Nina Paley’s Numbers: CC Licensing for Profit

Some of our readers may remember a post about a year ago about a cartoonist named Nina Paley and her copyright difficulties.

A short recap: Nina produced a film based on the Indian tale Ramayana intertwined with Annette Hanshaw’s jazz music. Although the sound recordings Nina used were in the public domain, the copyrights on the underlying musical compositions were not. Nina did not get permission to use the tunes and thus infringed the copyrights. Her settlement with the various rightsholders had a step setup, the more she sold, the more she had to pay to the rightsholders. Deciding that releasing her movie in the traditional way wouldn’t make her any money because most of the money would go to the rightsholders, Nina decided to release her film under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license.

The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article describing the profits Nina has made in the nine months since releasing her film, Sita Sings the Blues, under CC-BY-SA. The short article lists each source of revenue for Nina’s $55,000 total. It generally appears to be saying that CC licensing can work for smaller, professional artists, like Nina Paley, as well as the big guys that are always talked about, such as Nine Inch Nails.

There are a few more pieces of information, which the article does not cover, that give a better view of how successful CC licensing has been for Nina.

In the presentation on which the WJS is reporting, Nina reports that it cost her $80,000 to make the film, $200,000 if you include her cost of living during this time. Compared to the $55,000 she’s taken in so far, it seems like the CC licensing really isn’t working that well for her. However, when Nina approached independent distributors prior to releasing the film, she was told she would probably make only $10-$25,000, $50,000 absolute tops ‘in her wildest dreams.’ Now, comparing what she has made so far to what the distributors expected her to make total, she is doing pretty well.

A better tally of how she has done would include how the Sita copyright issue and subsequent CC licensing have increased Nina’s income from her other works by increasing her visibility; how much she makes from speaking engagements (which she says are her most lucrative work); and how much more she would have paid out under her settlement agreement had she released the film in a more traditional manner. Since all of these things only add to what she has already made, it’s clear that releasing Sita under a Creative Commons license was a good choice for Nina.

For more information on all the different ways Nina is capitalizing on CC-licensed Sita Sings the Blues, see: http://blog.ninapaley.com/category/sita-sings-the-blues/.

Sita Sings the Blues Available under CC License

Ip's What's Up is a little late in reporting this, but we wanted to make sure our readers were aware of it.  Nina Paley has released her award winning film, Sita Sings the Blues online under a cc-by-sa (attribution, share alike) license.  The full film is available for download from a variety of sites listed here.

Nina reached an agreement with the rightholders of the musical works used in the film that allows her to distribute the film.  She has chosen to use a cc license for several reasons, one of which is the ordeal she has gone through with respect to copyright licensing. 

It is important to note that while her film is under a cc-by-sa license, the songs within it are not.  What that basically means is you can watch her film, download it, share it, and remix/reuse any of the animation, but not the songs.  The Sita website provides complete details of all musical works included in the song, their rightholders and any other information people might need in order to secure their licenses.

One little piece of irony: Nina became very frustrated with copyright law during her attempts to get her film available for legal distribution.  In some respects, she's become a bit of an anti-copyright spokesperson.  Yet, in choosing to use Creative Commons' share alike license, she's using the full force of the copyright law to control how others use her work.  They must release any derivatives of her work under the same license she has used.  (For more on this type of use of copyright law, see dtrizzle's post on open source software.)

Nina is still looking for sponsors/donators/producers for the film, to help her pay off the large loans she needed to secure the licenses for the musical works.

[image from CC website]

Sita Sings the Blues: Copyright Jail is No Fun

An unscheduled post: This isn't really a breaking news story, it's more of an ongoing plight, but Ip's What's Up would like to help draw attention to Nina Paley's struggle to free her award winning feature length film, Sita Sings the Blues from Copyright Jail.

The (Very Brief) Low-Down

Sita Sings the Blues is a critically acclaimed animated film that brings together a classic Indian epic, Ramayana, Nina's own life and the 1920's jazz music of Annette Hanshaw.  (Movie Trailer, Awards List, Roger Ebert's Review, Film Clip.)

That last part is the rub.  Because the underlying compositions of the music used in the film is still under copyright protection, the film can not be legally distributed.

So what's the big deal?  Just pay the copyright owners and get on with it, right?  Well, it turns out that "just paying the copyright owners" is cost prohibitive.  (Nina's step-agreement with the copyright owners and her plans to get film distributed here.)  Nina has taken on a lot of monetary debt, not to mention the time spent, trying to get her art out there for people to appreciate.  She needs help.

What Can I Do?

Regular Ol' Joes

 Donate: QuestionCopyright.org has set up a donation system to help free Sita.  Donations are tax deductible.  Spread the Word: help tell others about the Sita saga, put it in your status message, tweet it, blog about it, tell your friends and neighbors.

Attorneys

Nina is looking for some good pro bono legal help.  You won't be alone.  She's working to assemble a team, and there's at least one volunteer to assist with legal research.  It appears most of the legal help she's found is more experienced in software matters than entertainment law issues.  From her blog:

Is there a lawyer in the house?
I mean a good, progressive, Free-Culture-oriented lawyer. Right now we havequestioncopyright.org’s legal counsel, whose experience lies in Free Software. The California-based Electronic Frontier Foundation hasn’t yet agreed to help directly (maybe they’ll change their minds!) but is looking for additional pro bono legal help for me here in New York. The coolest legal work seems to be in Software; I haven’t yet found anyone in Entertainment Law who really gets it. But if you’re out there, please get in touch! Let’s make a Sita Legal Defense team.

Where Can I See Sita Sings the Blues?

The film is being included in a number of film festivals around the world.  You can check for a location near you at the screening schedule.

 

 

 

 

More Detailed Information About Sita

The Step Deal

The original quote given to Nina for licenses for the 11 songs at issue in the movie was $220,000.  Nina provides a spreadsheet of the quotes here.  By the end of last month, Nina was able to get this reduced to a step-deal that starts at $50,000 (which she's taking out a loan to pay) and goes up from there depending on how successful the film is.  If the film were to be shown in theaters and made a million dollars at the box office, Nina would get between $30,000 and $80,000 (by her estimate, per her blog) and for every million at the box office she would have to pay another $38,500 for the licenses.  That means that if the film makes a million dollars at the box office, the publishing companies that own the rights to the compositions sung by Annette and used by Nina make more collectively than Nina makes.  Annette's heirs get nothing anyway; the sound recordings themselves are in the public domain (see below).

The Issue with the Music

As Nina nicely explains at comment #8 and comment #13 here, the actual recordings used in the film are in the public domain.  It's the underlying compositions that are still protected.  In US copyright law, sound recordings and musical works are protected separately and have different rights attached to them.  The recordings sung by Annette Hanshaw that Nina used in the film were protected as sound recordings.  They have since fallen into the public domain.  The underlying compositions, the words and written music for the songs, are protected as musical works and are still under copyright protection thanks to the Sony Bono Copyright Term Extension Act.  This act retroactively extended the copyright life of works made under the 1909 Copyright Act and still under protection in 1998 to a total of 95 years of protection, counted from the date of publication.

Several different entities own the rights to the compositions, some of them sharing the rights to a single composition with others.

The rights owners include:

• Bug Music
• EMI
• Irving Music (acquired by Universal Music Group)
• Pencil Mark Music
• Richmond Organization (TRO)
• Songwriter's Guild of America
• Sony-ATV Music Publishing
• Warner-Chappell Music

Nina says in her blog that there are 11 Hanshaw recordings used in the film.  The spreadsheet of offers from the rights holders only lists ten.  Here are those ten:

1. Am I Blue?  (1929, Harry Akst(d.1963) and Grant Clarke (d. 1931))
2. Daddy Won't You Please Come Home?
3. Here We Are
4. I've Got a Feeling I'm Falling (1929, Fats Waller (d.1943), Harry Link (d.1956), Billy Rose (d.1966))
5. Lover Come Back to Me (1928, Sigmund Romberg (d.1951), Oscar Hamerstein II (d.1960))
6. Moanin' Low
7. Mean to Me (1929, Fred E. Ahlert (d.1953), Roy Turk (1934))
8. What I Wouldn't Do for That Man
9. If You Want the Rainbow (You Must Have the Rain)
10. Who's That Knockin' At My Door

I couldn't find information on the rest of the songs.  If anyone has any suggestions or information, let me know.

Some Other Articles on the Sita Saga

Copyright Owners Contributing to the Destruction of Their Own Property at Copyfight

Sita Sings the Copyright Blues at Copyright & Campaigns

Sita Sings the Blues at Soup Greens

Owning Music at No Notes

Distribution Blues at Newsvine.mobi

Diversions - Sita Sings the Blues at The Obenson Report

The Best of 2008 at Duck Blog