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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."
"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.
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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.
What is music when you despise all sound?
Aww, that means my sig has no useful content.
*pout*
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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.
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.
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.
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.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
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.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
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.
First of all, if I'd had mod-points, I'd mod you overrated.
;-) and they will at some point stop buying the crap they put out for people to spend money on. No wonder sales are dropping.
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
Cheers
Simon
No they wouldn't. Not if they were smart.
Important quote for the lazy:
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.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!