Sita Sings the Blues, the critically acclaimed animated feature film single-handedly made by Nina Paley, is being released on DVD today. For those that haven't been following the story, the film's use of uncleared, copyrighted musical compositions has restricted the film's release.
Today, indieWire reports that "[t]hrough an intense study of copyright laws, Paley has realized the opportunity to allow other people to sell her work with her endorsement, and she can receive donations from these distributors."
But the author of the article does not mention the legal conclusions that Paley (and her lawyers) arrived at, nor does the article make any mention of the source for this information.
One website that is acknowledged is QuestionCopyright, which has a lengthy interview with Paley. The comments section that follows the interview is worth a read, too, as there's a lot of back-and-forth between commenters supporting Paley's attempts to produce "new work" (as copyright law is supposed to encourage) and several other others that argue that blame Paley for the situation at hand.
Unfortunately, I still don't have answers about how Paley and her lawyers have decided to release the film on DVD. Perhaps it's because they're also giving it away via torrent?
If you want to buy the DVD, it's available here
UPDATE: See the comments for answers....