Andrew Schulz’s new special, Infamous, was supposed to premiere on a major streaming channel. (He won’t say which one). But in the wake of the outcry over Dave Chappelle’s trans jokes, streamers got spooked and Schulz’s streamer asked him to cut some of the more controversial material, including an abortion joke. Schulz refused and spent most of his life savings, over a million dollars, to buy the special back and release it on its own, which he is doing tonight at 8 central on a platform I had never heard of, Moment House.

I paid $18 to pre-order the special for tonight’s viewing. If you want total free speech in comedy, you should too.

Comedians have long relied on networks to publish their specials, which any comedian will tell you is just an advertisement to see them live. Specials are how a comic becomes known and you have to be known to sell tickets to live shows. Comedy central was the first major force in standup comedy specials and getting a half hour on Comedy Central used to be a very big deal. Then, HBO got into the game and with Bill Burr, Netflix became the giant of all comedy streaming. Amazon and Showtime followed suit. Now, just about every major streamer is publishing standup comedy specials.

But lately many of the most interesting comedy specials have been self-published. Sam Morril’s Up on The Roof was filmed with minimal infrastructure on rooftops in New York and released for free on You Tube. It has 1.7 million views. Louis CK has put out his past couple of specials himself and sold them exclusively on his website. Yannis Pappas’s Mom Love is one of my favorite specials to be released this year. Where can you find it? Free on You Tube. Tim Dillon, who has a huge podcast following but no decent offer from a streaming service, has said he is going to self-publish his upcoming special.

The ubiquity of self-published comedy specials is an incredible development for free speech in comedy but streamers are still the main platforms for comedy specials so comics still have to care what the networks think of their content. Comics still want their specials on streamers not just for visiblity but because what could be better than getting paid for your special and having the streaming service bear the burden of filming it? Morril, Pappas, and Dillon may sell tickets because their You Tube specials get views but that doesn’t change the fact that they never got paid for the special itself. (Louis CK is in rarefied air with respect to his ability to publish his special on his website and actually make money from it.)

What Schulz is doing tonight is groundbreaking and the first data point we will ever get of the financial bottom line for a comic between a self-published special and a special on a streaming service. If Schulz makes money from this special, he is giving the ultimate middle finger to all streaming services. If he makes more money from self-publishing this special than he would have had it been on the streaming service, it blows the comedy special world up completely. A financially successful Schulz special brings us closer to a world where there are no more network notes on comedy specials. If you want to hear all about this, Schulz talked about this in detail with Bari Weiss, an interview I strongly recommend.

This is a world we should want. Standup comics are the ultimate truthtellers, the tip of the spear for free speech. If anyone has to be free to say anything they want, it is comics. If comics only make money on network-published specials and they have to listen to notes from a bunch of suits with no taste in comedy, who are more interested in avoiding controversy than they are in funny content, we don’t get real speech and we don’t get the best comedy.

End network notes on comedy specials. Support free speech in standup. Pre-order Andrew Schulz’s special and watch live tonight.

Update: Schulz made back his money and more. VICTORY!