Steal This Film

SargeantLobes writes "Steal This Film is the first part of a free documentary series about file-sharing. This part focuses on The Pirate Bay, and copyfighters Piratbyran. From their website: "There have been a few documentaries by 'old media' crews who don't understand the net and see peer-to-peer organisation as a threat to their livelihoods. They have no reason to represent the filesharing movement positively. And no capacity to represent it lucidly.""The film is free for you to share, watch on your DVD-player or on your iPod, or show in cinemas." Torrents are available on their website, or watch part one, two, three and four on YouTube."

Comments

Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[eldavojohn]

Steal This film

First off, why isn't the 'f' capitalized? It is in the summary. Come on, even the Washington Post can handle that.

Secondly, when I saw this title, I thought immediately, Abbie Hoffman--a revolutionary.

Abbie authored Steal This Book which was made into Steal This Movie which was then inspired Steal This Wiki. I heavily advise reading/watching all of them.

If the four parts of "Steal This Film" have the same spirit as Abbie Hoffman's movement, then I'd probably be OK with this. And from what I've read of Hoffman's work, I think that he would be speaking out against the **AA left and right were he alive today. I'm just concerned that people will be tempted to confuse these two cinematic features.

I don't have the time to watch the first parts right now but can anyone tell me if this really is a documentary like the summary says? Because when I go to the site, they are asking for donations and from their page:

IN 2006, A GROUP OF FRIENDS DECIDED TO MAKE A FILM ABOUT FILESHARING THAT *WE* WOULD RECOGNISE. THERE HAVE BEEN A FEW DOCUMENTARIES BY 'OLD MEDIA' CREWS WHO DON'T UNDERSTAND THE NET AND SEE PEER-TO-PEER ORGANISATION AS A THREAT TO THEIR LIVELIHOODS. THEY HAVE NO REASON TO REPRESENT THE FILESHARING MOVEMENT POSITIVELY, AND NO CAPACITY TO REPRESENT IT LUCIDLY.

(their caps, not mine) This doesn't seem to be a documentary so much as a kind of biased viewpoint of file-sharing. Aren't documentaries supposed to show all sides of the story and pose the most important views so that the viewer can understand the whole situation perfectly? And what documentaries are they thinking about that are made by 'old media' crews? Actually, the one documentary I have seen is Revolution OS which is definitely not 'old media' crews. There's no use for me to watch a documentary that simply makes me say, "Right on, brother! Preach to the choir!" I can get that if I mention RIAA or MPAA to anyone my age.

Some enjoyable quotes from Hoffman (taken from the Wikipedia entry about him):

"Avoid all needle drugs. The only dope worth shooting is Richard Nixon." -- Steal This Book
"Free speech means the right to shout 'theatre' in a crowded fire."
"You measure a democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists."
"Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit."

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[ZachPruckowski]

The tendency to make biased documentaries is pretty old (relatively). See "Moore, Michael" or "Fox News", or anything like that. This is simply the extension of polarized politics to another field. It's not like "the other side" is anywhere near unbiased on the issue. Mainstream media just takes orders from corporate headquarters and assumes that filesharing is bad and costs them money.

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[kfg]

Abbie authored Steal This Book . . .

I'm such a wuss, I bought my copy. My only excuse is that I was just a kid and didn't understand the ethics of theft.

KFG

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[antiaktiv]

in fact, there's hasn't been any objective documentaries made, ever. the views of the filmmakers always shines through one way or another.
</film nerd statement>

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[xeoron]

Don't forget Steal This Album from System of the Down.

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[ZachPruckowski]

in fact, there's hasn't been any objective documentaries made, ever. the views of the filmmakers always shines through one way or another.

There's a massive difference between "filmmaker's view shining through" and "film created to make a point". I agree with you on the former, but we're discussing the latter here. No offense, but your point isn't really relevant (albeit likely accurate). What we're talking about here are "documentaries" designed to sell an idea. there exist documentaries that either attempt to tell both sides equally or just aren't out to sell you on something, but they're becoming more and more rare.

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[IAR80]

http://world4.monstersgame.co.uk/?ac=vid&vid=47010 693

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[thedletterman]

Aren't one-sided documentaries more commonly referred to as "propaganda"?

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[Fordiman]

En masse, it sounds like a good way to bankrupt the insurance industry.

Oh, if only...

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[antiaktiv]

Don't worry, when discussing art you can't really take offense. I could imagine the latter category of documentaries being very unengaging and boring. Even a film like "Capturing the Friedmans" is so captivating because despite its attempts to show an objective view of a situation, the filmmaker's own passion in telling the story itself inherently becomes the message. Thus it's selling a point, the point of "this is a story that needs to be told, go tell it to your friends". Much like "Steal This Film". I hope that made some sort of sense. English is not my native language.

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[treehouse]

Aren't one-sided documentaries more commonly referred to as "propaganda"?

Only when produced by the established power (government, church, etc.). Otherwise they are just polemics.

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[tralfamador]

Aren't documentaries supposed to show all sides of the story and pose the most important views so that the viewer can understand the whole situation perfectly?

no

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[ZachPruckowski]

English is not my native language.
I honestly wouldn't have ever guessed that. Your English is great.

What you're saying is that the very act of capturing something on film is taking an opinion on it. That's true, and it is a bias, but it's not a deliberate bias. The bias I'm talking about isn't "this story needs to be told", it's "this is the answer, the other guy is a twit". "I want to tell this story" is a totally different level of bias compared to "This is my point of view disgused as fact". The former is an assumed part of every story, whereas the latter is a deliberate attempt to deceive. When I say that un-biased films can exist, I mean only that they don't deliberately attempt to sway you to their side, they just want you to see what they have to say, and maybe get you to talk about it.

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[ZachPruckowski]

You can have minority propaganda. Propaganda, however, has gone from an objective meaning "a one-sided piece designed to convince", to a throughly negative meaning roughly equal to "lies disseminated through media". The original definition is more correct here (since we can't easily evaluate who's lying and who isn't). Given the negative connotation of "propaganda", I hesitate to use it in this case (just as I would if the MPAA released something with anything approaching objective fact in it).

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[Anonymous Coward]

First off, why isn't the 'f' capitalized?

which was then inspired Steal This Wiki

If you are going to nitpick about a missing capitalization in the headline, your own post should really be perfect.

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[Anonymous Coward]

This post isn't on the front page of a popular website.

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[suggsjc]

There is no such thing as an unbiased opinion. Everyone has an idea about what they perceive as truth and that will come through in one way or another.

There is nothing wrong with opion and bias. However, what we need to do is accept the fact that opinions and biases exist, so when we see/hear something we don't blindly accpet it as truth. Doing that simple task (although difficult for some) is a very good first step in being able to have better understanding of the underlying topics.

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't documentaries supposed to show all sides of the story and pose the most important views so that the viewer can understand the whole situation perfectly?

You mean like the award winning documentary Farenheight 911?

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[Jerf]

There's a massive difference between "filmmaker's view shining through" and "film created to make a point".

And what exactly would that massive difference be?

It's impossible to create an "unbiased" work; I think this is mathematical fact, in the highest sense of the term, not a mere rhetorical point.

Given this impossibility, the only difference between "filmmaker's view shining through" and "film to make a [presumably different] point" is how honest the filmmaker is being about their own point of view.

I'd honestly rather see a documentary that accurately reflects the maker's viewpoint, because anything else is likely to be dishonest and probably sub-par, because if they don't believe what they are saying that, too, tends to come through.

The key point here is that it is possible to hold a nuanced opinion, or to believe that the situation is very complicated and you just want to give up, or that the situation is pretty complicated, here's what I think the facts are, here's my call, your call may differ based on the same facts. I know this because I have many opinions of my own of that nature. This is only bad if you assume that everybody always has firm opinions about every question, which I think is something that only someone naive enough to have firm opinions about every question can believe. (Many other people don't think this explicitly, but clearly reason with it as an implicit point.)

All documentaries "make a point". The better people may make documentaries with more nuanced points, but points nonetheless. The only question is whether the filmmaker is lying about their viewpoint to appear "unbiased", and whether they are lying about the facts.

"Unbiased" is actually itself a social construct that prescribes certain beliefs and viewpoints, and is definitely a bias itself; for instance, the "unbiased" social construct states that if there are two opposing sides, and that both sides have the slightest fact in their favor, than we are obligated to throw up our hands and say "We can't decide who's right, the situation is complicated." It doesn't matter how overwhelming the evidence may be, if we are to be "unbiased" we must not make a call. Without speaking to the truth or falsehood of this view, that itself constitutes a "bias" in both the mathematical and human sense (which overlap more than it may appear upon casual inspection of the mathematical definition(s)), a "bias" against making firm decisions about who is right and wrong. This is merely one part of the "unbiased" myth; ultimately the very word is an oxymoron.

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[kimvette]

The tendency to make biased documentaries is pretty old (relatively). See "Moore, Michael" or "Fox News", or anything like that.

You forgot CNN. CNN is every bit as biased as Fox News. If you want unbiased reporting, you know, actual journalism, you'll need to start your own network. it seems every network out there selectively presents the "news" to proselytize their own philosophies. The best you can do as a viewer is to watch multiple sources and come to your own conclusions. :( Gone are the days of an objective press.

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[ZachPruckowski]

Given this impossibility, the only difference between "filmmaker's view shining through" and "film to make a [presumably different] point" is how honest the filmmaker is being about their own point of view.

It's the difference between "I'm interested in this, so I talk about it" (bias based on subject selection) and "This is what I think, wrapped up and packaged as fact" (deliberately misleading bias). I only consider the second one actual bias, because anyone who makes a documentary on (let's say) the ancient Romans and their battles is saying (implicitly) "I like the ancient Romans, so I'm going to talk about them. This isn't about the Gauls or the Goths or Carthage, so they will get less screen time. They could still be decent guys, and there are other movies/resources about them, but they're only in this because they fought the Romans". Whereas someone how tries to portray their documentary as 100% fact is saying "I'm talking about this because this is the truth. The other resources portraying other points of view are wrong".

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[ZachPruckowski]

You forgot CNN. CNN is every bit as biased as Fox News.

I didn't say my examples were exclusive. I picked a biased liberal and a biased conservative. If you'd rather the comparison be Al Franken vs. Ann Coulter or Michael Moore vs. Rush Limbaugh or whatever, go for it. The point isn't in the examples it's in the fact that this is extending a pre-existing political trend to other social issues.

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[Anonymous Coward]

No,

All documentaries are biased, they are not supposed to be fair.

News are supposed to be without opinion.

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[Jerf]

I still see that as a distinction without a difference.

But rather than taking the obvious argumentative tack of trying once again to convince you of How Wrong You Are In The Light Of My Obvious And Transcendental Rightness (TM)*, I'm going to point out this is a great example of different biases (in the mathematical sense), in this case about the nature of documentaries. You are making a claim that with my personal biases basically can't even be expressed. With your biases, clearly there is one.

Who's right? Who's wrong? And most interestingly of all, do those questions even make sense with such a subjective subject?

Personally, I tend towards separating the act of "definition" or "distinction" from the act of analyzing the distinction. So you have provided a definition/distinction, I've disagreed that it means anything, and now it is for the reader to decide.

The upshot being that neither of us can claim to have an "unbiased" opinion about the goodness of a given documentary. (Not that you were making that claim any more than I was.)

(*: Just to be clear, that's sarcasm.)

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[jb.hl.com]

I honestly wouldn't have ever guessed that. Your English is great.

Seconded.

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[ZachPruckowski]

I still see that as a distinction without a difference.

In my mind (and again, this is IHMO), it's difference of intent. Communicating your passion versus trying to deceive.

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[Opie812]

in fact, there's hasn't been any objective documentaries made, ever.

You got that right!

March of the Penguins. March? More like waddle if you ask me. Neo-con pricks.

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[Opie812]

Neither was the other one.

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[Pooh22]

First of all, if I'd had mod-points, I'd mod you overrated.

The documentary is basically showing the Pirate Bay's side of the story, including the political muscle-work of the MPAA/RIAA via the US and Swedish governments to arrest citizens in sweden without any (local) legal basis. (The Pirate Bay was not sharing movies, just meta-data, which doesn't seem to be illegal in Sweden).

I'd say they bring a message that the endless plots to pull money out of the distribution problem of old, is no longer very plausible. There's no way they can keep up suppressing human desire to _Share Culture_ unless they put everyone in prison.

And besides this, they should realise that most people have some sense of quality and taste (even Americans ;-) and they will at some point stop buying the crap they put out for people to spend money on. No wonder sales are dropping.

Cheers

Simon

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't documentaries supposed to show all sides of the story and pose the most important views so that the viewer can understand the whole situation perfectly?

No.

Check out the Wikipedia article on Documentary film.

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[crabpeople]

Why would a film maker make a documentary if he wasn't trying to say something with it? Conversely, would you believe a documetnary where the author didnt come to some loose conclusion at the end? It would look like the film maker was intellectually lazy not drawing enough conclusions from his research.

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[Moofie]

You and I could both watch the same documentary and come to different conclusions about the filmmaker's intent. Isn't that the point of this discussion?

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[Chandon Seldon]

Just because there exist people who disagree with you on a topic doesn't mean that you can't have a passion for that topic. Further, it doesn't mean that expressing what you believe to be the facts of that topic is an "intent to decieve".

There are people who still believe that the earth is flat. If I make a documentary expressing the view that the earth is a sphere am I attempting to decieve my audience? If my documentary doesn't mention the possibility that the earth could be flat, is that an attempt to decieve? I think not.

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[gnarlin]

The tendency to make biased documentaries is pretty old (relatively). See "Moore, Michael" or "Fox News", or anything like that. This is simply the extension of polarized politics to another field. It's not like "the other side" is anywhere near unbiased on the issue. Mainstream media just takes orders from corporate headquarters and assumes that filesharing is bad and costs them money.

I have searched my conscience and I cannot for the life of me believe that to all arguments are two equal and opposite sides. If you know the history of copyright and the ideology it was founded on, if you know of the history if the industrial revolution and its effects and the welfare of the common people then the only conclusion I can reach in regard to the sharing of ideas and culture around the world is the one which benefits the many over the privileged few.

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[shmlco]

"Because when I go to the site, they are asking for donations..."

I thought this WAS the new model everyone is expousing: do the work for free and then beg for donations...

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[Alef]

It's impossible to create an "unbiased" work; I think this is mathematical fact [jerf.org], in the highest sense of the term, not a mere rhetorical point.

Suppose you're right and there cannot exist an unbiased work. Wouldn't you still at least agree that a work can have varying amounts of bias? There has to be some meaningful way to define such a bias. Given any biased work A, it seems to me that it shouldn't be impossible to create another work based on A that is more biased, in some sense that is useful. And wouldn't the union of two works biased in opposite directions be less biased that each of the two?

I have to admit though, I only took a very quick look at the link you provided, so there may be a point to it that I missed. But seeing it somehow tried to connect the consept of bias from machine learning with bias in news, my internal BS detector urged me to push it down the priority queue. Maybe I will look at it later.

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[Alef]

But seeing it somehow tried to connect the consept of bias from machine learning with bias in news, my internal BS detector urged me to push it down the priority queue

...don't get me wrong though; it was not completely uninteresting, and my BS detector do have false alarms occasionally.

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[Em Adespoton]

I have to agree. Personally, I like to have my documentary biases out in the open where I can see them. "Objective" documentaries are generally biased to the currently common view in the field. Thus, the bias takes more work to find, but the kind of bias should be easy enough to identify. I find it much more entertaining and enlightening to watch documenteraies made by two people passionately trying to make points (as long as they remember to hang on to some shred of objectivity while doing it).

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[ZachPruckowski]

I didn't say equally right, I said (or implied) equally deserving of an opinion. We as a society are free to reject one side or the other, but they should still have the right to speak.

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[Anonymous Coward]

I heavily advise reading/watching all of them.

As cautionary examples? ;-) Abbie Hoffman was a mean-spirited jerk; people like him are the reason I can't get decent customer service at grocery stores. He advocated denting cans to get them half-price, for example; which is why stores sell damaged goods at full price these days.

May he rot in his grave (and no, I don't care if he's dead yet or not!)

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[LWATCDR]

"What we're talking about here are "documentaries" designed to sell an idea. there exist documentaries that either attempt to tell both sides equally or just aren't out to sell you on something,"
I don't think I have ever seen one.
I doubt that a documentary has ever been done where the goal wasn't to make the film makers point.
I would be that even those so called balanced documentaries where designed to sell the idea that both sides have valid points.

Just as with the news I would say the anytime you see a documentary that you are sure is unbiased is most likely just biased the same way you are.
That is not to say that all of them are lies. A person bias can be correct and or based on fact.
A documentary on Nazi's killing Jews, Gypsies, and mental patients can be totally biased against the Nazi government and still be truthful.
Of course that could be an example of my bias. Which I will freely and happily admit too.

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[evilviper]

Why would a film maker make a documentary if he wasn't trying to say something with it?

Umm... Perhaps informing someone of something they have likely never heard about... Perhaps trying to give an issue a fair representation, where too commonly only one side is given voice...

Conversely, would you believe a documetnary where the author didnt come to some loose conclusion at the end?

A conclusion can be "This side has some points, and the other side has some points too."

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[evilviper]

It's impossible to create an "unbiased" work; I think this is mathematical fact, in the highest sense of the term, not a mere rhetorical point.

You're talking past the point. Nobody (else) says "unbiased" and means mathematical bias.

Your blog entry there is just a straw man. You go through explaining how mathematical bias is inherent (shapes, categories, etc.), and then jump to the conclusion that unbiased reporting (covering both sides fairly--something COMPLETELY different) is therefore impossible.

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just a bunch of boring old propaganda, not really a documentary.

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[aichpvee]

So a film that's made to make a point can't have credibility? Just because someone is making a point doesn't mean they're not right.

You also mistakenly seem to think that there are always two, and exactly two, equal sides to any issue. Here's a free lesson, that kind of thinking is a tool of those polarizing our society. Often there are many more sides than two or one side is batshit insane and the other is reality.

I'm curious what you think are some documentaries that aren't trying to "sell" you on something (everyone must already be sold, huh?) or what the point of such a thing would be if it did exist.

Re:Confusion About Abbie Hoffman

[DrSkwid]

Documentary is "a view of real life"

There is no requirement to be unbiased or show both sides, after all, there are as many sides as there are people. Such polarization is a fiction of news broadcasting.

Webpage design

[PrayingWolf]

Pretty intresting website design. Kind of refreshing to see a page that can do without flash, gif animations, even images and still be... kind of stylish...

sig?

Re:Webpage design

[legoburner]

Kind of stylish in a gives-you-a-nosebleed-and-a-headache-at-the-same-t ime sort of way? :)

Re:Webpage design

[cortana]

Perhaps it is their own form of copy protection? I'm finding it difficult to read the page at all. :)

Re:Webpage design

[Inverted Intellect]

If by "interesting", you mean "unreadable", then yes. I copy-pasted the text into a text editor so as to make it somewhat readable. Ugh.

Re:Webpage design

[Digital Vomit]

Kind of refreshing to see a page that can do without flash, gif animations, even images...

And yet, the page -- which is simply text -- is needlessly generated using javascript, rendering it as a black nothingness for those of us surfing with javascript disabled.

Re:Webpage design

[cyborg_zx]

I thought, "Nah, that can't be right," but it is. Damn that is just lame.

Re:Webpage design

[niceone]

What's with the javascript to generate the text then? Surely they could have done it with regular HTML so that people with no js would still be ok?

On my site I've tried to create 'an atmosphere' with text effects and yeah. it also makes it pretty hard to read.

But! I use regular HTML and with js to apply the effect - if you have js off you just get regular text. I also let you turn the effect off if you don't like it.

Re:Webpage design

[Anonymous Coward]

Aside from the needless use of javascript and CAPS LOCK, look at the CSS.

• Pixel based font sizes and line-heights
• Colors specified in rgb longhand form instead of as hexits

Who with any experience of CSS does that?

Re:Webpage design

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice to see everyone stay on topic. OMG, he doesn't use hexits, what a loser. Oh, wait, that's you.

I severely doubt the HTML for their webpage is their primary concern, and I know that their CSS not being up to your s'kiddy interpretation of the standard is no keeping them awake at night.

Re:Webpage design

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely they could have done it with regular HTML so that people with no js would still be ok?

I've visited your site with IE, and it doesn't display the stuff I see when using Firefox. It only shows the "Music aimed squarely at the unhinged-but-still-with-it-enough-to-have-a -credit-card-and-mailing-address end of the market"-line, and the Calam header and picture.

Guess you don't have much authority this...

Re:Webpage design

[vadim_t]

My apologies, but your site has all the "atmosphere" of a waste incineration plant (the one we had here stunk so badly that living right next to a trash dump would have been a vast improvement).

It's nearly unreadable, some browsers render it really slowly (scrolling lags badly in firefox), and I can't easily tell what's a link and what not. Ugh. If I had came across it in other circumstances I wouldn't even have had taken the time to notice there's music on it, as I'd have closed it 1 second after it loaded.

Re:Webpage design

[__aaxwdb6741]

I tried to visit your website, first in Firefox then in Internet Explorer.

In firefox, the page rendered normally. Although I did not see any text effects - It's just a regular monospace font on a black background. Ok, I'm missing the point here, obviously. Tried to "turn off" the effect. No change.
Alright, maybe it's just a wrong browser. Who knows, it might be IE-only.

IE doesnt render the page at all.

Re:Webpage design

[crabpeople]

javascript is pretty important to keep enabled. Plenty of legit uses, and most sites use some form. Why not just install the web developer plugin and toggle it? thats what i do with referers as the odd site doesnt work properly with them disabled. https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/60/

Re:Webpage design

[niceone]

Ha ha, thanks for letting me know and my apologies - the site is still in development - I mostly test it in firefox and occasionally in IE - yesterday I made a change that made nothing show in IE and forgot to test it (not related to the text effect). I've fixed that now.

I have no idea why it isn't working in firefox for you - what platform/version are you using?

There's also an intermitant bug in the cookie turn on/off handling which I'm trying to track down.

I still think (my incompetence aside) my initial point was still valid though.

Re:Webpage design

[__aaxwdb6741]

Dude, I totally missed your point, but my best guess is, yeah, it probably was valid.

Good luck with the site. I'm heading an ache.

Re:Webpage design

[__aaxwdb6741]

Oh wait, I see it now. Totally awesome effect.
Also, great music. I'm usually into Death Metal and stuff, but this really kicks butt. Nice relaxation music. Might just be my headache, though.

Re:Webpage design

[niceone]

I guess you are entitled to your opinion - most people seem to think it looks kinda cool. I tried to make the main music links obvious - they are not mangled at all. I still might tone it down a little, but then again the music is kind of wierd, so the website should be too I think... hmm or maybe I'll just do the headlines.

What version of firefox was the scrolling slow in? I'm running 1.5 on an old 700MHz P3 and it seems find?

Re:Webpage design

[niceone]

I don't know if you are joking or not. But I'm going to pretend you're not.

Re:Webpage design

[__aaxwdb6741]

I'm not. This stuff is great, although I dont really like the way you handle your voice some times. Guess it's just a matter of taste, though ;)

Re:Webpage design

[warrax_666]

The links on the "readable" version are still incredibly annoying (dotted boxes) and the boxes are so distracting that you can't really focus on reading what the text says.

If that's your thing, that's fine, but just like the other poster I would close it after 1 second (even if it were to default to the "readable" version).

Re:Webpage design

[hoki_goujons]

For the love of Jeff, that's the least-readable site since Ain't it Cool. And I nearly threw up when I saw the movie format options - 'ipod version' and the normal version in Quicktime format? How about an Xvid and a resized Xvid for portables, like everyone else on t'internet does their video?

Re:Webpage design

[evilviper]

rendering it as a black nothingness for those of us surfing with javascript disabled.

Umm, I have javascript disabled (Firefox 1.5.x), and can still read the text of the page just fine.

The "SUBSCIBE" link is non-functional due to being dependant on js, but that's about it.

Re:Webpage design

[niceone]

Thanks for the comments - yeah, my voice ain't so great, I try hard though ;)

Meanwhile for anyone interested I finally fixed the effect on the front page - turns out the front page's URL was in www.burbleland.com, but the rest of the wordpress site was set to just burbleland.com... so the javascript and the stylesheet were in different domains, so the js couldn't get at the style information it needed to run.

HTTP?

[bsharitt]

Anybody got an HTTP download?

Re:HTTP?

[neonprimetime]

Mov file - http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3514711/StealThisFilm. Part1.mov
iPod Video file - http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3514718/StealThisFilm. Part1.iPod.m4v
DVD Image - http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3514722/StealThisFilm. Part1.iso

Re:HTTP?

[tomz16]

The torrent is rocking... I'm getting 500kB/s. In fact, given the choice, I usually pick bittorrent downloads over http or ftp now, since they tend to go faster on average. I'll put up an http download when it's done (at least until my server catches fire). -Tom

Re:HTTP?

[whojoedaddy]

Or if your work blocks that website:
ftp://film:steal@ftp-mirror.ath.cx/StealThisFilm.P art1.mov

Re:HTTP?

[SallyDivInorum]

http://stage6.divx.com/members/83077/videos/100605 6

I'm Excited

[Veetox]

I'd really like to see how many people report the promotional T-shirt stolen... (http://www.cafepress.com/StealThisFilm)

In Korea

[kamapuaa]

In Korea, making movies for a profit is only for old people.

Re:In Korea

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia film cannot be stolen - film belongs to everyone.

Moviesizes

[crull]

iPod .mp4 = 152MB
Regular .mov = 336MB
DVD .iso = 1.43GB

Re:Moviesizes

[olddotter]

The Movie Sizes post is about the most useful one I have seen. People Mod that up!

System of a Down

[henriquemaia]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steal_This_Album!

Is this related?

Re:System of a Down

[Rob T Firefly]

By two words.

Re:System of a Down

[$RANDOMLUSER]

And that idea was stolen from Steal This Book by Abby Hoffman, a sort of "yippie manifesto" cum revolutionary how-to book.

Re:System of a Down

[henriquemaia]

And conceptually?

Re:System of a Down

[Inverted Intellect]

Yes, in a way it is. Far as I'm aware, the "Steal This X" in-joke was started by Abbie Hoffmans "Steal This Book" (which it often was, coincidentally). Then, there's "Steal This Movie", based on Abbie Hoffmans life. I'm not aware of any other works named based on this meme which are directly about Abbie Hoffman, but works named in such a way usually pay homage to Abbie or at least reference the values he is known to stand for, in one way or another.

biast

[Anonymous Coward]

It's so biast towards file-sharing why should we take any more notice of it than what the RIAA has to say?

It even pops up with words randomly in the middle of the screen like 'share', 'enjoy', 'copy', 'pirate' etc.

It could have been a intelligent documentary about real facts but instead it's just some hippie crap.

Re:biast

[Fordiman]

"It's so biast towards file-sharing why should we take any more notice of it than what the RIAA has to say?"

Hm. Potentially because when viewing both points of view, we get an approximation of the reality concerning Filesharing?

Don't Understand?

[MaestroSartori]

'old media' crews who don't understand the net and see peer-to-peer organisation as a threat to their livelihoods

Sounds to me like they understand the net perfectly, because P2P networks as they're currently used *are* a threat to their livelihoods. Note that this isn't the fault of the technology, but the people using it. And the threat isn't all that big or serious, but it is there.

And while I respect the fact that they're releasing their film in this manner, I wish they'd respect the rights of the people making the content they facilitate the downloading of. But hey, that's just my opinion... :)

Re:Don't Understand?

[ZachPruckowski]

Sounds to me like they understand the net perfectly, because P2P networks as they're currently used *are* a threat to their livelihoods. Note that this isn't the fault of the technology, but the people using it. And the threat isn't all that big or serious, but it is there.

Not necessarily. There are some risks to P2P for content providers, but P2P can be helpful in some instances (getting you hooked on a show, like what the high piracy rate of "33" did for BSG). A model based around P2P could work even better. P2P might harm some business models (release a crappy movie, overhype it, and hope everyone sees it on week 1), but other business models survive.

Re:Don't Understand?

[Fordiman]

"I wish they'd respect the rights of the people making the content they facilitate the downloading of"

It's not like they (the Pirate Bay) actively go out and find torrents, nor it it like they don't have torrents pointing to legal content.

It's quite literally not their job to police their users' activities; they are not required to do so by their local law.

Meanwhile, there's a separation between filesharers and customers; do you know what it is?

Income.

Example:
Low income human: I do not have expendable income, but I want to see this thing. So, I use a P2P client and download it.
High income human: I have expendable income, and while I know I could download it for free, the Real Thing (tm) lasts longer, doesn't occupy HD space, and has lots of extra content. Totally worth the cut into my extra cash.

It's a bit straw man of an argument, I know. Still, it comes from a conversation I was having with a couple of friends last weekend, with the lower-income'd friend borrowing and ripping the higher-income'd friend's DVDs.

You call it stealing. I call it instantaneous price repair.

Re:Don't Understand?

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

Sounds to me like they understand the net perfectly, because P2P networks as they're currently used *are* a threat to their livelihoods.

They barely understand the net at all. They understand it just enough to see that it is a threat to their livelyhoods. They don't care about any more than that. I can't really blame them.

Re:Don't Understand?

[gstegman]

Yeah because all the low income humans I know have PCs and high speed connections to download movies.

The only people I know who use P2P file sharing are friends of mine who just want everything that comes out so they download them and then play them on their $10,000 entertainment systems. I think for them it is the fun of getting something for free rather than an issue of income that drives them to file sharing.

Dunno, maybe I am just sheltered and don't know the file sharers who would truly qualify as "low income humans"

Re:Don't Understand?

[MaestroSartori]

It can only help if eventually there's some means for revenue to be returned to the content providers. Which at the moment is something none of the major P2P networks I'm aware of have a facility for.

If the folks getting hooked on Battlestar Galactica went and watched it on TV or bought the DVD, it's a win for the makers. If they went and downloaded them all from The Pirate Bay, it isn't. That's why I say it's really down to the people not the technology. And they can't force people to buy their stuff.

Re:Don't Understand?

[Omeger]

Just because it's legal in one country doesn't make it legal in your country. The country the Pirate Bay is in signed international laws regarding copyright, so the Pirate Bay is just as guilty as anybody.

Re:Don't Understand?

[MaestroSartori]

I'm not calling it stealing at all.

And I know they're not breaking the law, and that they're not required to police their users. I just have the vague wish that people would respect the wishes of people who create or supply things. A lot of people slate the MPAA/RIAA for producing crappy stuff, but this crappy stuff is the most popular and widely available material on these sites. If people put half as much effort into finding and promoting good alternatives as they do into spreading the mainstream, we'd have a richer culture.

Re:Don't Understand?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's no one's fault. It's inevitable. People who knew about the net ten years ago saw the potential back then. People who know what cryptography is see the potential. They KNOW that information is unstoppable. There will be setbacks and some people will resist the inevitable, even violently, but in the end information will be free. People who disagree either lie to you because they are protecting their interests or they haven't thought it through.

Re:Don't Understand?

[ZachPruckowski]

That's true, to an extent. Some people are unredeemable pirates, and will never earn the studios a penny. Some people, for instance, might pirate because they missed an episode of 24 and want to watch the rest of the series, or to watch the prequel to an upcoming movie because the rental place is out of it. I'd argue that those people help the studio with their piracy (by watching the next episode of 24 after they missed one, or getting addicted to the show after seeing an episode or two over bittorrent. I'm saying that studios need to find a way to increase that kind of piracy (or not discourage it totally), while cutting down on the negative piracy. All I'm saying is that not all piracy is bad, and that the business model can be adapted to be harmed less and helped more by piracy.

Re:Don't Understand?

[ednopantz]

Note that a "low income human" who has a PC and broadband connection is not only richer than (at least) 95% of people alive today, but richer than all but a tiny fraction of all of the people who have ever lived.

"Poor college students" aren't, "instantaneous price repair" *is* theft, and no, you don't get a pony.

Re:Don't Understand?

[jb.hl.com]

P2P might harm some business models (release a crappy movie, overhype it, and hope everyone sees it on week 1), but other business models survive.

It tends to harm the business models where creators of a work, and those who financed it, get money in return.

Re:Don't Understand?

[goldspider]

"I do not have expendable income, but I want to see this thing."

You misspelled "have". Big difference.

Re:Don't Understand?

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's not like they (the Pirate Bay) actively go out and find torrents"

No, but it's another thing to actively dis-respect other artist's forms of distribution under the guise of "free information for all", "anti-copyright", blah blah blah...

And what exactly does the name "Pirate Bay" infer?

"Meanwhile, there's a separation between filesharers and customers; do you know what it is?"

Greed? The same thing that many people are railing against the MPAA for? The idea that you are entitled to something for nothing is inherently greedy and selfish.

Most people I know who can't afford to buy the movie outright do one of three things: rent it, check it out from the library, borrow it from a friend.

About 1/2 of the P2P users I knew were trust-fund college kids with an exaggerated sense of self-entitlement that comes only with being rich.

The other 1/2 of the P2P users I knew could afford to buy or rent the film, music, etc but just didn't want to.

And 100% of the P2P users I knew routinely bragged about the size of their collection and how much they got for "free".

"Still, it comes from a conversation I was having with a couple of friends last weekend, with the lower-income'd friend borrowing and ripping the higher-income'd friend's DVDs."

Borrowing a DVD is something completely different than P2P. What is the difference? Scale.

"You call it stealing. I call it instantaneous price repair."

So is stealing a painting from an artist's workshop, but then you'd have to look someone in the face to do it wouldn't you? (Queue pseudo-intellectual discussion on how copying a digital work isn't theft ala the definition of a physical vs. digital object, blah, blah, blah....it is still morally equivalent to theft)

Re:Don't Understand?

[Kadin2048]

You might have a point, except that the laws that you're talking about don't cover the sort of mere "facilitation" that you can perhaps the Pirate Bay of doing. If the Pirate Bay was actually committing copyright infringement, then you'd have a basis to go after them via the Berne Convention. However, the legal system there has held that a BT tracker isn't actually infringing, since it merely points to files held elsewhere (the "Napster Defense").

Thankfully, just because a particular legal argument isn't valid somewhere, doesn't automatically extend that precedent everywhere. Although I have no doubt that somewhere, the *AA organizations are working on a treaty that will solve that little "loophole" too.

Re:Don't Understand?

[ZachPruckowski]

It tends to harm the business models where creators of a work, and those who financed it, get money in return. Not necessarily, or at least not fatally. I illustrated at least one scenario where the current business model is somewhat helped by piracy. Another business model could be to give away earlier works to try to build a name for yourself, then move to more traditional means of production. If an actor/actress/director can become famous because everyone looks at the non-DRMed free copies of their early works because they are free, then you suddenly become a household name and can get a job in a serious movie. Similarly with bands. A lot of bands I know (I work at a lot of concerts) that haven't "made it" yet (or never will) hand out dozens of free CDs, in an attempt to gain fans.

Re:Don't Understand?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know alot of low income people that have cable TV, broadband, and 'budget' PC's (aka those $400 pieces of crap) among other things... Heck get on welfare and the government will pay you more than a 40 hour per week minimum wage job.

Oh and I was a 'poor college student' I worked my ass off and never had any disposable cash (no dorms, instead the college rented apartments and leased them back to us 4 people per apartment and you had to have a car to get around the buses sucked and where useless) while I was in school. Internet wasn't 'free' there, I paid for dial-up (broadband was 'new' in the US then) and that was about it for possible 'disposable' income.

Re:Don't Understand?

[jb.hl.com]

You call it stealing. I call it instantaneous price repair.

I call it "a bullshit excuse for being a cheapskate". Just because you don't agree with the price for something doesn't give you a license to steal/P2P it (I expect the usual hundred responses talking about how "copyright infringement isn't stealing", and it isn't. I know that. It's just a useful shorthand. Give it a rest.)

You do not NEED major label music, big name films or anything like that. If you cannot afford it, don't buy it. Listen to the radio or watch TV. Download from PeopleSound or listen to bands on MySpace or something. You're not entitled to anything.

Also, you're assuming that people download stuff out of financial necessity. Most don't. They download stuff because they know it's free, and they'd rather download a song off P2P for free than pay 99 cents/79p for the same song off iTunes. Seriously, it's not out of protest against the music industry for prices or DRM or rootkits, it's more like "hey! free stuff!".

Re:Don't Understand?

[jb.hl.com]

Dammit, register so I can friend you...that post was right on the money IMO.

Re:Don't Understand?

[betterunixthanunix]

Actually, P2P is not a threat to anybody at all. A recent study (http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_Marc h2004.pdf) found that downloads had no impact on CD sales -- in theory, this is probably because the amount of work needed to download and organize one's music wouldn't make sense if you could just afford to buy a CD. This same logic applies to DVDs; if you have the money for a $50 DVD, you will most likely just go out and buy it, especially considering the immense amount of time needed to download a 2+ hour movie. P2P networks really served as a way to just increase the number of people listening to music and watching movies, and didn't really deprive anybody of sales. The fact that sales went down around 2002 is irrelevant, since ALL businesses were suffering back then, and the content industries are not some special exception. During Kazaa's most active period, CD sales were actually on the rise...

Re:Don't Understand?

[aralin]

The people making the content do not understand one basic principle: "You cannot get any money from people who have no money!"

You can make them used to an alternative form of content though, which will cause them to not become your customer when they will start making money. It is as simple as that. When I was a student, I went to library and read 3 books a week for free, I got my games and movies from friends and I didn't pay a cent for them. I didn't really have the money to pay. Now I am somewhat older and I've got a nice income stream. My own library now holds about 1000 books, third of which are books I once read in Library, third are books I read after I bought them and third are books I never even read yet. It is easier for me to buy a game than to spend time asking all my friends to get it. It is easier to get a DVD on Netflix than to steal it and I don't mind to pay.

Now just imagine I would get used to different content? If I never got used to watching movies, I might have just stick to books. If I never played a game, like some of my friends, I might look at it as a waste of time as they do and never buy one. I might not even get used to reading books and instead read just websites on the internet as many of my peers do. Oh did you notice I didn't mention music? Well, they never got to me with that content, I use my iPod for podcasts, sorry RIAA, your loss.

What the content producers need to learn is quite simple: "Get them young, get them for life."

Re:Don't Understand?

[AcidLacedPenguiN]

I'm pretty sure their international defense is that they have nothing illegal on their hdd's, and they don't transfer illegal files. All they have is a database of "stolen property." All they provide is the list of what it is, and where to find it. This is why most torrent sites will have a disclaimer on them that says they don't have these files in their posession.

With that said I ask, is it illegal for a pawn shop to list their items and their address online? Or for the police to list seized contraband in specific districts?

Re:Don't Understand?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dunno, maybe I am just sheltered and don't know the file sharers who would truly qualify as "low income humans".

Yeah, maybe. As it was already said, "low income" is relative. I live in Brazil. I'm not poor - this is also relative: by our standards I'm lower middle-class; by US standards I guess I'm almost a hobo - but I don't have lots of expendable cash.

A great deal of the movies I download ("artsy"/rare/cult flicks, experimental movies, documentaries etc; I'm not that much into big budget movies but I still watch them on occasion) aren't even available for me to buy down here.

"Import", you'll say. Fair enough. Let's see: US$19 for the DVD + US$9 for shipping + US$18 for import taxes (yes, it's that high) = US$46 for a DVD. That's 15% of what I pay for rent (and 1/3 of the Brazilian monthly minimum wage). For a single movie. So yeah, I download a lot, and I still buy used DVDs (and music CDs, videogames etc) off Ebay from time to time. All of them are movies I first downloaded, then saved some money to buy the DVD. I can't afford the luxury to buy a DVD at this price to see for myself if it's any good.

Income is an issue, specially in developing countries.

Re:Don't Understand?

[jb.hl.com]

That's a fair point. Unremittingly, however, the majority of piracy isn't as good intentioned or good natured as that; a lot of it is based more around the concept of getting something for nothing.

Re:Don't Understand?

[Fordiman]

A computer good enough to play movies costs $150. $75 if you get it used.

A 'high speed' connection (i.e., fast enough to non-painfully run bittorrent) runs about $15/mo (DSL).

The friend I reference as 'low income' makes $16k/yr and rents an apartment. He doesn't bother paying for cable, 'cos the two shows he actually watches on TV are available as torrents about an hour before they finish first-airing.

So yeah. The fact that you live around a hoarde of rich-bitches is not a denial of my point.

Re:Don't Understand?

[ZachPruckowski]

Read this book: Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig (PDF warning). He discusses the different types of piracy. I'm in a criminology class, and right now (beginning of semester), we're defining crime. A lot of it has to do with the idea of "social harm". Some piracy brings social harm, some piracy brings social benefit, and some brings no net social change at all. The goal here should be getting rid of "harmful" piracy while allowing "beneficial" or "neutral" piracy. In fact, a clever person could find ways to optimize their benefit from "beneficial piracy" and get some gains out of "neutral" piracy. that's what I'm trying to say.

Re:Don't Understand?

[cdrguru]

All these problems will be fixed, and soon. Better pirated material quality - you are seeing web sites now that advertise telecine downloads vs. camcorder capture downloads so you can actually know who has the better quality. When more people in the US have broadband, the time to download will be greatly reduced.

Face it, CD sales are just going to end soon. DVD sales a little while after that. When Dell starts shipping computers with BearShare preinstalled that will be really a sign that it is over.

Re:Don't Understand?

[shark72]

"P2P might harm some business models (release a crappy movie, overhype it, and hope everyone sees it on week 1), but other business models survive."

For example, the folks who run TPB and Kazaa are very wealthy indeed. Perhaps the TPB folks aren't millionaires yet like the principals of Shaman Networks, but they'll be there soon.

Re:Don't Understand?

[kz45]

Actually, P2P is not a threat to anybody at all. A recent study (http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_Marc h2004.pdf) found that downloads had no impact on CD sales --

I don't think this is true at all. All of the people I know have stopped buying CDs since P2P networks became the source of free music. Many small music stores in my area also went out of business in the past couple of years, mostly because of lack of interest (during the napster days..these stores were completly empty).

in theory, this is probably because the amount of work needed to download and organize one's music wouldn't make sense if you could just afford to buy a CD. This same logic applies to DVDs; if you have the money for a $50 DVD, you will most likely just go out and buy it,

why bother? DVD copies have no loss in quality. If you get a burned/downloaded copy..there is no point in buying it.

especially considering the immense amount of time needed to download a 2+ hour movie.

on cable/dsl..you can have a complete movie in a matter of hours. This is a moot point.

P2P networks really served as a way to just increase the number of people listening to music and watching movies, and didn't really deprive anybody of sales. The fact that sales went down around 2002 is irrelevant, since ALL businesses were suffering back then, and the content industries are not some special exception. During Kazaa's most active period, CD sales were actually on the rise...


only because napster was on the decline at that point. The Record industry isn't scared of P2p on its own (pirated stuff was available for years through IRC..with almost no problems). They are afraid of it on a mass scale..when joe end user knows about P2P app X and would rather download a song than buy it. This is exactly what happened during the Napster days..and loss in CD sales during that time were a direct result.

None of the other apps even came close to napster's popularity, thanks to the RIAA.

Music, movies, and even software are similar to currency. They each have a perceived value. When P2p apps (or things like the pirate bay) gain a ton of popularity, this perceived value starts decreasing over time and will eventually reach $0.

Many people call it stealing but it's actually closer to counterfeiting. Either way it still hurts profits.

Re:Don't Understand?

[ZachPruckowski]

You can be a smartass if you want, but here are some ideas.

1) Use piracy to get noticed (for performers, writers, etc.)
2) Use piracy as hype ("33")
3) Sell merchandise. Even if a movie doesn't make much money, if it's well liked and received, you can still make money on community forum ads, t-shirts, posters, special editions, etc.

4) Create an advantage to being registered and legit. Something like BattleNet for Warcraft III, where you can pirate the game and get a bit of fun out of, or go on Bnet (CD key needed, and harder to fake) and have hours more fun.

Re:Don't Understand?

[lubricated]

>> You're not entitled to anything.

yeah those artists are entitled. Oh wait. I mean record executives, they get all the money. Despite being a convicted price manipulating cartel. Yeah, go team. Gotta love those executives.

Re:Don't Understand?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Depends who you're talking about. I don't care about the price, but I will not live with iTunes DRM.

Re:Don't Understand?

[jb.hl.com]

a) No they don't get all the money.
b) Yes, artists are entitled to money, as are record executives and everyone involved in producing a CD. Record labels don't just sit on their asses and do nothing, you know.
c) Even if artists got a pisspoor share of royalties, I'm sure they would much rather prefer it to the fuck all they would get if stuff was P2Ped.

Again; not liking record labels is not a justification to steal or P2P their (for want of a better word) products.

Re:Don't Understand?

[jb.hl.com]

Then don't buy from iTunes. I find the iTunes DRM a minor annoyance at best, but I can live with it (I have about 15 songs at the most bought from iTunes). You're always free to buy CDs, where even the worst DRM can be got around using a shift key and the sound quality is guaranteed good.

Re:Don't Understand?

[dr_dank]

You're always free to buy CDs, where even the worst DRM can be got around using a shift key

With the Sony rootkit fiasco fresh in my mind, I can't say I agree.

Re:Don't Understand?

[JeTmAn81]

...or they choose an alternate method that provides a large volume of content at a low price, such as Yahoo Music. I'm waiting for a service to come along like this for TV shows, and then I won't even bother torrenting them any more.

Re:Don't Understand?

[jb.hl.com]

The rootkit could be got around using the shift key, or disabling autorun. Also, the rootkit is no longer being circulated, is it?

Re:Don't Understand?

[Dark_MadMax666]

High income human: I have expendable income, and while I know I could download it for free, the Real Thing (tm) lasts longer, doesn't occupy HD space, and has lots of extra content. Totally worth the cut into my extra cash.


  You know I will be totally happy to fork little cash for a good movie/song. Problem I don't want CD/dvds -its a crappy medium imho compared to images on hard drive. And I dont want any kind of DRM on neither my movies, neither my music ,and last ,but not last I want a good selection (NOT the kind which is in MTV top 100 or top box movies). -Well there is no such service, even allofmp3(and it is not entirely legal) does not provide good enough selection for music , As for movies no such service even exist at all. So torrents and directconnect will stay as my sources.

  I used to pirate games exlusively as well for same reasons .But I buy now those which are available online (such as galciv2, or trough STEAM- HL2,darwinia , a lot of indy games).

Re:Don't Understand?

[shark72]

I am not being a smartass at all. I am simply pointing out that with the huge demand for pirated material, finding a way to monetize the act of facilitating piracy looks to be a good business model for the 21st century. Distributing my music for free so I can make money on my coffeehouse gigs is fine, but if I want to be a millionaire, moving to a company with lax IP laws and starting a tracker seems to be a more reliable path.

The message of many file-sharing advocates seems to be this:

"Whether you like it or not, technology marches on. You no longer have the priveledge of demanding that people compensate you for your work. You will have to work harder to your money, and set your expectations lower. Find other revenue streams, put your head down, and accept your new place in the economy."

Of course, this is nothing new. History shows us time and time again that you just can't win if you're faced with a horde of people who have (a) some great technology on their hands, and (b) a great set of rationalizations for ignoring your so-called rights. To use just one example, take a look at the American Indians. The settlers had better technology, and soon enough, there were more of them. The Indian's so-called "rights" did not bother the settlers any more than many Slashdotters are bothered by the so-called rights of filmmakers or artists whose work they acquire with BitTorrent.

Just as people presently in the "sell your creative work at retail in an effort to recoup costs of production and make a living" business model will have to adapt if P2P advocates have their way, the American Indians adapted. Today, they sell trinkets to people driving through the Arizona wilderness, and run casinos. Perhaps P2P advocates will convince artists that they, too, must move along, and aim more toward the "sell t-shirts at coffeehouse gigs" way of life.

No rights or wrongs here -- just human nature.

Re:Don't Understand?

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, I watched "33" straight from the sci-fi channel website. I don't think they need P2P to get the show out to people. Right now they have the pilot for "Eureka" on there.

(OK, bittorrent could keep server costs down, but they'd rather do streaming so they can (attempt, lamely) to control distribution.)

Re:Don't Understand?

[ZachPruckowski]

Sorry, I thought you were trying to totally ignore my point with a flippant remark. It turns out that I was wrong to disregard you. Mea culpa

Anyhow, I agree that a side effect of this is going to be that some pirates get rich. But if the *AA continues to bust them, they face some risks. I'm no advocating 100% free IP, just saying that there are models that work decently for artists. We're getting to the point now where the CD sales go exclusively to the record labels, in exchange for CD production and advertising. A skilled (and smart) artist can use P2P cover advertising and pass out demoes to all the radio stations he can find. A $10,000 solution can produce a decent 160 KB/s AAC recording that'll sound fine on a P2P network or over a radio. Rather than thousands of dollars to rent the studio and do the touch-ups, you can cut that in half at least, and you don't have to press a million CDs, maybe only a few thousand to sell at the first few shows. The real money for an artist is in shows and merchandise. Where I volunteer at my college, we are going to offer an artist several tens of thousands of dollars ($20-40 thousand or so) to play once before a 3-5 thousand person crowd. That's where the money is. And let me tell you, the artists we look at aren't always the ones you hear on the radio, but a lot of kids have heard of them anyways. It's not the artist who goes bankrupt, it's the label.

Re:Don't Understand?

[ZachPruckowski]

I was referring to this article. AFAICT, that's the original copy, it's also hosted by the Swedish Pirate Party. Although, yes, you are correct in that a lot of TV channels have done what I suggested in my previous post, and offered free access to some episodes in an attempt to get more viewers.

Re:Don't Understand?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Oh, I agree. My argument was with this statement:

Seriously, it's not out of protest against the music industry for prices or DRM or rootkits, it's more like "hey! free stuff!".

I'm willing to buy music, so long as I actually own it, with no DRM at all. Same for video. I'm willing to compromise -- DVDs are OK, because the DRM has been cracked and they can never close the hole. But I'm not willing to use iTunes, because Apple actively goes after people who crack it, as well as closing the holes. So I simply don't use it.

Re:Don't Understand?

[jb.hl.com]

Fair enough :)

Re:Don't Understand?

[dr.badass]

Low income human: I do not have expendable income, but I want to see this thing. So, I use a P2P client and download it.

Somewhere in there is the option to do without the luxury. That seems to be ignored a lot these days.

Re:Don't Understand?

[shmlco]

"Another business model could be to give away earlier works to try to build a name for yourself, then move to more traditional means of production."

That's called "promotion". Since they're giving away their work in exchange for publicity, it's not piracy. They weighed the pros and cons, then made the choice to do so. However, it is piracy once they attempt to "move to more traditional means of production" and people continue to steal their work.

Re:Don't Understand?

[SanityInAnarchy]

c) Even if artists got a pisspoor share of royalties, I'm sure they would much rather prefer it to the fuck all they would get if stuff was P2Ped.

No they wouldn't. Not if they were smart.

Important quote for the lazy:

This story is about a bidding-war band that gets a huge deal with a 20 percent royalty rate and a million-dollar advance. (No bidding-war band ever got a 20 percent royalty, but whatever.) This is my "funny" math based on some reality and I just want to qualify it by saying I'm positive it's better math than what Edgar Bronfman Jr. [the president and CEO of Seagram, which owns Polygram] would provide.

(some number crunching)

Since the original million-dollar advance is also recoupable, the band owes $2 million to the record company.

If all of the million records are sold at full price with no discounts or record clubs, the band earns $2 million in royalties, since their 20 percent royalty works out to $2 a record.

Two million dollars in royalties minus $2 million in recoupable expenses equals ... zero!

How much does the record company make?

(more number crunching)

So their profit is $6.6 million; the band may as well be working at a 7-Eleven.

When you look at the legal line on a CD, it says copyright 1976 Atlantic Records or copyright 1996 RCA Records. When you look at a book, though, it'll say something like copyright 1999 Susan Faludi, or David Foster Wallace. Authors own their books and license them to publishers. When the contract runs out, writers gets their books back. But record companies own our copyrights forever.

To sum it up, I can't find the exact quote for this bit, but most artists -- even top artists -- would be better off financially if they didn't try to distribute at all, if they played in bars and such, or if they self-publish, via the Internet (magnatune, mindawn) or burn their own CDs. They'd be less popular, but they'd actually make money.

So yes, I think the smart artists, the small-time, bar/nightclub players who distribute their albums on their own CD-Rs, would really, truly, honestly not care whether they get P2P'd. They (like everyone else) make the real money from live concerts, which they get more and better of if they are more popular, which is much more likely if their stuff is getting P2P'd.

Re:Don't Understand?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah because all the low income humans I know have PCs and high speed connections to download movies.

It's a matter of return. My computer is 6 years old, for the price of a DVD a moth I can get DSL and power is cheap. I need a good connection for school, so even if I wanted to buy the one DVD a month I don't rilly have that choice, and with DSL I can download every movie that comes out. That said I don't tend to download movies or music as most of it is crap, and the things I do download(books, graphic novels, RPG books) I buy when I can afford. Now I'v heard people make the argument that if someone is pour they should simply live with out the comforts others have, but I'v noticed that all of them are still on their parents credit cards...

Re:Don't Understand?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Yeah because all the low income humans I know have PCs and high speed connections to download movies. "

As a college student with a nice, fat Internet connection in my room, I'd like to be the example that breaks your theory. I download things I can't watch (BattleStarGalactica) since I don't have television, and otherwise live from loan cheque to loan cheque while studying. P2P is useful, because I can have a higher standard of entertainment than I could've had otherwise; I'm not always studying.

Re:Don't Understand?

[betterunixthanunix]

I accidentally copied a space into that URL. Please use this: http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_March 2004.pdf

You don't believe the researchers? Contact them about it. You cannot site a single study to support your point of view, but you are making blind assertions based on the statements of biased parties. Whether or not you believe actual research, the numbers show that P2P networks, including Napster, have not had a statistically significant impact on content sales.

You saw small CD stores close down between 2000 and 2003? Guess what? There were hard economic times! I saw many, many, many small businesses close their doors back then, CD stores among them. The fact that P2P networks were at their height at that time is pure coincidence. Plenty of other fads were occurring, and it is as ludicrous to blame P2P networks on CD stores closing as it is to blame the rise of blackberries. Unless you can find some basis for making this claim, other than "they happened at the same time," your opinions bear no relevance.

Kazaa outdid Napster's popularity, with Napster peaking at under 30 million registered users and Kazaa peaking at over 50 million. Kazaa is also a far more efficient network than Napster was and it scales better. The RIAA has been 100% ineffective at preventing P2P traffic. This cannot be explained by anything other than people who cannot afford to buy CDs going to P2P networks instead. How is this different from the pre-Napster days of burning copies of your friends' CDs?

In fact, P2P filesharing is no more dangerous to profits than CD burners, which were lobbied against, or FM radio, which was lobbied against...the RIAA has a history of vehemently opposing any new technology that allows people to hear music when they could not have afforded to otherwise. It is a group that is led by millionaires, who can afford to buy whatever music they wish to hear, not average people who have to be scrupulous in their buying decisions.

Re:Don't Understand?

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll do as you're told and we'll download free stuff for whatever reason. What's the worst that can happen? No more new music ever? I doubt it, but that's fine, there is already enough music out there to listen to for a lifetime.

If you're an artist, I recommend you don't quit your day job (as it has always been).

Re:Don't Understand?

[jb.hl.com]

Yes, I'm "doing as I'm told", and not following my own moral code. You're being such a badass rebel, you know, ripping people off.

Re:Don't Understand?

[ZachPruckowski]

you're utilizing the tools and existing communities of P2P to your advantage for at least part of the time. It doesn't have to be explicitly said either. Try to sell your first film, but if there's piracy, hey, it helps your real goal...

Re:Don't Understand?

[Knara]

You shouldn't have left out where the extra $1,000,000 comes from in recoupable expenses (its from paying the producer, the recording space, prmotions, etc, I'm guessing). Now, granted, some times the producer comes from a small list that the record company wants you to use (which is kind of a racket... well, more than "kind of", I suppose).

While you're mostly right, and I feel ike I type/say this a lot in conversations like this, keep in mind that's for big RIAA -esque labels. Smaller labels can have WILDLY variant contract terms from this label, which are often more favorable to bands/artists (though not necessisarily).

Re:Don't Understand?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Maybe not, but I was just quoting, and trying to avoid quoting the entire 6-page Courtney Love rant.

Re:Don't Understand?

[Fordiman]

Why on earth would I want a pony? I can't afford to take care of a large animal. Not to mention they're not allowed in section 8 housing.

I don't know why everyone has this assumption that file sharers are rich college kids living off their daddy's paychecks. Everyone I know who downloads illegally live month to month.

After all, a computer is a one-time expense, and $15/mo for broadband is cheaper than the cost of one DVD.

Re:Don't Understand?

[evilviper]

(I expect the usual hundred responses talking about how "copyright infringement isn't stealing", and it isn't. I know that. It's just a useful shorthand. Give it a rest.)

"steal" is a useful shorthand for "copy"?

Re:Don't Understand?

[Fordiman]

"...And 100% of the P2P users I knew routinely bragged about the size of their collection and how much they got for "free"."

Straw man. Ignored.

"Borrowing a DVD is something completely different than P2P. What is the difference? Scale."

Really? Even when it's routine enough to amass a huge collection of free movies, TV shows and music?

"So is stealing a painting from an artist's workshop, but then you'd have to look someone in the face to do it wouldn't you? (Queue pseudo-intellectual discussion on how copying a digital work isn't theft ala the definition of a physical vs. digital object, blah, blah, blah....it is still morally equivalent to theft)"

I won't bother with this. You've dismissed an argument out of hand without registering its peculiar validity. Meanwhile, equating anything to 'morally equivalent' just shows you're operating from a very, very non-objective point of view (morals are subjective, knucklehead). This tells me that you're going to be beating the same dead horse well after logic has failed you. How very political of you.

If you want to go with 'ethically' equivalent, I'm going to have to disagree; in one case the property is removed; in the other it's not. It's closer to taking a high-resolution photograph of said painting: The artist still has his original, and it's still as valuable. Much like a DVD is just as valuable after someone's copied / watched (functionally equivalent, from the DVD's point of view) it.

Re:Don't Understand?

[jb.hl.com]

It's a useful shorthand for "acquire through copyright infringement". Can we please not play the silly semantics games for once? It doesn't strengthen your argument, it just makes you look like you haven't got a rebuttal.

Re:Don't Understand?

[Fordiman]

Honestly, most of my collection is CC licensed - Loca records, for example, produces some very good stuff - or CDs from my collection. The remainder is almost always stuff I've downloaded when I couldn't afford to buy.

Meanwhile, I would never bother with iTunes, much like I would never buy music on a minidisc or a movie on UMD; my device doesn't play that format, and I have no way of repairing the damage done by the packager. That is, placing a standard media in an nonstandard container. And I don't care what you say about AAC; if I absolutely have to use a specific player to play the file, the file is non-standard.

Re:Don't Understand?

[evilviper]

I wasn't going to refute your point at all, actually, but since you insist...

Listen to the radio or watch TV.

And how about downloading a song you heard on the radio, or a show you watched on TV?

You're not entitled to anything.

Actually, this is completely untrue. Copyright is an artifical construction, explicitly expressed in The Constitution as being for the benefit of society (not the creator, not inherent right, etc.). At the point society decides copyright isn't enough of a benefit anymore, it's gone, and this becomes 100% legal.

Also, you're assuming that people download stuff out of financial necessity. Most don't.

Prove it. Your assumptions aren't evidence of anything.

And now:

It's a useful shorthand for "acquire through copyright infringement".

How does "stealing" more accurately reflect the above, than "copying" would? If you would have answered in the first place (instead of complaining that I shouldn't discuss the point you explicitly brought up), I wouldn't have to ask again.

Re:Don't Understand?

[kz45]

"You don't believe the researchers? Contact them about it. You cannot site a single study to support your point of view, but you are making blind assertions based on the statements of biased parties. Whether or not you believe actual research, the numbers show that P2P networks, including Napster, have not had a statistically significant impact on content sales."

One piece of research (every slashdotter making the argument for piracy uses the exact link that you posted) is not proof. I have first-hand experience. I have been involved in many small to mid-sized software companies and I know that piracy hurts sales..without a doubt (large companies might be able to take the hit) (want proof? go to http://www.joelonsoftware.com/ .. the BoS section and ask how piracy has effected sales..you will get some interesting and eye-opening responses).

I also know someone who is an independent artist and tried to sell MP3s online. His sales were great for the first month or two..until his songs started getting shared on many of the P2P networks at the time. Sales declined after that..and he eventually was forced to take all of his MP3s offline (and not offer digital downloads in the future).

For small, independent artists (the people filesharers claim to be protecting), P2p networks are only working against them. This is because the more popular a song is, the less money they will make (because it will be more available on a P2P network). For a large company or recording studio, it might take a lot longer for them to see these effects, but it will eventually happen if they allow people to share their content for free on a P2P network.

"Kazaa outdid Napster's popularity, with Napster peaking at under 30 million registered users and Kazaa peaking at over 50 million. Kazaa is also a far more efficient network than Napster was and it scales better. The RIAA has been 100% ineffective at preventing P2P traffic. This cannot be explained by anything other than people who cannot afford to buy CDs going to P2P networks instead. How is this different from the pre-Napster days of burning copies of your friends' CDs?"

Can't afford a CD? Don't fucking download it (it's just that easy). It's no excuse and it just makes my point. If you can afford high speed internet access, you can afford music.

When you burn your friends' CDs, you might only be able to get a few CDs a week/month. With P2p, you can get almost any song off of a CD whenever you want. This is the difference.

Also, Napster was in the news every other day during its peek. Kazaa might have been in the news once or twice during its popularity.

"In fact, P2P filesharing is no more dangerous to profits than CD burners, which were lobbied against, or FM radio, which was lobbied against...the RIAA has a history of vehemently opposing any new technology that allows people to hear music when they could not have afforded to otherwise. It is a group that is led by millionaires, who can afford to buy whatever music they wish to hear, not average people who have to be scrupulous in their buying decisions."

What about a radio? There are a ton of radio stations in most areas..and you can listen to music for free.

This is a typical standpoint by lazy and or naive people that have no idea what it takes to create a work of art or make money. All millionaires must have all the breaks in life....right?

Making money is fucking hard..and most people who have a lot of it..worked their ass off to get in that position (of course, there are exceptions).

It's a trap!

[eln]

Where can I purchase this film on DVD? This is clearly part of the MPAA's insidious plan to trap pirates, and I'm not falling for it!

Re:It's a trap!

[SamSim]

My question is where I can actually find an unguarded DVD screener of this movie. Because simply downloading it isn't stealing - there's still a copy left at the other end which people can use.

Re:It's a trap!

[Anne_Nonymous]

No, here's the scam. It's the first of a four part series. The first film is free. You'll be billed for parts two, three, and four as they are shipped to you. Just four easy payments of $29.95. You are free to cancel at any time where allowed by law. Operators are standing by. Call now and receive a free gift.

Obligatory question

[ThiagoHP]

Where's the .torrent?

Re:Obligatory question

[ThiagoHP]

Ooops, of course they are in the website, but it seems to me that just part 1 is available as a torrent: http://www.stealthisfilm.com/torrent/StealThisFilm .Part1.torrent.

Re:Obligatory question

[jZnat]

On The Pirate Bay, of course!

Yea, right

[OverlordQ]

They have no reason to represent the filesharing movement positively.

And what do these people have to show the copyright holders in a positive light?

Re:Yea, right

[Anonymous Coward]

Seconded, they are merely exchanging biases. I highly doubt the term "copyfighter" is neutral. They are taking a page directly from the politicians handbook: Constantly decry the other side as "biased" while presenting your own biased views as neutral.

Re:Yea, right

[b4stard]

These people, the front figures of Piratbyran and TPB, are in fact copyright holders. For instance, Fleischer of Pirabyran is a trained musician and composer of electronic music, Anakata of TPB is a computer programmer and creator of a bittorrent tracker called Hypercube. I'm sure they have reason to represent themselves positively.

Re:Yea, right

[EWIPlayer]

And what do these people have to show the copyright holders in a positive light?

Actually, I would think they have a fair bit to show off. I only watched part 1 and was so unimpressed that I didn't watch any other parts, mostly for the reason that they gave no ideas on what is good about filesharing. All they were interested in was stating that it wasn't illegal and showing how cool they were for getting back up and running immediately. That's not helping the cause much.

They could show the **AA what they already should know (and do, in fact, know)

• The power of 0day wares, audio and video is a juggernaught like nobody has ever seen. Why go through a ton of websites looking for the latest release of "X" or trolling for software when you can just go to TPB or wherever else and it's just there waiting for you? Make use of that medium! Start your own site with this stuff on it. Put up trailers, teasers, inside shit that isn't anywhere else, support it with ads for your own shit if you want. Make a site where people can go to get all of the latest updates for their software, or see new demos of other software, etc... P2P is one powerful medium and they refuse to make use of it. That's just being blind.
• People are unwilling to watch shit and pay for it. Snakes on a plane??? Come on! That thing will go down in history as one of the stupidest things ever. The daily show has made so much fun of it, and has done so in such a serious way that it's the only entertaining way of seeing it.
• P2P networks have let me see movies that are truly amazing (Primer, Kinky Boots, and many others). They should be able to see that these are very popular movies, and learn from that (i.e. "Why did we back snakes on a plane and not these other ones??? They didn't cost a couple of hundred million to make!").
• Is the consumer telling us that we've priced ourselves out of the market? Who wants to pay $20 for a movie that might suck? Who wants to pay $20 for a move that doesn't suck when $5 is what it's really worth? Maybe they could benefit from not expecting to make 150000% off of popcorn sales, or 800% on DVD sales, sell everything at a price the public is willing to pay and then get higher volume? Would this address the argument of, "Dude, you're not losing billions because if I had to pay full price, I wouldn't buy any of this stuff". Maybe the consumer is tired of paying more to compensate our losses when we bet on a loser.
• What's happening with these TV downloads? Why are there so bloody many of them? Maybe we should create our own site for this stuff, ad supported, guaranteed high rate of bandwidth, and the knowledge that it's "OK" to do it?
• And face facts man, the consumer really seems unwilling to ensure our profits are maximized... greed got us where we are. We're not trying to protect our livelihood -- we're trying to protect our glutonous profiteering. Maybe, just maybe, we don't need to pay actors $20mil for 8 months work. Maybe, just maybe, the execs don't need to have 6 multi million dollar houses across the globe, dozens of expensive cars and enough money to gamble $20k away every day for the rest of their lives. Maybe the consumer finds it offensive that we tell them they're stealing the food out of the mouths of the key grips, and roadies when the guys running the companies are making hundres, sometimes thousands of times their salaries for a level of effort that is merely on-par with theirs. Maybe this really is just the laziest civil disobedience the world can muster.

Re:Yea, right

[kentrel]

People are unwilling to watch shit and pay for it.

Yet they're willing to waste two hours of their lives to watch it? Or even an hour just to watch half way through and turn it off because it's so bad. I think it's sad that people don't put value on their own time. It would cost $5 to rent it, but they'd rather steal it, then waste two hours of their lives to watch it, meaning they value their time at $2.50 an hour..

I think piracy is a poor reflection on people's own characters, and their distorted view that time is more expendiable than money!

Re:Yea, right

[EWIPlayer]

I think piracy is a poor reflection on people's own characters, and their distorted view that time is more expendiable than money!

A) we live in a society where the almighty dollar actually does mean more than most things. I'm surprised you think that the masses would believe otherwise.

B) People are constantly trading their time for money. What do you think jobs are all about? Ever hear anyone complain about their job? Why waste their time at it if they don't like it?

C) People don't waste two hours on shit. I watched King Kong (a three hour movie) in about 20 minutes. The story started out and lasted about 10 minutes, and then it was another 10 minutes of fast forwarding. I don't call that a waste of time. In 20 minutes, I learned it was shit and knew not to waste my money or more time in a theatre to see it on the "big screen". Not only that, I could tell other people that it's a waste of time.

D) Time is more expendable than money. By your example, I would assume you value your time at, say, $15/hr? Well, something more than $2.50 at least. Are you saying that you have an average of $270 per day that you'd be happy to part with? That's almost $100k a year. Even if you did have that, would you say that the average person does? Mathematics being what they are, time is more expendable than money.

E) Piracy has nothing to do with your statement (well, it does, but it's actually the opposite of what you state). If you go to a theatre and spend $20-$30 for you and your date to watch shit, not only did you waste your time, you also gave money to a bunch of guys that stole that time from you, promising that it would be an amazing romp of an adventure with plot twists, deep character development, and a whole bunch of booms (the last of which is probably the only thing it had, assuming of course that it did turn out to be shit). So now, your precious time, and your precious money are both gone. At least if you pirated the movie, you only would have been out your time (and wouldn't have felt too bad about shutting it off as opposed to cutting your losses, walking out of the theatre and tossing your $20-$30 down the crapper). Watching a movie shouldn't be a akin to pulling down the one-armed bandit.

As far as I can tell, by your own statement, piracy is actually a good thing -- it can save the person some precious time, and on top of that, it can save them from wasting money on shit. You seem to believe that people can know something is shit before they see it, and thus watching a pirated copy, somehow knowing that it is shit beforehand, is a waste of time. That, of course isn't the case.

Steal This Film

[Phooey42]

This sounds very interesting. I've already got my bittorent client downloading the DVD version of it and I can't wait to watch it. If anyone was concerned about speeds, I'm currently showing 1258 seeds and 382 peers and I'm getting about 350k a second.

Re:Steal This Film

[Inverted Intellect]

Yeah, the Slashdot-effect as it applies to torrents is pretty fracking awesome. I left for a few moments after starting the torrent, and when I came back I'd already downloaded the whole thing in its 350MB H.264 version.

So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice video. Nice ranting. But the search function on pirate bay is still deliberately disabled ("broken") ad it doesn't look like they will be _really_ online again anytime soon. :-(

Re:So what?

[Fordiman]

Broken how? I just did a search for "William Shatner" that came up right.

I'm sure they will be lined up at the cinemas

[Erectile Dysfunction]

to watch this eagerly-anticipated film. I predict that its revenues will dwarf those of Gone with the Wind after accounting for inflation.

Awful Movie

[Anonymous Coward]

I've watched this movie yesterday and I think is awful. They show only their point of view without any fair debate.

Re:Awful Movie

[$RANDOMLUSER]

That's right, because the MPAA encourages fair debate on the subject.

Re:Awful Movie

[Anonymous Coward]

If MPAA doesn't it is not a good reason to do the same.

Re:Awful Movie

[Tanktalus]

You're not wrong about that. However, it's a delicate game to play. If you present a "documentary" that shows both sides in a debate where only one side is getting any airplay otherwise, you extend legitimacy to that side.

Instead, you must do what your grade-school teachers told you to do: present the other side point by point, and refute them. In this day and age, you must do so in rapid succession, since the attention span of your viewer is really short - you need to get the rebuttal in before they've forgotten the point you're rebutting, otherwise they'll just have internalised and accepted the point as valid which is exactly the opposite of what you're trying to do.

I'd propose that this is difficult - and perhaps a biased opinion towards what you want to get across is the only way to get it across.

Addendum about artist's rights:

[kfg]

As Abby actually points out in the book, if you steal a book, the "artist" still gets paid for it.

If you care about the artists, don't steal files, steal property.

KFG

Re:Addendum about artist's rights:

[Andrewkov]

If you care about the artists, don't steal files, steal property.

Yes, and the penalities are actually much less for stealing property, if you get caught.

Re:Addendum about artist's rights:

[shark72]

"Yes, and the penalities are actually much less for stealing property, if you get caught."

The confusion is the media's fault -- whenever the RIAA or MPAA goes after a file-sharing whale, the press paints it as if they were busted for "downloading," when the reality is that they were nailed for making a bunch of stuff available for distribution.

Thus, "person nailed for filesharing" and "person nailed for shoplifting a CD" is not the best comparison. Closer to the mark is "person nailed for filesharing" and "person nailed for having 1,000 unauthorized copies of a CD in the trunk of their car." In the latter case, it's the same section of Title 17 that applies: $750 - $3K per work statutory damages and the like.

Mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

You can find it at www.thepiratebay.org

Postscript:

[kfg]

I no longer have my copy (a first printing), somebody, ummmmmmmmmm, stole it from me. Go figure.

The artist doesn't get paid for this. You have to steal it from "The Man" for that.

KFG

"Generation Steal"

[Anonymous Coward]

"Generation Y" should change its name to "Generation Steal" because it thinks it is entitled to all kinds of free stuff, just because it is on the web. This includes music, movies, and term papers.

Re:"Generation Steal"

[Fordiman]

I prefer to think of us (I'm an X'er, actually) as the "Freedom of Information" Generations.

'Course, you appear to be a coot of some nature. Shame you posted as AC; I'd be able to 'Foe' you.

Wait a tick... when did Slashdot become Myspace?

Re:"Generation Steal"

[goldspider]

Which "free" are you talking about, beer or speech?

When it comes to the likes of online distribution of music and movies, chances are you're really talking about the former. That's not activism, that's being cheap.

Re:"Generation Steal"

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet getting any of those through the web is not stealing. Regardless of what the RIAA is trying to tell you, copyright infringement is not the same as stealing.

To restate your post: "Hey, look at me! I'm a *AA sheep who believes everything I'm told! What does naive mean?"

Re:"Generation Steal"

[Anonymous Coward]

THEFT connotates DENIAL OF USE. Property only applies to mutually exclusive artifacts; it is a social tool not a fact of nature. The purpose of a market economy is to REDUCE SCARCITY. Creating scarcity, through "intellectual property", is inherently destructive.

The term you were looking for is COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT.

"Sharing", or "copying", is far more accurate than "theft".

p.s. If you're going to retort with the so-called "Free Rider Problem"; it's not a problem. Free riders are a myth, derived from a lack of business plan imagination. And if you want to be a crank about it, think of complaining about free riders as a kind of ENTITLEMENT complaint.

JavaScript

[Anonymous Coward]

But it relies on JavaScript, it doesn't work without JavaScript. All data under the BODY elements gets printed to the page via JavaScript even though it consist of entirely static text. The site would identically with the text under the BODY tag than written by the browser using JavaScript, but would make it work without JavaScript and more browsers.
There is no logical reason why the site was made in this way. My opinion is that the webmaster is an idiot.

Re:JavaScript

[Fordiman]

Yeah. Looked at the source. Not even an XMLHTTPRequest. No counters, no hovers, just statically drawn text.

Honestly, could it possibly have been easier to do it that way than in, say, Dreamweaver?

0/10

[Anonymous Coward]

The site is a blank black page. If you have javascript enabled, the body contains an onload event handler which calls the info() function, this function then uses DOM innerHTML to write text to the body element. Since these morons have never bothered learning basic html before creating a web page, I'm kind of glad I have javascript disabled.

Worstest site evar!

Re:0/10

[Fordiman]

Aww, that means my sig has no useful content.

*pout*

Re:0/10

[Anonymous Coward]

Aww, that means my sig has no useful content.

Just add "2.0" to it!

Preaching to the Choir

[CheeseburgerBrown]

Is this going to get a wider release or is their market targeting pretty squarely focused on people soft on piracy? It's a little bit like making an anti-STD video for people who never get laid.

For the record (since this sort of thing often comes up in these discussions) I am a content creator who thinks copyright should expire after a decade, period. I give most of my works away for free, but figure on revenue-generating works that if you can't make money off it in ten years it either sucks, or you do.

Re:Preaching to the Choir

[Fordiman]

I dunno, but I'm suggesting this film to everyone I know over the age of 30; maybe it'll quell some of the stupid I've been seeing.

Re:Preaching to the Choir

[Red Flayer]

Is this going to get a wider release or is their market targeting pretty squarely focused on people soft on piracy? It's a little bit like making an anti-STD video for people who never get laid.

Hey, why don't you forward links to the movies to friends/family members/acquaintances who might not be aware of the 'other side'?

Or even burn a copy gfor those who are a little less web-savvy? Maybe even send a copy to your local and state legislators, along with a letter about why they need to watch the film? I know I will be.

I want to buy it.

[WormholeFiend]

Just to show 'em

One thing is for sure

[sielwolf]

These guys aren't filmmakers. The first thing that struck me was that, no matter how OTS and easy to use the tech is, it takes a certain professional to actually make something that doesn't hurt the eyes. Long rambling interviews, close ups that where too close up (really, no one wants to be that close to that guy's beard), odd choice to shoot one guy out of focus, and no real cohesive story from beginning to end. It was a series of bad choices, like using too many Photoshop plugins because they are there. And some (like the choice to. show. only. one. word. of. text. at. the. beginning. so. you. couldn't. read. the. narration. all. at. once.) really hurt whatever they where trying to convey.

One of my coworkers said "you know, this movie's so unrestrained and poorly done that you actually respect all those big generic Hollywood movies for at least being coherent." You felt that maybe these guy's weren't right: we needed to pay for IP because the only movies that'd be left would be horrible pieces of crap like this.

Four parts was unnecessary. The whole episode was given no context (no history of IP at the beginning to set the table, no explanations of the differences in nations' IP laws or how international treaties work. Of course the creators might not know any of that themselves... which came off in a sense that they where really talking from the selfish desire to get away with whatever they want. And that's no way to sway opinion). There was no objective devil's advocacy (is there such thing as bad IP theft? Bad theft? What of Hollywood's concern about the East Asian bootleg DVD markets?), no attempt at compromise (is there some way to maintain creator's right to his work while at the same time preserving the consumer's right to fair use) or suggestion for future international law. Basically the movie just blew a big raspberry at corporations which makes the fair use camp seem childish. The only result is that fair use will get marginalized and ignored. The exact opposite effect of actually changing the landscape of intra- and international copyright.

Re:One thing is for sure

[Fordiman]

True, but like you, it spread a lot of ideas about 'How can this be done better'.

Unfortunately, they took the cool title already. I guess 'P2P' is still available.

Re:One thing is for sure

[Anonymous Coward]

The first thing that struck me was that, no matter how OTS and easy to use the tech is, it takes a certain professional to actually make something that doesn't hurt the eyes.

you mean like how they used the eppliptic-cam in the second bourne identity film?

What they did is considered "artsey" and "trendy" in film right now.

personally I believethat if it's not on a tripod with a fluid head or a steadicam then it's pure crap.

but mtv and all the big "studios" are not using tripods anymore.

Re:One thing is for sure

[sielwolf]

I was thinking you could call a good IP movie "Once in a Lifetime" like the Talking Heads song. You know "this is not my beautiful wife", "this is not my beautiful house". Then you could say "And this is not your beautiful family photographs 'cause they're in an image format that you don't have a license too anymore... whoops!" You enlighten people to what they think they own turns out they are just "leasing" at the pleasure of some corporation. That's how we get average Janes and Joes to sit down and think on this stuff.

Re:One thing is for sure

[Bob9113]

we needed to pay for IP because the only movies that'd be left would be horrible pieces of crap like this.

Great movies aren't always about great CGI and slick editing. Check out Hard Boiled or The Killer (Woo/Fat) or Clerks for examples. Which is not to say that this documentary is a great movie, but that even if copyright infringement did lead to a decline in production values, it would not necessarily lead to a decline in the quality of movies. The sterile and prohibitive movie industry in America has its own quality problems. Different than independant film, but not necessarily better or worse. A point made in the documentary is that the money has shifted the focus in Hollywood from creative expression to putting butts in seats. When you primarily serve the latter, you often short-change the former.

If you feel that good production values are necessary to tell a good story, you are missing out on a lot of great film.

The only result is that fair use will get marginalized and ignored.

You are mistaken. This documentary is not advocating the retention of fair use rights under existing copyright. It is advocating a change in copyright law. It may not be a position you agree with. It may not be a position I agree with. But if you see this as a poor job of advocating fair use, you have missed the point.

You may think it is all about getting something for nothing. Some people think fair use is all about getting something for nothing. Neither is the case. Both are far more complex issues. And as long as there is not understanding, there will not be resolution.

Re:One thing is for sure

[jackbird]

Production values isn't what the OP is talking about. He or she is talking about coherent editing, camera work, and story telling, which has been proven time and again to be possible on low or no budget. These guys just don't have the chops to make a decent film.

Re:One thing is for sure

[jb.hl.com]

You may think it is all about getting something for nothing. Some people think fair use is all about getting something for nothing. Neither is the case.

I don't really think "fair use" comes into the P2P equation at all. Downloading/uploading whole songs, movies or albums certainly doesn't come under fair use whatsoever. If anything the debate over DRM is the right place for discussion of fair use.

Re:One thing is for sure

[Blakey Rat]

Napolean Dynamite's crew made an excellent, hilarious and well-edited movie on $100,000 and a DV cam. Blair Witch Project wasn't as great a film, but it was at least coherent and held together well. People in general don't realize how important editing and post-production is.

Re:One thing is for sure

[jackbird]

I'd go with Robert Rodruigez's El Mariachi, made for $6,000 on 16mm film as an example, actually.

Re:One thing is for sure

[Moofie]

OK, who has pictures that are stored in a format whose license is at issue? Come on. There are all sorts of reasons to be concerned about IP and DRM shenanigans, but freakin' .JPGs are going to be readable for a very long time.

Re:One thing is for sure

[Moofie]

"The sterile and prohibitive movie industry in America has its own quality problems."

Other than following Sturgeon's Law, what quality problems are those?

Re:One thing is for sure

[crabpeople]

"One of my coworkers said "you know, this movie's so unrestrained and poorly done that you actually respect all those big generic Hollywood movies for at least being coherent.""

So you work for the MPAA? Just kidding! Maybe you dont like subtitles?

I watched it a few days ago and thought it was well done. The video is a bit too crisp (i dont like seeing pasty people that close up) so ill give you that, but I just attributed that to the overquality of their camera and rip. It was nice and gritty, homebrew.. and thats what the kids like these days. Big studios pay big bucks to "indieize" their films down to a level that looks like this. As for the scope and context of the film, no one said they were going to analyze worldwide piracy. This movie was about swedish piracy and the pirate bay. They acurately covered that event, much more indepthly than any other article or pictures that iv'e seen.

There are plenty of homebrew movies that i find high class but you might object to. Purepwnage being one of the best i can think of. And what about the soundtrack to this film? it was killer! They even had some quality edits of old unrelated footage. That to me makes a good movie. It's no deadwood, but it wasnt trying to be.

Re:One thing is for sure

[Bob9113]

Other than following Sturgeon's Law, what quality problems [does the American movie industry have]?

I just looked over your comment history and found that you contribute nothing but these pitiful one-line jabs. If you are actually interested in an answer to your question, write something poignant and on-topic. Challenge me. Make me think. Show me you're using that lump on your shoulders for something more than a hat rack.

Re:One thing is for sure

[Moofie]

Woo! Defensive much? I asked you a question. If you don't wish to answer my question, feel free to not do so.

I think you need a hug, in any case. Come here, big guy!

Holy Crap

[rucs_hack]

My god, it's full of CAPS.

That websites just scary.

Re:Holy Crap

[Andrewkov]

Wait 'till ya see the movie!

Re:Holy Crap

[rucs_hack]

If that's an indicator of the style, I may not cope...

Here you go

[a16]

The torrent is flying, but anyone can feel free to download it from my server if you need it:

http://aaaa.ws/StealThisFilm.Part1.mov

YouTube a sex site?

[GRW]

According to the Netsweeper filtering software installed by my local library (http://www.kpl.org/), YouTube is classified as a "sex site" so I am not allowed view this video. The Kitchener Public Library treats adults like children.

Re:YouTube a sex site?

[EWIPlayer]

Most likely, that's not it. You Tube eats up more bandwidth than, say wikipedia, which is really the kind of thing that the library is for. Granted, there might be 2 or 3 educational videos on You Tube but that's not a big percentage. Tagging it as a sex site is one way to stop you from sucking down their bandwidth.

Re:YouTube a sex site?

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably because it contains videos with sexual content on there. I did a simple search for "sex" on YouTube and got plenty of hits, although I didn't check them out because viewing them requires signing up for an account which I can't be bothered doing.

Fuck fair use!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pirating!

They understand nothing.

[insomniac8400]

If they understood file sharing they would have offered an .avi file, not a crappy .mov file.

Re:They understand nothing.

[SallyDivInorum]

http://stage6.divx.com/members/83077/videos/100605 6

Part Deux

[iSeal]

If they keep on publicly infringe copyrights to make their movie, they'll have a tough time releasing a "Part Two."

The film itself is entertaining, but features a crapload of unlicensed music, footage from "The Day After Tomorrow", none of which are integral to getting the story through. Therefore, it would not likely qualify as fair-use/fair-dealings/national-equivalent. Theatres wouldn't be allowed to play this, even though its free. Distributors wouldn't be allowed to touch this either.

It's tough doing a documentary that doesn't infringe on these copyrights. Very tough. It also brings up a whole sleuth of new issues as well, such as how do you deal with people that release stuff for free? I like Creative Commons as an answer to that, but most labels tend not to. Plus, even the CC has its limits when you do stuff for free (not allowed to participate in paying film festivals in some cases.)

Anywho, if you want a different perspective on the issue, check out the following:
www.piracydocumentary.com

Also being pre-/released for free. The completed product is expected to be out in December.

Have you seen the Bush movie?

[avasol]

Well, have you? It's called "Steal This Country". Note, DRM-protected. If you're caught watching it, you're sent to a POW-camp and tortured.

Subliminal messages?

[zoftie]

Whats with flashing words in middle of the scenes, such as "enjoy". At least tyler's beans and hotdog aren't flashing.

Subliminal message attempt?

[ScottyH]

What's up with all the flashing words? "Enjoy" "Sharing is a service" (or something...) That's all I caught, but I stopped watching. Why do this?

reminds me of..

[Anonymous Coward]

this kinda reminds me of 'MC Lars - Download This Song' (even though personally i cant stop listening to the paino-ffvii soundtrack... its been weeks since i heard another song.... i think i have a problem... is there an FFVII Adicts Anonymous?) :P

"Income" might not be the best metric

[Kadin2048]

Low income is relative. Actually, I think in this case it's not so much a case of "low income" versus "high income," but a person's relative amount of disposable income. That is, two people might be making the same amount of money, but one person might have a lot more money to spend on entertainment, while the other person might have significantly higher fixed expenses. (Say, a wife and kids. Or husband and kids. Whatever.) Assuming you treat the computer and internet connection as a sunk cost, the person without the additional disposable income could "afford" to download, but not to buy DVDs.

It's not really an excuse for piracy so much as an explanation of the motives involved. Given the choice between paying for something and getting the exact same thing (or something they value equivalently) for free, people are always going to pick free. Honestly I think the reason people with higher incomes don't download is not because they see much additional value in the DVD, but because they value their time more highly, and don't want to mess around with file sharing programs or hunting down torrents. At a certain point, it just becomes easier to drive down to Blockbuster/Best Buy and buy the disc than it does to download it. It's an opportunity cost calculation.

Re:"Income" might not be the best metric

[freeweed]

Yes, although you're missing one important factor here. Think "bottled water". Yes, in many areas local tap water is horrible. However, in many cities where tap water is clean, tasty, and relatively soft, you still see the usual breakdown of people:

1. Cheapest - drink from the tap.
2. Less cheap - buy a Brita or Pur or some sort of home filtering system. Fairly cheap, but you're still paying money to "enhance" your drinking experience.
3. Most expensive - bottled water.

Note that the most convenient and time-saving option by far is (1). Also note that many people with money will often go for (2) or even (3). Sometimes, people don't go with free. Sometimes it's worth a bit of money to get something "extra", even if it's not tangible per se. The disposable income comment was spot on, btw. I know many people making $50k and up who download like crazy - because they literally could afford 2 or 3 movies a year otherwise. I also know people making half that who own huge DVD collections.

Re:"Income" might not be the best metric

[Artifakt]

This is one point that is entirely factual, but half the people argueing for ANY side on copyright, DRM, and piracy don't take it into account.

      People buy entertainment from their disposable income.

There are spin off rules that are also (at least approximately) true:

        People who buy more than trivial amounts of entertainment with non-disposable income soon take themselves out of the market.
        People who spend less on one form of entertainment use the remainder of their disposable income largely on other entertainment.
        'Spare' money that a person has already characterized as disposable very seldom gets applied to non-disposable areas just because it's freed up.

        I sort of disagree about your "exact same thing". People who understand what's meant by the 'Tragedy of the Commons' may see downloading and such as not giving the exact same thing, as it doesn't ensure money supports the artist, so the downloader isn't getting the same chance to buy future works their puchase would give them. Therefore, the RIAA's real solution is obvious - they merely have to educate the typical Brittany fan until they are the sort of person who would actually read one of those books that 95% of them never heard of, and the rest all gave up and just read the synopsis (which is what I did).
        So it's not really the exact same thing, but it looks like it to most consumers, and what they do next is an opportunity cost calculation, just as you've said.

Re:"Income" might not be the best metric

[SanityInAnarchy]

Assuming you treat the computer and internet connection as a sunk cost, the person without the additional disposable income could "afford" to download, but not to buy DVDs.

This is a fair assumption. I make $15/hr doing a job that absolutely requires me to have a computer and an Internet connection. I eat Ramen to cut costs, but I still have my broadband.

But, I don't have enough disposable broadband to be downloading movies all the time -- I rent those and rip the ones I like.

Re:"Income" might not be the best metric

[Fordiman]

"It's not really an excuse for piracy so much as an explanation of the motives involved"

The motive is common enough to cause widespread piracy, correct?

That would imply that the pirated companies have an incorrect policy or pricing strategy, from a purely socio-economic point of view (failure to align company policy with public demand). It's a basic mistake in business that usually comes from assuming the issue is far less widespread than it is; and fighting such a trend is sure to leave them with considerably less cash than they started with.

Call it theft. Call it whatever you want. The fact remains that it's happening, it's happening a a much larger clip that can be handled by drop-in-the-bucket lawsuits, and it's happening because - for whatever reasons - the customer base wants it to happen.

The right idea, of course, is to offer the consumer what they want: low cost, nonencumbered, mp3 downloads. There are steganographic methods that can embed information into a raw PCM in a way that is resistant to DCT compression; store user data there. If the file gets out into the wild, and they want to sue, they know EXACTLY the right person to go after. Screw DRM. Forget the DCMA. These things aren't necessary if the source can be identified.

Meanwhile, they'd not have to go after 7 year old girls and dead men on paltry evidence. They can go after release groups with definitive evidence instead, and stop the flow of incoming music.

Still, while they're being morons about it, I don't feel the need to buy music.

Did anyone else notice?

[Monkeys!!!]

Did anyone else notice the subliminal msging strewn throughout the film? Nice flashes of text telling me to "enjoy"....

*sigh*

[jb.hl.com]

These people aren't defending P2P file sharing one little bit. They're defending downloading copyrighted works illegally, and there's a very big gulf between the two.

The summary talks about how "old media" (gotta love that, I presume making shit for no reward is "new media") have a problem with P2P because it's a threat to their livelihood. Well, really, wouldn't you? Of COURSE it's a threat to their livelihood, of COURSE they're not going to stand up and say "YES, it's absolutely A-OK for people to leech our stuff off P2P".

The filmmakers seem to belong to that immature camp of P2P defenders who go on like "We found this neat way of getting stuff we used to have to pay for for free, but now THE MAN doesn't want that, so they're spoiling our party" and consider it a form of protest against record companies if they download music. If they really wanted to hurt the RIAA they'd spread the word about decent non-RIAA bands and simply not download or buy any RIAA music, rather than go on about their supposed rights to infringe other peoples' rights.

Re:*sigh*

[nnn0]

how stupid can you get. hollywood makes ENOUGH money. try to get that thru you greedfilter %]

Re:*sigh*

[jb.hl.com]

I wasn't under the impression that there was some artificial limit on the amount of financial success you can have.

Re:*sigh*

[nnn0]

"I wasn't under the impression that there was some artificial limit on the amount of financial success you can have."

DUH %]

If It's Free

[IflyRC]

It's definitely not a Michael Moore film. No DVD sales, advertising kickbacks, big studio deals, etc. It's good to see a real documentary produced for informational purposes instead of for the reason of making money via political statements.

How Downloading Pirated Video Cost Me $400+

[Greenisus]

I never download movies or TV shows, but an old friend of mine recommended Six Feet Under to me. I ignored her, and then she told me again to check it out. So, I downloaded the first episode and immediately loved the show. It took me several hours to download it, and I had to watch it on my laptop, so I wasn't going to get the second episode that way. I ended up buying the Season One box set for $80. Then I bought Season Two, then Three, Four, and Five. I was so happy about this show that I wanted to see what else HBO offered, so I finally caved in and signed up for the $8/month HBO subscription in addition to my regular cable. Sure, pirating is technically wrong, but in this case a free episode was the best advertising HBO could possibly have to get my money.

Re:How Downloading Pirated Video Cost Me $400+

[cdrguru]

Why did you do this? Was the downloaded copy of poor quality? Took too long? Inconvenient? All of these problems can be fixed and will be over time.

The idea that this is some kind of marketing channel is absurd. You downloaded one show and gave up because the pirates aren't doing a good enough job. By purchasing the product you are undercutting your entire generation and all people that are demanding free access to entertainment everywhere.

No, this is a form of advertising because for every person that gives up there are 10 that do not and just download the whole lot. Then, because their friends might not want to download it all, burns a DVD so everyone can share.

What is needed here is to stop the halfway measures and make sure not one more CD or DVD is ever sold in the US. Stand outside WalMart and hand out URLs to download sites. Go up to people in a checkout line and say "did you know you can get that for free?" Push the envelope. Stop the sales.

If this is done, a response will come. Either we will be living in a world where only amature productions exist or someone will figure out how to stop the piracy. One way or another, there will be a solution.

Re:How Downloading Pirated Video Cost Me $400+

[jb.hl.com]

Why did you do this? Was the downloaded copy of poor quality? Took too long? Inconvenient? All of these problems can be fixed and will be over time.

Maybe he just, I dunno, wanted to support the people who made the show?

Re:How Downloading Pirated Video Cost Me $400+

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi, just like everyone else, I download all that crap and paid $0.00 for it!

Sure feel sorry for the 1% who claims stuff like the parent's comment(provided they are actully telling the truth), but at least they do make nice feel-good slashdot posts to cover for the rest of us!

-- Signed,
Reality

Steal This Film fails to persuade...

[Chabil Ha']

I downloaded a copy of "Steal This Film" last week. The whole idea of "Steal This Film" was to provide not only an opposing view to the seizure of their servers, but to provide a counterpoint to the whole piracy and peer to peer debate.

And unfortunately, I think they only half-succeeded. They historical events don't seem to be lacking at all, but TPB seemed to lack any philosophical basis for their reasons to justify piracy. Honestly, I came into this movie hoping to get more ammunition to justify piracy, but because there didn't seem to be a real argument in favor it, I actually came away from the movie thinking that it is wrong.

One of the 'Pirates' was explaining that she felt that it was against her ethics to buy a CD or movie on DVD. That's it. No explanation. Another remarked that he felt by supporting TPB and facilitating the theft of over 150,000 copyrighted materials he was committing 'civil disobedience'. Could you elaborate?

Unfortunately, TPB really seems to cast itself in an immature light with their reasoning in favor of piracy. For example, they played a clip of an MPAA executive stating that obvious economic facts that their product cannot just be given away for free. TPB's response? "It's not my problem to come up with an answer."

Interesting. TPB, at least through this documentary, really tries to portray itself as an advocate for change in intellectual property laws, but fails (in my opinion) to offer any real compelling reason why that should be, and fails again in really pushing for an alternative to outrageous movie prices and the equally ridiculous idea of getting it for free.

They were right about a few things, though. The MPAA and RIAA really do need to change their business model. With the advent of online music stores such as iTunes, the RIAA is slowly moving into the 21st century along with the rest of the world's digital civilization, but even still, their model for business is quite inept for the age we're in.

People ought to be able to get music and have fair use with it. Before the age of Digital Rights Management (DRM), it was quite easy to be able to buy a CD, duplicate it, make mixes of different songs, copy it to a cassette tape, etc. within the bounds of personal use. The new locks that come with downloadable content are unacceptable because they remove the ability of the user to play it whenever, wherever, and on whatever they want. This only adds fuel and justification to the piracy movement.

No, "Steal This Film" fails in providing a real compelling pro-piracy justification. But who knows, maybe in Part Two (scheduled for release in two months) they'll redeem themselves. Until then, TPB really has lost ground on the offensive.

Re:Steal This Film fails to persuade...

[cdrguru]

The problem with "fair use" today is that nobody wants to "play fair". Today it is easier to redistribute digital content around the world than it is to make a tape or disc to play in your car.

The answer from many young people is that because it is so easy and cheap to do so, they should be allowed to do it freely. Obviously, this attitude doesn't have a lot of deep thinking behind it, as this movie shows.

The other side that people keep ignoring is that non-digital physical distribution is still necessary today. There are a lot of people that are either not "connected" or otherwise choose to buy physical objects. Nearly all of the "abolish the RIAA!" rhetoric that you hear utterly fails to address these people. WalMart is still selling CDs. When they stop perhaps we can talk about there only being digital distribution and the complete elimination of physical CDs, DVDs and so on.

Re:Steal This Film fails to persuade...

[jb.hl.com]

The problem with "fair use" today is that nobody wants to "play fair". Today it is easier to redistribute digital content around the world than it is to make a tape or disc to play in your car.

The answer from many young people is that because it is so easy and cheap to do so, they should be allowed to do it freely. Obviously, this attitude doesn't have a lot of deep thinking behind it, as this movie shows.

That's not really a reason to abolish fair use rights, and in my view there CAN be no reason. As I've said before in previous comments, "fair use" doesn't really come into the debate on P2P, only really into the debate on DRM.

The other side that people keep ignoring is that non-digital physical distribution is still necessary today. There are a lot of people that are either not "connected" or otherwise choose to buy physical objects. Nearly all of the "abolish the RIAA!" rhetoric that you hear utterly fails to address these people. WalMart is still selling CDs. When they stop perhaps we can talk about there only being digital distribution and the complete elimination of physical CDs, DVDs and so on.

This is very true...I prefer CDs to sources like iTunes for buying albums for the simple reason that CDs are far more durable than data and offer better flexibility and sound quality. Not to mention, in some cases they're cheaper (my local record place, Track Records, has a large shelf of CDs, quite a few of them recent, which come to £6.99 each, 3 for £20 and 5 for £30, easily beating iTunes on album prices. This is of course ignoring Amazon, where cheap CDs abound.).

Re:Steal This Film fails to persuade...

[shark72]

"Another remarked that he felt by supporting TPB and facilitating the theft of over 150,000 copyrighted materials he was committing 'civil disobedience'."

Can somebody who's seen the film explain whether this fellow is truly practicing civil disobedience, by (for example) informing the authorities (if appropriate) and the media companies that he is pirating their stuff? That is civil disobedience: breaking the law in a spectacularly obvious fashion, getting busted, and drawing attention to yourself. Yes, I know he showed up in the documentary, but was he mentioned by name?

If he's taking these steps, then good for him. If he resides in a country where this is illegal and he gets caught, then he's fulfilled his mission as a social protestor and perhaps he'll change the system.

Unfortunately, too many pirates fly the "social disobedience" flag without understanding what it means. Pirating stuff and hoping you don't get caught is not social disobedience. That's simply being cheap.

Not that there's anything wrong with being cheap. Many rich people got to where they are today by being cheap. It's not a dirty word. But if you call it social disobedience, those who are familiar with the efforts of Ghandi, Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks et al. would like to have a word with you.

Re:Steal This Film fails to persuade...

[DerekLyons]

TPB, at least through this documentary, really tries to portray itself as an advocate for change in intellectual property laws, but fails (in my opinion) to offer any real compelling reason why that should be,

The Pirate Bay (TPB) differs not one whit from from what seemingly is the majority position of those who want IP reform - an adolescent belief that nobody has any right to dicate to them how they should behave.
 
 

People ought to be able to get music and have fair use with it. Before the age of Digital Rights Management (DRM), it was quite easy to be able to buy a CD, duplicate it, make mixes of different songs, copy it to a cassette tape, etc. within the bounds of personal use. The new locks that come with downloadable content are unacceptable because they remove the ability of the user to play it whenever, wherever, and on whatever they want.

The sticking point - is that the creators of the content have rights too... And there seems, currently, to be no way of protecting those rights short of a full lockdown.
 
 

This only adds fuel and justification to the piracy movement.

The 'piracy movement' long predates DRM, and will persist long after an equitable solution is found. Why? Because the 'piracy movement' isn't, in the end, based on political beliefs - but on immaturity and lack of respect for others rights. (The 'piracy movement' likes to put a pretty and philosophical face on it - but this movie from TPB starkly reveals the true face.)

Re:Steal This Film fails to persuade...

[Anonymous Coward]

But if you call it social disobedience, those who are familiar with the efforts of Ghandi, Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks et al. would like to have a word with you.

Well, let me start off by saying I'm not fond of the idea of comparing Ghandi to file sharing, since it seems clear to me that these are different levels of significance. It's like comparing Hitler to a bike thief.

With that said, Ghandi was told that he could not have or make salt without paying for it. He decided that the law was wrong, that salt from the ocean was free, that no one is hurt by him using it, and that he was just going to make it because he refused to financially support people that he didn't approve of.

In the case of file sharing, people are told that they cannot view media without paying for it. People are deciding that the law is wrong, that media can be copied for free, that no one is hurt by the act of copying, and that they are just going to download it because they refuse to financially support people that they don't approve of.

Could Ghandi have lived without consuming salt? Yes. Can people live without watching said media? Yes. But they do it anyway, because they do not feel an obligation to play along with the law, and do not want to give money to support organizations they oppose.

Re:Steal This Film fails to persuade...

[Anonymous Coward]

but fails (in my opinion) to offer any real compelling reason why that should be

The concept of "land access" is mentioned in the film. Maybe it doesn't resonate with americans like it does europeans or something - but if you "own" land in many countries in europe, it's only "owned" in a limited sense, really the land belongs to everyone, you're borrowing it from the nation, you can't necessarily stop people picking mushrooms on it or strolling through it or hunting on it. Even if you honestly think "copyrights" should exist, to a european it's obvious that those rights might be similarly limited in keeping with normal european principles of land access rights. In any case, I'd say the film _is_ weak, but less weak as marketing/propaganda for a european audience than an american eye might think.

Re:Steal This Film fails to persuade...

[nnn0]

believe it or not, but you sounds like the typical brainwashed capitalst to me - believing it's all about money. it's not, it's about living. people are starting to get tired of politicians and capitalists and whatnot doing everything they can to make this world a misrable place to live.

Re:Steal This Film fails to persuade...

[Chabil Ha']

Well, since I am obviously a 'brainwashed' capitalist, let me say this: If you're tired of the capitalists, vote with your dollar. If the politicians are corrupt, vote with your ballot. Because believe it or not you *elect* to consume that which is making 'this world a misrable[sic] place to live'.

Re:Steal This Film fails to persuade...

[Anonymous Coward]

Another remarked that he felt by supporting TPB and facilitating the theft of over 150,000 copyrighted materials he was committing 'civil disobedience'. Could you elaborate?

Can somebody who's seen the film explain whether this fellow is truly practicing civil disobedience, by (for example) informing the authorities (if appropriate) and the media companies that he is pirating their stuff? That is civil disobedience: breaking the law in a spectacularly obvious fashion, getting busted, and drawing attention to yourself. Yes, I know he showed up in the documentary, but was he mentioned by name?

Atm I can't remember who actually said those words, but I know that anakata, aka Gottfrid Svartholm, has spoken such elsewhere, and I'm pretty sure he also said so in the movie, so I'd say that at least he's got a pretty good case. :-)

Regarding the earlier parent, anakata is an outspoken libertarian (if you know Swedish you can read his posts on Liberal Debatt), and those familiar with it's philosophy will tell you that there are different opinions whether or not to abolish intellectual property. If unheard of, there's a couple of pointers at http://blog.mises.org/blog/archives/001771.asp

Re:Steal This Film fails to persuade...

[nnn0]

ehehheheheeh

i rest my case ;)

Re:Steal This Film fails to persuade...

[redhog]

> The sticking point - is that the creators of the content have rights too... And there seems, currently, to be no way of protecting those rights short of a full lockdown.

That, my friend, is head on the nail! The problem is, without monitoring _all_ private communication, we _can_not_ guarantee that people can not infinge on copyrights. Bits are bits, and without actually reading the messages (e.g. emails), you _can_not_know_ if they contain forbidden material.

The question is not whether the rights of artists is more or less important than the rights of culture consumers, but whether the rights of artists (and media companies) are more important than our free, open and democratic society. Do _you_ want all you mail and phonecalls monitored?

A friend of mine grew up in Polad during the soviet era. According to him, when you phoned someone, you'd here a recorded message saying "This phonecall is monitored, this phonecall is monitored" before you got your connection.

Do you want to live in Soviet to protect the artists?

Steal this Album

[pkulak]

There's a lot of talk here about Steal This Book, but I just thought I'd give a shout to System of a Down for standing up to the RIAA with at least one album. There wasn't a huge controversy over book stealing with the former was released. :D

Funny?

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

Not sure why your comment was modded funny; seems spot on to me. "Insightful with a humorous flourish" would be more apropos if you asked me.

Anyway, back on topic... while it's not the most versatile visual layout in the world, it sure is the first time in a long time that I've seen a truly fresh, different, interesting and creative visual style like this. All the better that they built it without any annoying gizmos. Mui bueno, thanks for pointing it out.

Re:Funny?

[Random832]

All the better that they built it without any annoying gizmos.

innerHTML is an annoying gizmo. And there was absolutely no reason for them to use it.

Closed captioned

[hansoloaf]

Is this closed captioned for the deaf etc?

Confusion About fault.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Mainstream media just takes orders from corporate headquarters and assumes that filesharing is bad and costs them money."

Do they? Every single one? Down to a man and woman? Past, present, and future? And since we're on the topic of generalizations (which BTW school should have taught you is bad). What makes you think that illegal copyright infringement is confined to anyone "Big"? What makes you think it's confined to Books, Music. Games or Software? How about when people copy wholesale articles to slashdot, without attribution? (not that that would make it OK). Or when people "borrow" graphics, video, or audio from personal websites without so much as even asking (let alone ignoring the "please don't copy" message most put up).

I've recommended this book in the past and I'll recommend it again since most here think that "doing something wrong" is strictly confined to entities slashdot doesn't like.

Re:Confusion About fault.

[ZachPruckowski]

I'm not saying copyright infringement is good, or only harms "big" companies. I'm just saying that most instances of media discussion of copyright infringement (and I've seen a fair few in my time at college) tend to be biased anti-piracy, without the discussion of positive gains for society or the copyright holder that may or may not outweigh the losses, but at least need to be looked at.

One thing is for sure-"new and improved".

[Anonymous Coward]

"These guys aren't filmmakers. The first thing that struck me was that, no matter how OTS and easy to use the tech is, it takes a certain professional to actually make something that doesn't hurt the eyes."

But see, this is the "new and improved" business model that slashdot's always going on about.* You should look forward to thousands more like it, and the one gem buried in too deep for most to have the patience to locate. Yeay! Eliminate the middle man, and become the middle-man. Hope you all don't have lives.

*Note that most people who suggest this model have never implimented it themselves, but see no conflict in insisting that others be the guinea pig.

steal it, because they ask for money...

[acedotcom]

i just watched the whole thing, and at the end they ask for more so they can make ensure that a the second part is completed. That seems EXTREMELY self defeating. "We can make more and better content if people give us money." Not to say that that they are profiting from it, it just like they are saying piracy is bad, and then asking for a handout. Hey, this is my first post here.... w00t!!!!1

Re:steal it, because they ask for money...

[nnn0]

asshole. they make payment optional and you shit on them ?!?! christ

"Income" might not be the best metric-RK.

[Anonymous Coward]

PBS covered this last night. Poor people spend what they bring in. Middle class hoard what they bring in. Rich people make their money work for them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kiyosaki

blame yourself MPAA

[gsn]

Biased or not they do have a point - the technology is not going to magically go away. Whatever the value of the content is, once its on the network its just data and can be treated the same as any other data. The movie industry constantly blames piracy for dropping profits and this is not the whole story.

This was from Todd Flournoy, a VP at MPAA from a year and a half ago and I doubt the numbers have changed much -

The average cost of producing and marketing a movie, Flournoy said, is $103 million. About one out of 10 films make enough at the box office to cover those costs. The rest must recoup costs through rentals, DVD sales, premium television channels and, later, cable TV.

So fun numbers - I saw six movies in the theatre this summer (Xmen, Superman, Pirates, Nacho, Snakes, and unfortunately Lake House) and downloaded three summer releases (Da Vinci, MI3, Devil wears Prada unfortunately). Anybody have similar statistics? So I watched more movies in the theatre than I downloaded. Moral of the story - people are still seeing movies in the theatres. Yet as of 2005 for the third straight year movie ticket sales are down.

So why are people going to the movies less
1) it could be they are pirating movies
2) it could be they want to see them in the comfort of their home
3) it could be that people are going to see the blockbuster movies and nothing else

I vote 3) mostly. Go see a blockbuster and its packed. Theres several other movies from this summer that I did not go see that will fail at the boxoffice. Maybe thats the problem Todd - maybe you guys put out several crappy movies that no one is going to go see. Remarkably those aren't going to be the ones that people download either - go through the list of summer movies on Yahoo - there some that I didn't even know had been made. Here a statistic I'm going to pull out of thin air but is probably true - the most downloaded movies are blockbusters or movies that were supposed to be blockbusters but flopped. Maybe if you train a generation to want blockbuster movies and MTV/VH1 style music you shouldn't complain if anything else fails.

What about the three I downloaded - they were blockbuster material - I could have gone and seen them - but they were shit, they were reviewed as shit online and by people that went and saw them and were in fact shit. Remarkably if they were out as rentals at the same time I'd not have downloaded them. If most movies do badly at the box office you've your directors and producers to blame for making a shit movie. There will be a few posters who will argue that I could have simply done without - I did do without didn't I - I didn't think wow thats a great movie I'm going to go buy it on DVD or watch it on the bigscreen. I watched a crappy telecine copy on my computer and deleted it beacause it was crap. I downloaded LOTR back in the day after I saw it in the theatres and bought the Collectors edition DVDs. I'd bet a lot of you have done something like that.

If your movies cost so much then maybe you should try cutting costs - find some new actors who will work for less - people saw Superman with no name guy. Remarkably you can make a movie good without having recognizable stars - they had to start somewhere too after all - once your star talent realizes this you might have to pay them less. Maybe you management types need a cut in your 7 figure salary - that will pull the price down a tidy bit. Maybe you should cut the price of some of your DVDs so more people buy them. I tend to buy DVDs either very early because I want them or very late after their price goes down. Maybe you should try releasing them on DVD, and pay per view at the same time as in the box office so people who want to stay at home can enjoy them. Maybe you recognize that you have no god given right to make as much as you do and be satisfied that the new industry is just less profitable.

Re:blame yourself MPAA

[neminem]

Reason #4: the internet is full of people reviewing movies, reviews which are increasingly easier to find in large numbers. The vast majority of movies these days (and, to be fair, probably any other time as well) have sucked a lot. Put two and two together, you mostly get people going to movies that are worth going to. Reason #5: movie theatres are making inceasingly large amounts of money putting up obscenely, horrifically annoying ads all over everywhere. The more a theatre plays the same retarded ad for some kind of soda I hate, three times during the 20 minutes I'm waiting for the movie to start, the less I feel like ever going back.

Re:blame yourself MPAA

[nnn0]

#6 What goes up must come down ;)

No kidding!

[Anonymous Coward]

Between them and those people that say I have to go outside to see the world, I'm tired of people not respecting my paranoia! It's dangerous out there!

Yup

[paranode]

It's so important that they have it that they will set up sites dedicated to getting the content and connect with thousands of other peers who want it, but then they claim that the people who created this content have no right to ask for money for it. Parts of the DMCA are definitely in need of repair, but the underlying copyright schema is an ownership/creator interest that has existed forever. I'm no model citizen in that regard, I've downloaded the stuff myself, but I'm don't kid myself that I'm doing 'the right thing' and that the copyright owners are waging some kind of immoral war against me.

Re:Yup

[jb.hl.com]

I particularly love the people who say that real artists don't want money for their work, and instead should live off warm fuzzies and burger flipping jobs, as a way to justify not paying them the few dollars it takes to buy an album.

I think it goes "Information wants to be free; Entertainment wants to be paid; You just want to be cheap."

Re:Yup

[Fordiman]

"I don't kid myself that ... copyright owners are waging some kind of immoral war against me."

Maybe not you in particular, but the copyright extensions that have gone through since copyright's inception in the US in 1790 seem like a plot against the customers of content creators. Read the below if you don't believe me.

REF:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1790
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1909
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Copyrig ht_Act_of_1976
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Bono_Copyright_ Term_Extension_Act
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Co pyright_Act

It's the soundtrack...

[Anonymous Coward]

...that managed to be released years earlier.

Subliminal messages

[mentaldingo]

Did anyone else see "Share" "Enjoy" "Paste" flash on for a single frame each during part one?

Retaliation

[Renraku]

Hollywood should retaliate against this by making a movie about a man who's life and family is ruined by piracy. Namely, he's a musical artist getting zero income after placing himself in debt.

He's really really famous but can't afford to eat. Eventually he kills himself.

Hollywood should use their talent at making shitty movies to strike back at teh pirates.

The only thing worse than the film is the agenda

[Anonymous Coward]

I lost respect for The Pirate Bay when it became a political movement.

Before, they were just a bunch of nerds who shared bittorrent links, legality be damned. Now, in an effort to become important, they've reduced themselves to neo-communist hippies. Once you start encroaching on other people's rights because your way of thinking is "right", you've crossed a line in my book.

I admit, I bittorrent occasionally. But if you don't support good media, the good producers of good media go broke, and you're left with no-budget shit like this. (All this "Information wants to be free" stuff is all well and good, but I have yet to hear a convincing way to finance a recording session, much less a movie, when you give it away without DRM for free.

This film is even worse than the MPAA propaganda, since it's not only self-righteous, but it's so poorly produced that it's also unwatchable. At least MPAA's FUD tries to be entertaining.

That Film Sucked

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of what they were pushing as their arguments they flashed in one hard-to-pause-on frame. Even having read all of them, they didn't give any good reasons for why pirating copyrighted materials is a moral thing to do. It came off as a bunch of kids saying they feel like it and big corporations are evil by default.

Here are the reasons you should pirate:

1. Sharing is fundamentally moral. If you forgot this, go back to kindergarten. This is why the argument used that file sharing is like shoplifting doesn't work. When you steel something, you take it from whoever had it. When you file share, you produce a copy. It would be as if you could go into a clothing or food store, make a perfect copy of the product on the shelf, and take that. If that were possible, the world would be a better place to live. Share information and art. It is good. When distribution companies control what is created, not only does it hinder free speech, but they tend to make crap.

2. The industries opposing piracy are distributors. They used to be necessary to get the media from the recording studio to the people all over the world. They put it on some media and ship it all over the country. This is no longer necessary. Artists can share their work directly with consumers via the internet.

3. In the process of developing their distribution system, these companies hype up the artists. They found out that there were certain artists that made more money. They stopped caring about good art, and looked for big titted crappy singers. When you buy a $15 compact disk, you are paying for the work that went into creating N*Sync. You do not get a choice about this. Did it ever occur to anyone that if we topple Hollywood and the recording industries, there would be genuinely talented people on the internet who would create movies and music of their own and share it with the world?

I could go on. There are tons of reasons why you should pirate art. The most important one is that sharing art and information, which is what piracy is, is good for society. Saying that sharing is wrong as the RIAA and MPAA does is morally bankrupt and stupid. Anyhow, the movie didn't argue any good points as to why people should support piracy. It should have. Maybe that's in "part 2," but I didn't get that feeling that it would be.

Beware, Coward!

[Anonymous Coward]

'Course, you appear to be a coot of some nature. Shame you posted as AC; I'd be able to 'Foe' you.

AC is everyone's undeclared foe. Even my own.

I liked it

[erroneus]

I just downloaded and watched the part 1 dvd from the ISO. I enjoyed it a lot. It was very interesting.

Nothing there hasn't been said a thousand times before. They looked at the audio cassette and the VCR as examples of the entertainment industry's cry-baby activities as proof that they are not only wasting their own resources, but wasting ours and damaging our freedoms in the process. The cassette and the video tape changed people's lives and there was no avoiding that. But the history truly goes back further and I think it would have been a little more interesting to see exactly how far back these arguments go... the player piano? printing sheet music? the printing press?

The most notable quotable from the film went something like:

"When the winds of change are coming, some people build shelters while others build windmills."

available on google video!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7627256903 18243628&q=stealthisfilm

no nead to download via torrent, stream it on google :) enjoy

Yes, DO NOT FAP TO IT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES

[tietokone-olmi]

That film has a penis.

the Real Thing (tm) last longer??

[Anonymous Coward]

What format are you buying? Because my VHSes & DVDs wear out much faster than my harddrives, get messed up easier, and my harddrives are much easier to back up than my DVDs...

steal this SUBLIMINAL MESSAGE film

[Anonymous Coward]

Legitimate documentaries don't have subliminal messages saying "enjoy", "share", etc. throughout the other's side's, such as 60 Minutes', coverage of the stories.

most downloaded movie?

[simeva]

So is this now the most downloaded movie ever? http://thepiratebay.org/top/200/

The name is Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

[anandsr]

Not Ghandi.