In other words, I believe the right to ‘read out loud’ comes with a book and showing our documentary to everybody who can watch it at once on a television (even big screen or rear projection) comes with a DVD.

One could always come up with an exception such as charging admission to a baseball stadium and showing the movie on the projection system to a packed house (I can dream) that would cross the line but the key point is that it should be my burden to prove that. The only copyright infringement should be clear cut piracy. Every thing else should be allowed. What is piracy? Watch the movie and listen to Carrie McLaren, currator of the Illegal Art Exhibit coming to San Francisco.

Interepretted properly, the copyright law says you can do anything short of “usurping” the value of our copyright. What would that be? In my mind, wide performance to a mass audience of the complete work or making numerous copies of the complete work to distribute in quantity. In other words, things that would be demonstratable (by me) as directly causing net fewer sales of the complete work. I don’t believe the mere act of copying or showing or performing comes close to infringement. There has to be a provable loss or damage. Large copyright owning corporations would like us to think that the principal of equity has been repealed by copyright law but I disagree. (PS I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice but my philosophy of copyright.)

Alternatively, have you thought about releasing it as an MPEG4 or some non-physical format? I would be more than happy to send you some cash that way if you also had a downloadable copy.

I really want to see it — doesn’t matter how — the price is just too high. It seems that you’re going in the right direction though, distribution-wise. 🙂

-Chris

RE: PRICES
We just decided to go the ‘cheap’ route and not charge the $200-$300 typical of videos aimed at the library/educational market….now you tell me that’s too much for individuals. Seriously, we never expected individuals to buy many copies.

I have two suggestions. Ask your local library or video store to buy a copy and share it with your community or wait a week until we have the streaming version set up and watch it for a couple bucks.

RE: RIPMIXBURN?
That’s not a simple ‘yes or no’ question for someone who has spent the last two years obsessing over Fair Use. AND if I give you my full answer you won’t need to watch the video. So I guess I am officially hoisted by my own petard you sly dog. (That’s video pirate talk.)

I’m with the above comments, though, when it comes to price. He is asking far and above what would be reasonable.

I understand that he has expenses to cover and I also understand that this is intended to be a low-volume work, but wouldn’t a better approach be to release it for free and then accept donations if you liked the movie?

Ugh.. (hits hand on forehead)

-Chris