Sita sings the copyright blues

By David MacQuarrie, CBC News

Sita Sings the Blues is an animated film filled with the strange and unlikely: American jazz age music provides the soundtrack to an ancient Sanskrit epic; the deeds of heroes are brought down to Earth by the nattering of shadow puppets; and a love story that's inspired generations is the backdrop to a modern tale of heartbreak.

Film critic Roger Ebert calls it enchanting.

{Click to read Ebert's blog review.}

Dancing moons, monkey musicians, a half-dozen animation styles, all the result of three years of work by Brooklyn-based cartoonist Nina Paley, who wrote, directed and produced the film.

And perhaps the strangest and most unlikely aspect of Sita Sings the Blues is that Paley is giving it away.

For free.

I was a big fan of Nina Paley's newspaper cartoonsback in the 90s; i knew she was working on animation projects, and now she's made a film.

But there are rights problems.

Paley is releasing the film in many formats to give it maximum exposure. She estimates Sita cost her about $80,000 plus $50,000 for the rights to the music (more on that shortly) and $160,000 in living expenses.

{snip}

Much of the soundtrack to Sita is provided by the music of Annette Hanshaw, the 1920s singer who popularized Am I Blue?. The copyright on her recordings was never renewed, but in the U.S. at least, elements of the work remain protected. The rights holders initially wanted a lot of cash before Paley could release her film.

Eventually, they came to an agreement: if she paid $50,000 for the rights, she could release as many as 5,000 copies of Sita on DVD. Promotional copies would be exempt.

And that's why Sita is free. It's a promotion.

Read the full article here.

Copyrights are fascinating things - i'd almost be willing to bet that Hanshaw's family (She died in 1985) won't get a penny of that fifty K.

And i'd also be willing to bet that the heirs of whoever wrote most of or even all of the songs used in the film won't either.

But the corporate successors of the publishers and recording companies that conned them into signing contracts ... they'll get it.

Read the article, click here to download a copy of the film, and send Nina some money.

Help extend the middle digit of opprobrium to the corporate types who talk about protecting the artists but somehow never seem to get around to actually passing any of that good money on to the artists a lot of the time.

I'll be back later - right now i'm going to go download it.