Techdirt has an interesting piece on the economics of “free” combined with Creative Commons licensing. The work in question is Nina Paley’s film Sita Sings the Blues:

Some copyright holders of the music used in the film put positively insane terms on the use of their music. This made no sense, considering that the music (from the 1920s) was mostly unlistened to these days — and the only thing the movie would likely do is increase demand for people to get legitimate versions of the music. Eventually, Paley worked out a plan to release the film under a Creative Commons license and put in place a business model like the ones we’ve talked about for years: give away the infinite, sell the scarce.

In this 20 minute presentation, Nina Paley shares her experience and the interesting, basic fact – the more she shared, the more she made!