Some Hows and Whys of Free Culture

from the I'm-talking!-again! dept

On July 16th I gave at talk at H.O.P.E. (Hackers On Planet Earth) called “Sita Sings the Blues: a Free Culture Success Story.” 9 Minutes of excerpts are below, in which I discuss why I insisted on authentic songs, what is and is not property, how software is culture, the difference between Share Alike (copyleft) and other Creative Commons licenses, why I paid to legally license the old songs, how noncommercial copyright infringement is still illegal, legal costs, benefits of audience sharing & decentralized distribution, the Sita Sings the Blues Merchandise Empire (sitasingstheblues.com/store), open-licensed merch, audience goodwill, how fans support artists, rivalrous vs. non-rivalrous goods, the Creator Endorsed Mark, migrating Flash files to open formats, gift income, commerce without monopolies, why I encourage legal sharing, and more.

For those with longer attention spans, you can watch the entire unedited hour-long talk. It includes even more topics like Minute Memes, cultural lineages, combining vs. originating, many Ramayanas, our impoverished Public Domain, understanding Free Culture, Content vs. Containers, and a more detailed income breakdown of the Sita Free Distribution Project.

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Comments on “Some Hows and Whys of Free Culture”

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11 Comments
Auditrix (profile) says:

Sita didn't cite her costs

The figures cited by Sita were unlabeled. Are they revenues or profit?

Most importantly, Sita didn’t cite her costs. Unlike most film profit accountings, Sita’s totaled one year. You can only determine project profitability with an inception-to-date accounting. Not to mention, if you included the prior period, there may be a lot more costs!

btrussell (profile) says:

Re: Sita didn't cite her costs

“Unlike most film profit accountings, Sita’s totaled one year. You can only determine project profitability with an inception-to-date accounting.”

You mean they don’t spread their expenses over the 140 years they expect to profit…?(Or however long copyright is. You know, the matching of expenses to the profit received from those expenditures.)

IronM@sk (profile) says:

Re: Sita didn't cite her costs

Oh Auditrix you just got wtfpwned by the two above me. OMG there is a new way of thinking that my expensive college degree doesn’t cover! Does Nina have to cite her costs if the net gain was her happiness? I had some respect for you since you were actually game enough to have a profile here (and because you are cute), but you pretty much lost it with that comment.

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