --> 28:42.420]  Most of these corporations didn't even know that they owned the stuff.
[28:42.740 --> 28:46.100]  Now, when I approached them to ask for permission, they did not return phone calls.
[28:46.240 --> 28:49.860]  So first, it was incredibly difficult to find out who owned what.
[28:50.000 --> 28:52.300]  So you called them up and you're like, I have some money for you.
[28:52.480 --> 28:56.500]  And they said, oh, they just, they were not interested in having your money.
[28:56.580 --> 28:57.000]  They wouldn't call back.
[28:57.120 --> 28:57.860]  They wouldn't answer.
[28:57.860 --> 29:00.880]  There'd be messages, they'll call you next week, blah, blah.
[29:00.900 --> 29:01.860]  This went on for months.
[29:02.700 --> 29:05.200]  I had, they only talked to paid intermediaries.
[29:05.400 --> 29:14.140]  They only talked to what's called music supervisors, who are people who are paid because of their relationship to these licensors.
[29:14.660 --> 29:15.880]  Or they talked to lawyers.
[29:16.540 --> 29:19.260]  So I, after months, I became desperate.
[29:19.480 --> 29:20.880]  I just hired a lawyer to talk to them.
[29:21.060 --> 29:22.500]  Then they got right back to us.
[29:22.660 --> 29:25.640]  But I spent $15,000 on lawyers.
[29:25.640 --> 29:32.600]  Is that, is, is that another side effect of consolidation?
[29:33.060 --> 29:40.380]  Where they're so big that they need somebody with huge quantities of customers to talk to them with?
[29:40.600 --> 29:42.700]  Well, no, it's just an effect of having a monopoly.
[29:42.960 --> 29:44.320]  If you have a monopoly, you don't have to do anything.
[29:44.920 --> 29:49.520]  It's like, they have no incentive whatsoever to be of any use.
[29:49.520 --> 29:51.440]  I have a question about sync rights.
[29:52.540 --> 29:59.040]  As I understand, it's, it's the synchronization to any video at all, not the image or likeness of the original author.
[29:59.340 --> 29:59.640]  Okay.
[29:59.900 --> 30:01.220]  I just wanted to get clarification.
[30:01.460 --> 30:01.740]  Just any picture.
[30:01.940 --> 30:02.480]  Any picture.
[30:02.660 --> 30:03.180]  Any picture.
[30:03.400 --> 30:04.520]  Like you're repurposing it.
[30:04.680 --> 30:07.080]  And for, for instance, in this case, it's your story.
[30:07.380 --> 30:08.240]  Or if you're depurposing anything.
[30:08.580 --> 30:13.020]  If you, if it's, if it's on a CD with no picture, that's mechanical rights.
[30:13.220 --> 30:13.300]  Got it.
[30:13.300 --> 30:14.880]  If it's on something that has a picture.
[30:15.240 --> 30:15.640]  Got it.
[30:15.640 --> 30:16.540]  Then that's sync rights.
[30:16.680 --> 30:23.240]  And I should, I should let you know that the amount they came back to, um, and, and the entire budget of my film was $200,000.
[30:23.800 --> 30:25.960]  The entire, everything was $200,000.
[30:26.700 --> 30:27.280]  It's like, that's...
[30:27.280 --> 30:27.420]  Hey, Nina.
[30:27.620 --> 30:27.800]  Yeah.
[30:28.320 --> 30:29.400]  Oh, hi, this is Bernie S.
[30:29.480 --> 30:29.740]  in Philadelphia.
[30:29.900 --> 30:31.540]  I saw your film and I thought it was beautiful.
[30:31.880 --> 30:33.920]  Um, I thank you for making it.
[30:34.020 --> 30:39.240]  But if it cost you $50,000 just for legal fees to make this small film.
[30:39.580 --> 30:40.800]  $15,000 for legal films.
[30:40.820 --> 30:41.580]  Oh, $15,000.
[30:41.920 --> 30:44.540]  Even $15,000 for a film.
[30:44.540 --> 30:50.520]  Um, that's a huge barrier of entry for someone else who would want to take on something like this.
[30:51.080 --> 30:52.920]  Um, yeah, you're not supposed to do this.
[30:53.000 --> 30:57.820]  This is, it's censorship and, and censorship begins in your own mind and it's very effective.
[30:58.000 --> 31:00.120]  I mean, most people never get to the point that I got to.
[31:00.240 --> 31:02.500]  Most people quit before they even start.
[31:02.660 --> 31:04.520]  Well, there must be people that do it anyway.
[31:04.880 --> 31:11.120]  There must be this, this kind of underground filmmaking society where people just thumb their nose at all these crazy fees.
[31:11.120 --> 31:13.780]  I mean, there are people who, who make films who really go overboard.
[31:13.780 --> 31:19.440]  If somebody is whistling something in the background, they have to cut that because that whistling tune might be owned by somebody.
[31:19.580 --> 31:24.460]  They have to block, block out everybody's face in a crowd unless they get permission, sign permission from everybody.
[31:24.800 --> 31:26.260]  It gets ridiculous after a while.
[31:26.300 --> 31:28.200]  And there are people that just say, screw that.
[31:28.200 --> 31:29.160]  I'm doing it anyway.
[31:29.380 --> 31:30.920]  And, and let whoever come after me.
[31:30.920 --> 31:33.080]  There are people who do it anyway, but you can't see their films.
[31:33.560 --> 31:34.600]  I mean, like how you...
[31:34.600 --> 31:36.980]  Well, not in those channels, but you can see them in other places.
[31:37.300 --> 31:38.080]  Yeah, you can see them on the internet.
[31:38.120 --> 31:39.680]  And of course, now they're trying to break the internet.
[31:39.940 --> 31:42.800]  The internet's, you know, it's, it's been great.
[31:42.980 --> 31:55.580]  It's been really great having the internet, but it's becoming more and more of a problem as the plot, the main way people get their films through the internet is on their freaking iPads and through Netflix streaming, which is DRM'd.
[31:55.660 --> 32:01.140]  I mean, I don't know if you know my story with, you know, I don't, I don't endorse DRM on my film.
[32:01.340 --> 32:01.480]  Right.
[32:01.740 --> 32:07.960]  And so Netflix actually carries the DVDs of Seat the Sings the Blues, the physical DVDs.
[32:08.220 --> 32:18.320]  But I was confronted with this real problem when they wanted to use it on their streaming video service, where I just couldn't endorse DRM and it's all DRM.
[32:18.860 --> 32:22.460]  Um, so I said, no, and I don't know if that was the right thing to do or not.
[32:22.900 --> 32:38.840]  It's, it's really questionable, but whatever it is, there's this increasing problem for films because people are just used to like, they're, they're developing film delivery channels that are all DRM'd and people forget that you can just download it for free on the internet.
[32:38.840 --> 32:42.600]  It's becomes a, it becomes a pain for them to download something.
[32:42.880 --> 32:42.960]  Yeah.
[32:43.260 --> 32:49.340]  Nina, just for, for some of our less technical listeners who aren't familiar with DRM, um, what is that basically?
[32:50.400 --> 32:56.300]  It's either digital rights management or digital restrictions management, or what are some other, uh...
[32:56.300 --> 32:59.140]  Well, there's some obscene ones, but I don't, uh, that's basically it.
[32:59.460 --> 32:59.520]  Yeah, yeah.
[32:59.600 --> 33:04.320]  It's, it's basically, um, it, it's something that disables computers.
[33:04.520 --> 33:07.420]  It disables the basic function of computers.
[33:07.720 --> 33:16.180]  It's meant to restrict the way you use something that you buy by redefining it and saying you're not really buying it, even though you've paid money for it and it's delivered to you.
[33:16.180 --> 33:20.040]  You're simply leasing it under their, their, their terms, for instance.
[33:20.320 --> 33:24.020]  But the way that it does that is it basically breaks, it cripples your computer.
[33:24.540 --> 33:26.280]  That's what I really hate about it.
[33:26.440 --> 33:26.620]  Right.
[33:27.360 --> 33:36.680]  And the hammer of, uh, the hammer of enforcement for digital rights management, uh, many of our listeners will know, is the, uh, uh, digital millennium copyright.
[33:36.680 --> 33:37.440]  Ugh, yes.
[33:37.960 --> 33:38.200]  Yeah.
[33:38.200 --> 33:41.320]  If it weren't for that, DRM would be okay, but ugh.
[33:41.620 --> 33:43.300]  But that's only in the United States.
[33:43.560 --> 33:46.620]  Obviously, there are other countries, um, but we can get into that in a moment.
[33:46.700 --> 33:46.880]  All right.
[33:46.980 --> 33:55.640]  Uh, just to clarify for the listeners is, uh, you know, you have to have something on your machine that's actually listening to the DRM, uh, otherwise it really wouldn't have any effect.
[33:55.760 --> 34:07.500]  It's really sort of an agreement that whatever you're using to watch, uh, whatever, uh, or listen to whatever media it is that, that you're paying attention to, it's enforcing this DRM and that, so you still can sidestep it, just maybe not legally.
[34:07.560 --> 34:17.000]  We're having a very parallel issue with, uh, our, our Kindle release of 2600, the subscription, uh, because, uh, Amazon likes to put DRM in various places.
[34:17.180 --> 34:21.460]  We're, we're telling them we don't want DRM and it's, it's kind of like a battle of wills here.
[34:21.860 --> 34:27.280]  And we, we, we, we're trying to, uh, to make this as open as possible, but it's, uh, it's not as easy as you might think.
[34:27.560 --> 34:28.400]  It's these platforms.
[34:28.400 --> 34:29.280]  It's like, yeah, sure.
[34:29.280 --> 34:32.900]  Netflix would love to do it, but they've, they've created a platform that doesn't permit it.
[34:33.020 --> 34:45.440]  And this is what really concerns me as, as we have like quasi internet substitutes for our formerly free internet is that it's become becoming increasingly impossible to make things free.
[34:45.600 --> 34:45.660]  Yeah.
[34:45.760 --> 34:46.980]  People are, are accepting that.
[34:47.100 --> 34:48.340]  And now it makes no sense.
[34:48.440 --> 34:56.640]  Cause if you think about it, uh, if the artist, the creator, whatever, whatever term you want to use, the creator, the initiator wants to let it be free, does not want it to be DRM.
[34:56.640 --> 35:01.180]  Why is the distributor saying, no, no, no, you must keep this locked.
[35:02.000 --> 35:07.800]  I think it's just because it's easier for them to do only implement one platform of like the DRM thing.
[35:07.960 --> 35:09.980]  It's, so it's not even a DRM by default.
[35:10.200 --> 35:12.740]  It's you have to, you can't opt out of the DRM.
[35:12.920 --> 35:16.400]  If you're, if you're a creator, uh, you have to accept the DRM.
[35:16.400 --> 35:18.420]  So Nina, where are we in your story now?
[35:18.780 --> 35:20.440]  You've paid $15,000 in legal fees.
[35:20.440 --> 35:22.240]  Well, okay, $15,000, just, just to contact them.
[35:22.420 --> 35:32.820]  So what they came back with was, um, the bargain basement, no budget, independent film rate of, uh, $220,000 to use those songs legally.
[35:32.960 --> 35:34.220]  And your budget was $200,000.
[35:34.420 --> 35:35.920]  Which I'd spent to make the film.
[35:36.720 --> 35:39.240]  So they wanted $220,000 on top of that.
[35:39.340 --> 35:41.640]  And oddly, they all quoted like exactly the same rates.
[35:41.640 --> 35:45.660]  Uh, I should also note that each song had multiple owners.
[35:46.020 --> 36:03.360]  So, uh, a single song could be like 50% owned by Warner Chappell and 27% owned by Sony and, you know, 32% in British territories by EMI, but then 8% in French territories by someone else.
[36:03.520 --> 36:04.540]  It was insane.
[36:04.720 --> 36:06.540]  And all this money goes back to the artists, right?
[36:06.620 --> 36:07.780]  The dead artists, yes.
[36:08.000 --> 36:11.040]  Which gives the dead artists an incentive to write more songs.
[36:11.040 --> 36:11.840]  Uh-huh, of course.
[36:12.220 --> 36:17.040]  What if they're, like, uh, this deal is negotiated and a country splits in half?
[36:18.200 --> 36:20.160]  Let's not make it even worse, all right?
[36:20.380 --> 36:21.740]  It's, it's insane.
[36:21.840 --> 36:23.820]  You've seen those pictures of, like, patent thickets, right?
[36:23.980 --> 36:30.160]  I mean, the, the, the graphics of this is just like a big nest of, uh, words that I can't say on the air.
[36:30.240 --> 36:30.380]  Yeah.
[36:30.680 --> 36:33.500]  So, so did you pay, you paid the $220,000, right?
[36:33.500 --> 36:33.940]  No, I didn't.
[36:34.080 --> 36:34.920]  Uh, I couldn't possibly.
[36:35.080 --> 36:49.740]  I should also say that before I could do, actually before they even told me that, the first thing, the very first thing they did when I paid the lawyer to contact them was say, we are not going to talk to you until you pay us $500 per song and sign this,
[36:49.740 --> 36:59.020]  uh, festival license in which you promise not to make any money on the film and that the permission to use these songs is going to expire in a year.
[36:59.520 --> 37:15.640]  So that was the first, in order to talk to them further, in order to ask them for permission, I first had to pay them money and promise that there would be no commercial screenings of the film and that the film would be quashed entirely after one year if I didn't get permission.
[37:15.820 --> 37:29.720]  Well, isn't the thinking behind that you pay $500 per song, which sounds, it's still a lot, but it's much more reasonable, uh, that, uh, you, you show it at festivals for a year and a distributor picks up your film and then they cover all these massive charges because they believe your film is going to do well.
[37:30.020 --> 37:31.600]  Yeah, that's the justification for it.
[37:31.680 --> 37:41.120]  But in this case, it was, we, you can't negotiate with us until it was, it was a $500 per song to talk to us, to ever talk to us again fee.
[37:41.220 --> 37:41.560]  Ah, okay.
[37:41.560 --> 37:43.900]  That's what it, that's what it was.
[37:44.040 --> 37:46.080]  It was extortion from the very beginning.
[37:46.340 --> 37:47.280]  It was, it was ridiculous.
[37:47.480 --> 37:50.660]  And then to like pay the money to promise that you're not going to make any money.
[37:50.800 --> 37:53.020]  It's like, where is my money coming from?
[37:53.180 --> 37:54.880]  Like you want $500 per song.
[37:55.220 --> 37:56.500]  Where is that coming from?
[37:56.720 --> 37:59.860]  If I've just signed something that says that I can't get any money to pay you.
[38:01.080 --> 38:06.240]  So you, so you refused to pay the $220,000 and you just buried the film and said, sorry.
[38:06.960 --> 38:11.660]  Well, then there was the year of struggle, which is like what to do.
[38:11.840 --> 38:15.900]  Now, from the beginning, whatever, I was on the festival circuit.
[38:15.900 --> 38:28.620]  I talked to a lot of filmmakers who were actually, they all had distribution deals, but people weren't seeing their films because when a distributor takes your film, the first thing that they do is they lock your film down and they make it harder for people to access your film.
[38:29.240 --> 38:30.240]  So there are many...
[38:30.240 --> 38:30.440]  Wait, wait, wait.
[38:30.540 --> 38:31.900]  That's the first thing a distributor does?
[38:32.060 --> 38:36.040]  A distributor, isn't there a purpose to distribute the film and have more people see it?
[38:36.040 --> 38:38.720]  Yes, that's, that's ostensibly the purpose, but...
[38:38.720 --> 38:40.880]  All right, I just want to make sure I didn't misunderstand that.
[38:40.880 --> 38:44.780]  But their business model is actually to charge for every single use of the film.
[38:44.900 --> 38:47.000]  And that means that they have to build more walls around it.
[38:47.400 --> 38:56.560]  So they're, they're focusing on building the walls and restricting people's access to the film so that they can charge when they, when you do go get to see the film.
[38:56.720 --> 39:02.740]  So frequently films that had been in festivals, as soon as they got a distributor, the distributor immediately pulled it out of festivals.
[39:03.800 --> 39:09.000]  You know, filmmakers that had distributors, the distributor would release their official DVD.
[39:11.040 --> 39:14.720]  Generally, the independent film distributors don't have that much money, so they couldn't promote it or anything.
[39:15.200 --> 39:16.880]  People didn't know about the DVD.
[39:17.300 --> 39:19.220]  It was really hard to find the DVD.
[39:19.540 --> 39:20.920]  You couldn't get it in most stores.
[39:21.680 --> 39:23.920]  It was illegal, of course, to copy the DVD.
[39:24.240 --> 39:29.140]  And so these beautiful films were becoming obscure very, very quickly because of the distributors.
[39:29.140 --> 39:39.620]  So I met various filmmakers on the festival circuit, who very quietly mentioned to me that they were hoping that their films would be pirated, because as it was, people were not seeing their films.
[39:40.240 --> 39:40.660]  Interesting.
[39:40.940 --> 39:44.740]  So they actually are wishing for unauthorized copying and viewing.
[39:45.220 --> 39:45.580]  Quietly.
[39:45.780 --> 39:51.080]  They could, they can't say that out loud, because, you know, that would undermine their relationship with their distributors.
[39:51.320 --> 40:03.540]  Now, that's the kind of thing I think is hilarious, especially when you think of those, those little commercials you see at the beginning of some of these movies these days, where these various actors or directors talk about, you know, how they don't want their movies to be pirated and,
[40:03.760 --> 40:06.640]  you know, like, you wouldn't steal a car, would you, and all those things.
[40:07.200 --> 40:10.360]  And how every time you see a movie, the very first thing you see is a threat.
[40:10.500 --> 40:15.600]  And the very last thing you see is another threat about copyright infringement and unauthorized.
[40:17.320 --> 40:19.980]  And the people who see that are the people who have bought the film anyway.
[40:20.220 --> 40:22.740]  The people who copy it tend to cut that part out.
[40:22.880 --> 40:24.520]  So they don't ever see it, which is kind of ironic.
[40:24.520 --> 40:35.060]  Anyway, so that first year, I was thinking, well, you know, if all else fails, hopefully someone will pirate this film and let it out illegally, and it won't be my fault.
[40:35.300 --> 40:35.800]  You thought that.
[40:35.860 --> 40:36.560]  You didn't say that.
[40:36.660 --> 40:37.600]  Right, I thought that.
[40:37.660 --> 40:37.920]  All right.
[40:38.740 --> 40:40.740]  But I really wanted the film to be legit.
[40:40.900 --> 40:42.900]  And, you know, I really wanted it to be shown in cinemas.
[40:42.900 --> 40:44.340]  And I really wanted it to be broadcast.
[40:44.440 --> 40:49.780]  And as nice as the internet is, it's not actually a substitute for the cinema experience.
[40:49.780 --> 40:52.580]  It complements it very well.
[40:52.720 --> 40:53.460]  It augments it.
[40:53.560 --> 40:55.020]  But I wanted it to be in cinemas.
[40:55.020 --> 40:56.700]  And I wanted it to be showable.
[40:57.240 --> 41:02.920]  So I ended up hiring a rights clearance house.
[41:03.540 --> 41:08.460]  And they negotiated what's called a step deal with these corporations.
[41:08.460 --> 41:29.600]  And the step deal was, I ended up paying $50,000 on top of what amounted to a total of $20,000 in transaction costs, $50,000 to make it legal to share the film freely, or as I put it, to decriminalize the film.
[41:29.780 --> 41:35.040]  And then for every 5,000 copies of the film sold, I have to make additional payments.
[41:35.420 --> 41:42.260]  And if the film makes a million dollars in the box office, as recorded by Variety, I have to make that payment over again.
[41:42.420 --> 41:43.400]  So that's called a step deal.
[41:43.520 --> 41:45.120]  It's like pay-as-you-go sort of a thing.
[41:46.380 --> 41:47.640]  It cost a lot of money.
[41:47.840 --> 41:49.300]  Obviously, I had to take out a loan.
[41:50.400 --> 41:53.920]  You know, I started working with questioncopyright.org.
[41:54.100 --> 41:56.840]  Just for this, you had to take out the budget for the film alone.
[41:56.840 --> 41:59.380]  You probably have to take out a loan for about this particular aspect.
[41:59.380 --> 41:59.980]  Oh, yeah, totally.
[42:00.120 --> 42:02.340]  You know, I was completely broke by the time I'd finished the film.
[42:02.340 --> 42:05.040]  So I had no money at all.
[42:05.180 --> 42:08.300]  I also investigated just making a fair use argument for the film.
[42:08.400 --> 42:10.220]  And there's definitely a fair use argument there.
[42:10.560 --> 42:22.440]  But I learned that even then, the channels that I wanted to get it into wouldn't let me in with a fair use argument.
[42:22.440 --> 42:27.000]  So I could go to a cinema or a distributor and say, like, but it's fair use.
[42:27.120 --> 42:28.120]  And they'd be like, yeah, right.
[42:28.980 --> 42:33.220]  So I wouldn't even have the opportunity to be sued to have this thing resolved.
[42:33.220 --> 42:36.800]  I just would be barred from all the channels that I needed the film to get into.
[42:37.020 --> 42:38.060]  Do you understand what I'm saying?
[42:38.280 --> 42:38.740]  Pretty much.
[42:39.060 --> 42:41.360]  It's not very inspiring for people who want to make movies.
[42:41.680 --> 42:45.540]  I got to say, it sounds like all kinds of walls and barriers are in place.
[42:45.540 --> 42:47.100]  And there's no way to get past them.
[42:48.080 --> 42:51.160]  Well, I mean, I hope that it is inspiring because I did it.
[42:51.300 --> 42:52.140]  You know, I did it.
[42:52.140 --> 42:52.940]  So how did you do it?
[42:54.000 --> 42:55.120]  Well, I did it legally.
[42:55.860 --> 42:57.740]  That's the question is how I did it legally.
[42:57.740 --> 42:59.160]  One thing is I wrote about it.
[42:59.360 --> 43:00.700]  I wrote about the whole process.
[43:00.840 --> 43:06.080]  And most filmmakers don't do that because most filmmakers want to make a second film and they want industry assistance.
[43:06.420 --> 43:11.540]  But I didn't particularly like the film industry and I didn't have any need to make a second film.
[43:11.540 --> 43:13.000]  So I don't have anything to lose.
[43:13.120 --> 43:16.180]  I'm just going to tell the truth about what this process is like.
[43:16.260 --> 43:18.140]  And I don't care if Hollywood doesn't like me.
[43:19.960 --> 43:22.980]  So that was really helpful.
[43:24.260 --> 43:25.620]  And, you know, I did it.
[43:25.620 --> 43:27.080]  And in the future...
[43:30.800 --> 43:32.220]  In the future, what?
[43:32.620 --> 43:37.020]  I mean, independent cinemas take more risks than cinema chains.
[43:37.380 --> 43:38.840]  I did make an art film.
[43:38.840 --> 43:41.440]  So it's mostly in independent cinemas to begin with.
[43:43.220 --> 43:45.620]  Hopefully, the internet will keep improving.
[43:46.360 --> 43:53.660]  Hopefully, people will be willing to download films from the internet and not just get them, you know, through streaming services.
[43:54.820 --> 43:56.260]  I'm still hopeful.
[43:56.420 --> 43:57.600]  I mean, it certainly can be done.
[43:57.740 --> 44:03.200]  And I wonder sometimes, like, if I wanted to make another feature film, what exactly would I do?
[44:03.340 --> 44:03.980]  Like, would I...
[44:05.980 --> 44:11.100]  I guess I'll just confess that, you know, the law is so bankrupt at this point.
[44:11.280 --> 44:12.800]  The law is so utterly pointless.
[44:12.800 --> 44:13.340]  I just...
[44:13.340 --> 44:14.760]  I can't respect it at all.
[44:14.940 --> 44:16.740]  I mean, sorry, people.
[44:17.800 --> 44:18.640]  Sorry, folks.
[44:18.820 --> 44:21.680]  But, like, every time I do this, I legitimize it.
[44:21.780 --> 44:23.640]  And so I legitimized it this one time.
[44:23.740 --> 44:24.360]  You know, I...
[44:24.740 --> 44:40.820]  I made it legal this one time in order to draw attention, in order to get the film seen by as many people as possible, and to, you know, take the high road and say, like, yeah, it's legal, and this is what I had to go through in order to make it legal.
[44:40.880 --> 44:44.160]  This is what you have to do to comply with the law, and this is obscene.
[44:44.440 --> 44:52.140]  We're speaking with Nina Paley, who made the film, Sita Sings the Blues, and went through all kinds of hell to get there.
[44:52.360 --> 44:56.380]  Our phone number is 212-209-2900.
[44:56.380 --> 44:59.460]  800, if you have any questions or comments on all this.
[44:59.740 --> 45:03.880]  One thing I'd like to ask, I alluded to this before, we're talking about United States law.
[45:04.060 --> 45:05.540]  What if you did this in a different country?
[45:05.700 --> 45:10.000]  What if Canada, the UK, the EU, other parts of the world?
[45:10.220 --> 45:11.540]  They're all at least as bad.
[45:11.860 --> 45:17.140]  In fact, the worst copyright laws that I've found yet, or I should say it's the worst cultural laws, are in France.
[45:17.180 --> 45:19.900]  It was really difficult to get the film released in France.
[45:20.560 --> 45:22.800]  Europe is really struggling with this right now.
[45:22.800 --> 45:28.020]  I mean, there are differences between US and European copyright law, but it's bad.
[45:28.940 --> 45:29.880]  It's bad everywhere.
[45:31.840 --> 45:34.700]  Mike, why don't you tell us how we can see the film?
[45:34.780 --> 45:38.180]  Because I've seen it, and any of our listeners who haven't seen it should see it.
[45:38.280 --> 45:38.900]  You have like...
[45:38.900 --> 45:43.360]  We didn't talk at all about the film itself, but there's like six different styles of animation.
[45:43.360 --> 45:43.840]  How many?
[45:44.000 --> 45:45.520]  There's a lot of different styles of animation.
[45:45.520 --> 45:49.100]  You can go to sitasingstheblues.com and click...
[45:49.100 --> 45:50.180]  That's spelled S-I-T-A.
[45:50.380 --> 45:57.360]  Yes, S-I-T-A, S-I-N-G-S, theblues.com, and click watch.
[45:57.380 --> 46:00.660]  And we have a list of main places.
[46:00.820 --> 46:01.880]  You know, you can Google it.
[46:03.200 --> 46:05.320]  The distribution is completely decentralized.
[46:05.320 --> 46:06.480]  I don't host the film.
[46:06.480 --> 46:07.260]  I never have.
[46:07.340 --> 46:08.300]  It's at archive.org.
[46:09.140 --> 46:11.300]  It's a bit torrented all over the place.
[46:11.660 --> 46:16.200]  I encourage people seating it, sharing it any old way.
[46:16.480 --> 46:19.080]  So, I mean, that's another like really great thing about it.
[46:19.080 --> 46:23.120]  That might be the most democratic and most effective way of future distribution of films.
[46:23.360 --> 46:24.680]  Yeah, it doesn't cost me anything.
[46:24.680 --> 46:25.320]  That's awesome.
[46:25.540 --> 46:29.700]  Now, if you hadn't used music in your movie, would you have had to worry about any of this?
[46:30.500 --> 46:30.900]  No.
[46:31.220 --> 46:32.280]  No, I wouldn't have.
[46:32.300 --> 46:33.940]  But it was essential that I use that music.
[46:34.100 --> 46:36.880]  Again, there's a fair use argument for it, which I want to go into.
[46:36.880 --> 46:42.040]  But one way around this in the future might be for people to use Creative Commons music artists.
[46:42.860 --> 46:48.480]  Yes, although not just Creative Commons, you need a specific license, because a lot of those Creative Commons licenses are extremely restrictive.
[46:48.920 --> 46:49.320]  Okay.
[46:49.480 --> 46:52.140]  They offer seven licenses, and they are not all the same.
[46:52.280 --> 46:55.560]  And unfortunately, the genuinely free ones are not that popular.
[46:55.900 --> 46:58.080]  Let's give our listeners a chance to weigh in on all this.
[46:59.120 --> 46:59.760]  Good evening.
[47:00.000 --> 47:00.700]  You're on Off the Hook.
[47:01.560 --> 47:01.960]  Hi.
[47:02.240 --> 47:03.240]  I have a question.
[47:04.060 --> 47:06.640]  I think you may have just covered it, but I was curious.
[47:06.880 --> 47:19.320]  to ask the filmmaker what the effect would be if you were to write your own music for your film, and or if you were to do a cover of an existing song.
[47:19.660 --> 47:20.180]  Yeah.
[47:20.460 --> 47:30.300]  Well, to do a cover of an existing song, I would still have that sync license problem, because the sync licenses apply to the underlying composition of the song, not the actual recording.
[47:30.300 --> 47:33.920]  And the recording of Hanshaw's voice is basically public domain.
[47:34.120 --> 47:35.720]  So it wasn't the recording that was the problem.
[47:35.880 --> 47:37.480]  It was what she was actually singing.
[47:38.700 --> 47:52.100]  The whole write your own song or write something that sounds similar, this is again why I had a fair use argument, is if you see the film, you'll notice there's a kind of thesis of the film, which is that the story of the Ramayana transcends time and place.
[47:52.100 --> 47:58.820]  And the fact that these songs are authentic songs from the 1920s is really, really powerful.
[47:59.920 --> 48:07.920]  And yes, if it were purely just some cute-sounding music that I wanted, I'm sure I could get other cute-sounding music, but that's not the point.
[48:08.040 --> 48:19.760]  The point is that these songs, from a completely different time and place, were telling the same story as is in the Ramayana, and they actually work as historical documents, authentic historical documents in the film.
[48:20.780 --> 48:24.480]  So that's why I couldn't just contrive something that sounded like that.
[48:24.480 --> 48:26.260]  I can see your pickle.
[48:26.620 --> 48:42.660]  I'm wondering, as someone, I'm an artist, but I've never, I've thought about making a film, and I guess I'm thinking from the horror stories that you're telling of, if I were to do it, you know, before you even go to concept, you know, the benefits of not having to deal with this.
[48:43.200 --> 48:49.900]  Yeah, except that, you know, in the future, if I'm similarly inspired, like if I were to do this over again, I would do the same.
[48:50.100 --> 48:51.440]  I would do it without fear.
[48:52.340 --> 48:54.740]  The important thing is to do this stuff.
[48:54.800 --> 48:56.040]  It's not to back off.
[48:56.160 --> 48:59.000]  I mean, if we're, you know, then the terrorists have already won, right?
[48:59.960 --> 49:01.160]  You got to use this stuff.
[49:01.260 --> 49:02.420]  This is our cultural heritage.
[49:02.820 --> 49:06.420]  And I realize it's illegal to use it, but the law is wrong.
[49:06.600 --> 49:14.040]  And if we're, you know, censoring our own work because of this, we're doing something bad.
[49:14.260 --> 49:16.340]  So I say, do what you really want to do?
[49:16.560 --> 49:22.480]  I mean, you might get in some trouble for it, but you'll be better off and the world will be better off if you do that.
[49:22.500 --> 49:31.800]  Worst comes to worst, you have an unreleased film on your hard drive that nobody can watch that one day anthropologists will find or archaeologists will find and share back then.
[49:32.040 --> 49:32.920]  Pirates can get it.
[49:33.140 --> 49:34.520]  There's nothing you can do about that.
[49:34.860 --> 49:35.360]  That's true.
[49:35.980 --> 49:36.240]  All right.
[49:36.280 --> 49:36.900]  Thanks for that call.
[49:37.040 --> 49:38.240]  Let's take another one.
[49:38.320 --> 49:38.680]  Good evening.
[49:38.880 --> 49:39.600]  You're on off the hook.
[49:40.640 --> 49:40.740]  Hello.
[49:41.040 --> 49:41.200]  Hi.
[49:42.000 --> 49:42.120]  Hi.
[49:42.740 --> 49:44.520]  Do I have to turn off my radio?
[49:44.640 --> 49:45.540]  It would be nice if you did.
[49:45.600 --> 49:45.820]  Yes.
[49:46.280 --> 49:46.480]  Okay.
[49:46.980 --> 49:52.160]  First of all, I just want to tell you that I watched a movie, Cedar Sings the Blues, with my kids this weekend.
[49:52.440 --> 49:54.860]  And they watched it like 15 times.
[49:55.020 --> 49:57.120]  My daughter was in love with the movie.
[49:57.500 --> 49:57.500]  Yay.
[49:57.780 --> 49:58.540]  Then they watched it.
[49:58.640 --> 49:59.500]  No, they're like seven.
[49:59.640 --> 50:00.900]  One of them is five years old.
[50:01.000 --> 50:02.220]  One of them is nine years old.
[50:02.580 --> 50:05.960]  You know, they had a little bit of problem with the music from the 1920s.
[50:06.560 --> 50:08.460]  They, you know, they were like, well, what is this?
[50:08.840 --> 50:10.280]  But they really liked it.
[50:10.340 --> 50:11.080]  They really did.
[50:11.240 --> 50:12.240]  They really, really loved the movie.
[50:12.460 --> 50:15.580]  But I got to tell you something, a personal thing that happened to me.
[50:15.760 --> 50:22.180]  Like, it's parallel to what you're doing, you know, and the difficulties that you encountered with the laws and the way that they're done.
[50:22.280 --> 50:27.560]  So I'm not trying to, like, you know, take away from what you're talking about because I know it's like, you know, yours is an artistic thing.
[50:27.680 --> 50:30.700]  And what I had to encounter was a different kind of thing.
[50:30.860 --> 50:39.420]  But, like, I work for a, I won't name the nonprofit organization, but one of the things that we do is we have, like, training programs for people that get out of jail.
[50:39.420 --> 50:56.220]  And, you know, we take people who ordinarily into our program who, you know, they've been, you know, besides, like, you know, like being the fodder for the prison industrial complex for years and years and years, you know, they've been categorized, I mean,
[50:56.320 --> 51:01.040]  there's like a kind of institutionalized prejudice against them entering into the mainstream workforce.
[51:01.240 --> 51:05.420]  We take them into our organization and we train them and we work with them.
[51:05.700 --> 51:20.880]  And, you know, with the understanding that, well, you know, I mean, we're not going to be able to, you know, you're not going to be able to kind of like, you know, be considered to be like a regular employee because, like, we couldn't really do that and also do all the other things that we have to do.
[51:21.120 --> 51:25.300]  And, you know, most people are, they don't have a like all students don't have a problem with that.
[51:25.440 --> 51:27.040]  They love to be in the program.
[51:27.280 --> 51:29.160]  They know that the results show that they move ahead.
[51:29.520 --> 51:37.320]  Well, you know, recently the unemployment people, the IRS people got wind of what we were doing and they presented us with a bill.
[51:37.640 --> 51:42.560]  Now here we're doing work that the government should be doing, you know, really.
[51:42.740 --> 51:47.780]  They should be paying me to do the work that I'm doing because we're having like a very good, you know, end result.
[51:47.780 --> 51:56.400]  It's like, like you said, you know, these like cultural kind of like situations where it's like you're having a positive effect on the society.
[51:56.900 --> 51:58.980]  You know, we're taking all the risks.
[51:59.420 --> 52:02.740]  We're doing all of the, you know, we're doing all of the backbreaking work.
[52:03.020 --> 52:12.400]  And like the IRS wants to turn around and hand me a bill and say, well, actually, you know, you actually owe us X amount of money because, you know, this, that and the other things.
[52:12.460 --> 52:16.820]  So I know what you're talking about, about the difficulties of trying to, you know, work within the system.
[52:16.820 --> 52:20.720]  And like you said, you decided to, to adopt, take the high road.
[52:20.880 --> 52:30.700]  And kind of like, you know, well, in the end, you know, like, like Rama said in your movie, or like, as like the commentary about Rama was in your movie.
[52:31.140 --> 52:33.060]  Well, Rama didn't want to make it difficult.
[52:33.240 --> 52:36.960]  So he didn't even say his fault of why he just said, okay, father, this is what you want to do.
[52:37.580 --> 52:38.720]  So that's what we did.
[52:38.860 --> 52:40.760]  You know, we said, okay, well, this is what you want to do.
[52:40.880 --> 52:41.260]  This is what we're going to do.
[52:41.400 --> 52:42.700]  But, you know, it's just so unfair.
[52:42.700 --> 52:44.080]  It's just so amazingly unfair.
[52:44.080 --> 52:58.680]  And I feel you're, you know, I totally feel like, you know, the brotherhood with you, even though, you know, I'm not an artist.
[52:59.200 --> 53:07.840]  There are many different places where we can see that kind of injustice or unfairness that happens to people that are trying to make a positive contribution to society.
[53:08.000 --> 53:09.320]  But it's an interesting parallel.
[53:10.040 --> 53:10.680]  Very much.
[53:10.780 --> 53:12.100]  Thanks for that call.
[53:12.240 --> 53:13.560]  Let's see who else is out there.
[53:14.080 --> 53:14.840]  And good evening.
[53:15.040 --> 53:15.660]  You're on Off the Hook.
[53:17.840 --> 53:18.460]  Speak up.
[53:19.360 --> 53:20.460]  Okay, let's try this one then.
[53:20.620 --> 53:20.980]  Good evening.
[53:21.160 --> 53:21.840]  You're on Off the Hook.
[53:23.320 --> 53:23.720]  Yes.
[53:23.980 --> 53:29.680]  Why don't you use production music, like network music, Romney music, one of those pre-recorded music libraries?
[53:30.380 --> 53:31.560]  Any response to that?
[53:31.660 --> 53:32.280]  We addressed that.
[53:32.400 --> 53:33.320]  Yeah, we addressed that.
[53:33.920 --> 53:39.600]  Yeah, they're not, there's a historical value of these songs that support a thesis of the film.
[53:39.600 --> 53:44.680]  For a split second, I, for a split second, I thought Rebel actually was on topic.
[53:45.420 --> 53:46.180]  I almost was.
[53:46.340 --> 53:46.640]  Good evening.
[53:46.760 --> 53:47.380]  You're on Off the Hook.
[53:47.680 --> 53:48.320]  Yeah, hi.
[53:48.660 --> 53:49.320]  Hi, what's on your mind?
[53:49.720 --> 53:56.500]  Okay, I just wanted to say that there ought to be a statutory limit on the damages for infringement.
[53:56.500 --> 54:11.400]  You know, maybe triple damages, like if the copyright value on a DVD is maybe 50 cents on that DVD, maybe $1.50 would be the maximum damages you'd have to pay, or for a song, whatever it is.
[54:11.600 --> 54:16.660]  And people should be able to put their music or their artwork out and not worry about it.
[54:16.800 --> 54:22.700]  Just set aside a reasonable amount for the damages, and just go out and publish their artwork.
[54:24.140 --> 54:30.360]  The problem with that idea is that the amount of damages are, in most cases, set by the copyright holder.
[54:30.580 --> 54:36.060]  The value of the song, as Nina said, they declare to be, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars.
[54:36.360 --> 54:39.540]  And so for them to sue for triple that, well, that's a lot of money.
[54:39.720 --> 54:40.660]  No, I mean, per disc.
[54:40.720 --> 54:45.800]  If you release an album that's got 15 songs on it, the amount, you know, it only sells for $13.
[54:46.600 --> 54:50.080]  So how much of that is, you know, copyright money?
[54:50.080 --> 54:55.580]  So whatever that amount is, you know, $1, you know, triple it, and pay the guy $3.
[54:56.620 --> 54:59.000]  So 10 songs in the movie, $30.
[54:59.440 --> 55:05.480]  It sounds nice in theory, but unfortunately it doesn't work out that well, especially if you want to talk about new things like the Internet.
[55:05.700 --> 55:17.560]  You know, if you say a song is worth just one cent, but it travels across the Internet and millions of people get a hold of it, then how much damages has the holder actually taken?
[55:17.560 --> 55:21.520]  And because of this, you'll see all sorts of stifling going on.
[55:21.840 --> 55:28.440]  And ultimately what it comes down to is these laws are designed to protect private interests instead of what's right.
[55:28.440 --> 55:31.040]  And what you're just going to have happen is justice will suffer.
[55:31.380 --> 55:33.840]  Yeah, there should be a certain amount of private interest, yeah.
[55:34.040 --> 55:43.120]  Like, I remember The Lathe of Heaven, a movie by Ursula Le Guin, came out, was shown on PBS once, and then it was held up in litigation for over 20 years.
[55:43.120 --> 55:47.340]  And it was finally shown again after they settled the case 20-something years later.
[55:48.160 --> 55:50.100]  And now it's out on DVD, thank goodness.
[55:50.620 --> 55:53.740]  And also I did see Seated Sings of Blues, and it was very good.
[55:53.920 --> 56:01.040]  And I feel the creator, she'd probably never have to pay for a drink again in her life by telling this story at a bar.
[56:01.220 --> 56:02.380]  If only I drank.
[56:02.900 --> 56:04.160]  That's a real problem.
[56:05.480 --> 56:08.520]  A pink lady or a Coca-Cola, I don't know.
[56:08.520 --> 56:09.740]  If only I liked bars.
[56:10.000 --> 56:12.040]  But I do like food, if anyone wants to buy me food.
[56:12.040 --> 56:13.960]  All right, that's something to definitely consider.
[56:14.040 --> 56:14.660]  Thanks for that call.
[56:14.800 --> 56:16.300]  See if we can squeeze in one or two more.
[56:16.400 --> 56:16.700]  Good evening.
[56:16.880 --> 56:17.680]  You're on Off the Hook.
[56:19.020 --> 56:19.380]  Hello?
[56:19.600 --> 56:20.140]  Yes, go ahead.
[56:21.160 --> 56:21.720]  Oh, hi.
[56:22.520 --> 56:28.260]  I had a comment about the conclusions that you've been drawing about the laws and the purpose of them.
[56:28.260 --> 56:49.260]  And I think that there's kind of another purpose that you're not considering, that perhaps the reason that these laws are so restrictive to disallow all of these millions of songs that are not being used by anybody, because I'm sure that this movie uses songs that haven't been used since they came out,
[56:49.460 --> 57:00.780]  that they're really trying to use this to keep a cohesive social structure so that everybody's watching the same movie with the same media that came out this year.
[57:00.940 --> 57:10.520]  And that way you don't have subgroups of people who are going back and really enjoying music and movies from the 20s and 30s and 40s and 50s.
[57:10.640 --> 57:11.060]  Well, yes.
[57:11.340 --> 57:16.260]  You know, again, the same conglomerates that are producing new things own all these old things.
[57:16.440 --> 57:19.960]  And, you know, these monopolies are primarily to eliminate competition.
[57:20.440 --> 57:23.000]  So they also don't want to be competing with the past.
[57:23.600 --> 57:24.860]  Yeah, who wants to compete?
[57:24.860 --> 57:24.880]  Right.
[57:25.100 --> 57:26.920]  That's not the American way.
[57:27.480 --> 57:30.140]  Well, Nina, I want to thank you so much for stopping by and talking to us.
[57:30.260 --> 57:31.340]  It's a fascinating conversation.
[57:31.380 --> 57:33.640]  And we do hope you make a second film somehow.
[57:33.900 --> 57:34.760]  We really do.
[57:35.660 --> 57:38.260]  Nina Paley made Cita Sings the Blues.
[57:38.460 --> 57:40.480]  And again, CitaSingsTheBlues.com.
[57:40.620 --> 57:44.140]  You can find out all kinds of information about the film and about what you're up to.
[57:44.220 --> 57:45.240]  Any other sites you want to talk about?
[57:45.260 --> 57:46.780]  Yeah, questioncopyright.org.
[57:47.860 --> 57:48.580]  Questioncopyright.org.
[57:48.580 --> 57:49.320]  That sounds serious.
[57:55.160 --> 57:57.320]  A little cartoons about this.
[57:57.520 --> 57:57.840]  All right.
[57:58.340 --> 57:58.620]  Great.
[57:58.800 --> 57:59.840]  Thanks so much.
[57:59.980 --> 58:00.720]  We'll see you next week.
[58:00.840 --> 58:03.100]  OTH at 2600.com is our email address.
[58:03.640 --> 58:04.560]  We'll see you next week.
[58:04.560 --> 58:14.100]  In my hand Oh, it's on paper Written in the sand
[58:22.210 --> 58:38.390]  We've got telegraph We've got telegraph Right across this land Oh, across this land It doesn't mean a damn thing I don't understand The moon is telling her
[59:22.050 --> 59:28.290]  In the sand Oh, we've got telegraph We've got telegraph
[01:00:45.270 --> 01:00:47.550]  And din, din, din, din, din Yeah!
[01:00:48.250 --> 01:00:49.150]  Oh, my goodness.
[01:00:49.310 --> 01:00:54.210]  Hey, what's the story with all these people that don't signal when they change lanes when they're driving?
[01:00:54.470 --> 01:00:55.970]  Had to drive in today.
[01:00:56.250 --> 01:00:57.070]  Oh, my goodness.
[01:00:57.230 --> 01:00:57.390]  Yeah.
[01:00:57.950 --> 01:01:01.110]  And, uh, and all, man, that off the hook.
[01:01:01.250 --> 01:01:02.410]  They have a great show.
[01:01:02.410 --> 01:01:07.050]  That, uh, say, is the, my second favorite show here at WBAI.