story last year i discovered see there was illegal according to copyright laws and rather than simply suppress the film or find a million dollars it was sort of difficult i decided to be honest about what was going on and i started writing about it on my blog and i did a lot of research showing what other people into copyright law copyright extensions and the consequences of  and you know i realized that the was have changed so radically in recent years that i was actually if i released the film i would i could if someone wanted to enforce the most draconian aspects of the law i could actually face five years in jail for showing people my film technically when i would tell people that they'd say oh well you know that wouldn't happen but it really bothered me that it according to the law since then we have laws passed but criminalize me  pretty much everyone i know actually and so i wrote about it and you know this information was my struggle was fairly public and other people wrote about it and then richard  s stations to broadcast things without having to clear individual permission so he contacted me and said he was interested and i said great some of the film and one thing led to another and the rest is history wasn't certain about the free release yet but that idea was developing at the same time and he suggested streaming it for free basically i was amenable to anything he wanted to do because when he approached me with the license i said well this isn't like a normal license or actually for you to do anything you want with this film and that includes streaming in paying for the multiple broadcasts anything you want to do online it will never be shown on the big screen now and what i found even in the last week in fact be availability before online actually increases the demand for thirty five millimeter prints and sort of months but it's not a normal commercial release these are  was your reaction to that compared to you know the big screen well i think all films are better on the big screen in a dark room with other people i do think that sega holds up pretty well for online viewing it's not the same experience but a lot of it comes through hopefully people that see it online will say hey i would like to see this in the theater if it's available you know what sort of first you have about  filmmaking and its relationship to you know i mean you know for you it's been a way to distribute your film it's fast there's a huge audience out there but at the same time it's not necessarily the ideal then you know for a film i mean  people don't like to sit in one place you know or eighty minutes the screen is small so it's sort of those it's a contradiction it's easy to market for them it's not best place yeah it's a the internet is a tool people actually use it to connect up with each other in real life and they use it to buy things in real life go to meet ups in real life and yeah there are limits to it it's not the destination it's going to say something really stupid to say like it's not the destination  and forth to it's not a substitute for meeting in real life but it facilitates streaming isn't the end goal of this thing the fact that there are all these t files on archive dot org means that anybody anywhere can get them at any time if they have across the connection if they're patient enough so in a way it's a way to preserve an archive for the film also you know if something happens because we're because it's completely free and people can share it with each other it's a route around censorship one of the one of the issues with this film is nobody as of yet has distributed and india because it could potentially provoke protests or be censored and the fact that it's being freely shared means that that kind of censorship simply won't work someone who's determined will find a way to get it somehow and i like that and that would not be possible just with d v d s and videos and actual material things what is your reaction from people who would be familiar with the about and then there are people that are outraged by the very idea that i would treat this through a cartoon style and that super has these big round breasts and but she's you know she's singing jazz music and things like that so there's there's a whole range of reactions to it mostly positive though do you remember anything she said specifically as well  simply wrong you know caylee is a white christian woman who hates hindus nothing in that statement is true except that i am a woman example most of the people but the fiercest critics of the film are people that haven't actually watched it and they're mostly upset about the idea on the other hand if they do watch it there probably will change their minds because they come to it with a guy you know this whole mess in the first place ok so i want to be very clear and then him shows voice is not the problem though actual recordings but the copyrights on the actual recordings were never nude and what that means is that they are not protected by federal copyright law however they are protected by new york state law which means either that the film is not allowed to be released in new york state without permission or i've gotten different legal opinions on that see the new york state where is the united states but outside the united states is fine which is why it's so great that thirteen has that special status because thirteen because it i being broadcast on thirteen means that it can be broadcast for it here in new york state and new york city without any without breaking the law though the issue the issue i'm dealing with the biggest obstacle for me has been the compositions that actually underlie her voice and i know it's really confusing like there's the recordings and there's what her voice is actually singing what she's actually singing is pr has proven to be a much bigger problem all of those old songs are now controlled by corporations that they have this system in place i should say that everybody all these  licensors they really are just doing their jobs they really it is their job to charge money to use the stuff and sequoia senses are there are business this is their business model and the system is so it's so inflexible it's not with any individual who works within that system can affect any kind of change and even if an individual in their realizes  that this license system is primitive to independent filmmakers there's not really anything they can do about that but if they have that realization in the first place so from the licensors point of view they gave me a deal because they brought their price down from fifteen to twenty six thousand dollars a song to a mere thirty five hundred dollars a song with all of these strings attached which is a whole other story this is just the most complicated i mean this is th the issue with the song if you know i was working on a film student attorneys or both glasgow samuelson intellectual property law clinic of american university who were doing research on the recordings and that's how they found out that the copyrights on the recordings were never renewed  recordings were certainly free and clear outside the united states but it might be a problem either in the united states or in new york state specifically that's what they found and they said but you know the compositions that underlie these those things are protected and i didn't think that was so serious because i was aware of people recording covers of songs but i didn't realise is that covers of songs are regulated by mechanical licenses which are regulated by the government so if you want to do a cover if you want to release any of these songs including and i know how shows version on audio only that cost is regulated by the government you don't have to clear specific permission you don't have to reach the rights holders you just paid nine point one cents to the harry fox agency and you're done and that's why there are so many covers of so many songs all over the place synchronization rights is the problem i'm facing and secret invasion right is the right it's weird that i'm using the term rate because we're really talking about is restrictions but i think rates are the right to use a song with an image and of fixed audio visual work there's some misunderstanding about this when i write about it they think that the problem is that they've actually synchronize the character or synchronize the lips it doesn't matter what's actually going on in the picture if there's a picture of one of the music whatever it is even if it's just titles or a still if it's in a fixed audio visual work that's subject to sync license fees and those are not regulated by the government and that's how these corporations came up with the bargain price of sixteen or fifteen to twenty six thousand dollars a song and that was a bargain basement by the way t them was actually a very low and reasonable price but it would have amounted to about probably more than two hundred twenty thousand dollars which is more than it cost to make the entire film and you know minor things written about me awake oh i was never so harsh he should have been nicer to the waste service and i didn't try you know if i tried to approach them directly or actually i should say my my barber who is oh the film specimen relations manager and peasant you get the run around and they really only pay attention to professionals so i had to hire a professional intermediaries and that alone cost me lots and lots of money also they would not negotiate  actual release licenses until i paid them all five hundred dollars a song for a festival license and the festival license is a promise that you will not make any money but you will pay them five hundred dollars for the privilege and promise of not making any money off of the film and showing it non commercially only and they require that simply to talk to you then they will negotiate anything until you pay them five hundred dollars up front all of which is really a hardship for both a real independent filmmaker so where was i with this so why is you i mean you know i mean the sort of my realization that life was short was what got me to make the film in the first place and life is too short to kill your art because of some really stupid laws i never felt like i was morally infringing i mean i knew what the history of the law was i knew that when these things and i also am of their long before this i believe to the public domain because as an artist i've used all the clip art you know these old woodcuts that dover books would publish there is rubber stamps that are based on these things people have built really beautiful new works using copyright free public domain etchings and stuff old newspaper art now and now that's a beautiful thing i really benefited from that and i can see other artists have benefited from that and i can see culture of the whole is benefited from that and when i first encountered that stuff i learned that we could use that stuff because their copyrights have expired well copyrights been extended and extended and extended nothing after nineteen twenty three is in the public domain now and this is really impoverishing our shared culture at what point would you be satisfied is as far as it can go where do you see where do i see it going you know i don't know it's really up to the audience now i'm trying to work every day it's an opportunity for me to practice detachment because it is totally up to the audience now and you know what would make me happy just is that it remains a circulation you know forever i don't think it will be it's new now so it's making sort of a splash right now and i don't know when when this sort of upward curve is going to taper off it has to eventually or maybe it will go up and down and up and down but hopefully it will you know stay in the shared culture and people will it and i hopefully they'll share it before the my real hope is that they won't start releasing it too much until it's been sort of assimilated into everyone's mind they're all there will reach a point hopefully if i'm lucky where people are sick of it and then they can start cutting it up and using it as the basis for jokes it will be somewhat of a cliche bill referred to it changes that's the dream right week i think it's gone farther farther being for you than it would have being protected so that the commercial side of it doesn't matter to me what matters is yours watching if you know you have grass well no not living on the grounds i'm in debt so i totally need money and i should make it very clear that i like money everyone likes money money is really nice i don't like extortion and i don't think that locking up culture is the way to make money when the fact is this isn't quite something i'm doing out of the goodness of my heart because i'm such a nice person i actually realize that i could make more money if i free but film then if it from commercial release no matter what i knew i would get more viewers but the more the film circulates for free the more demand there is for d v d s posters t shirts whatever all these well let me back up a bit content is and unlimited resource as long as people can copy it for almost nothing it's basically free zeros and ones are basically free  but there are still containers of that content which are limited like actual d v d s that's an actual you know piece of plastic we don't have like a d v d replicator but will actually you know it's not like a star trek transformer thing where you have an object here and you can push a button and then that same object appears here both the data on that d v d is free but the d v d itself is not free and same thing with t shirt you know this this logo here is free anybody can copy it it's on archive dot org you can make as much merchandise as you want but this actual t shirt is a limited thing it's made of cotton wants to me and i paid for it  so in my experience my theory actually was that if the if you simply allow the free stuff to be free that will increase the value of the limited stuff and in the past week th proven to be true because people are watching both the streaming version on channel thirteen and the e mailing me and saying i must have this on d v d how can i buy the d v d the d v d being limited and the streaming version being unlimited so you know i had a hunch that this was true and that this would actually be a much better way to make money and right now i'm just scrambling to produce the d v d s and get some rich and it's made so that i can turn you know satisfying the demand for the stuff but yes of course so i want money also i really appreciate the donations and i am still you know i'm still in debt from this whole thing there is the fifty thousand dollars to pay off the that and then you know the film costs if you include my living expenses for those five years it cost two hundred thousand dollars to make and i haven't even begun to pay myself back for that and the so yeah i want money but i really think that releasing the content for free is the way to make more money so where you get what you want to work on next i want to work on a bunch of short cartoons about free speech and free expression free culture and that goes back to what i first said berman animator end of free culture activist so i want to combine these things until i burn out on the free culture of activism because i'm so passionate about it right now it just it almost keeps me up at night and i've got i'm trying to bring both laws of physics back into the discussion of copyright law so some of that is counteracting the media industries the big media industry is propaganda of recent years they have been telling everyone that copying is stealing or they say downloading is stealing downloading movies and stealing while downloading seekers and stealing downloading seated is actually beneficial to me i know i'm getting off track here but that's something i really want to impart on people if you watch my film you're helping me you're helping the film by watching it you're not stealing you're not hurting me you're not taking anything away from me you're helping me and then if you tell people about it you're helping the film you're more if you send a donation you're helping me even more it's all good sharing culture is actually really good for everyone including the artist especially the artist so it's definitely not stealing brick wants to hire me he said a new studio where i when i don't remember what the how do you know there's a year for that i think they say the fourteenth century but the fourteenth century was recently you know but i don't know that's that's when the here is in the state of the british it's right there therefore the story has to be true it's really based on as real as event as the bible is based on if you want to know the whole story all because father when i was the evil king of lanka and he just still incredibly learned meant what i understand robyn i was actually the only bad thing he seems to have she's gone i told her not to leave the heart or how would i ever find  hello it's me dave where are you here fandor i'm silly at home you have a home phone of course you've been gone a month and you never even told me your phone number i didn't well i have some good news babe extended my contract another year what another year you said you'd be back in six months but i like it here what about me what about le i love you see you must be my wife now i i am the chaste and virtuous wife of another man i belong to them all as the rays belong to the sun give me back to rama all use and soon he had his mighty suspicions about your character and conduct of alpha no was aware of your beauty he cannot have kept you in his house for so long without touching you the very sight of you in forty you are free to go wherever you want i hey they want me to attend this meeting so much they're going to fly me all the way to new york five days all expenses paid debts parades it'll be fun for not like a woman he always had this element of doubt i mean it coupled with of course you know his says virtually that everybody spoke off and you know that he kept his word to his dad and his his subjects is his kingdom but i felt like you always had come on but also at that point of time it was just that unconditional love you know for her she was like ok i think i think this is this is the part of the female perspective i disagree with because it's like then we can say oh yeah because she loved him so she did it it was like yeah we should love someone who doesn't treat her as you so badly ok that's her mistake that's hence unconditional love and when