A few months ago, my friend The Finn told me to send him a DVD of our indie movie, Moving. It turns out he had a friend who was starting a new distribution company, a subsidiary of Universal. They offered us $20,000, 20% of net profits, and we would have had access to the full Universal music library for licensing if we wanted to put in new music. At my insistence, we turned them down.

To be precise, I proposed revisions to the contract they wanted us to sign–and they flatly refused to consider them. So we didn't sign. Here's why it was the right thing to do.

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