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Music Piracy Documentary Released As Torrent
goodbye_kitty writes "The producers of a new documentary film analyzing global music piracy have decided to 'put their money where their mouth is' by releasing the film as a free Xvid download (hosted by the Pirate Bay, as one would expect). The film explores the blurred line between 'fair use' and piracy, and includes interviews with DJ Danger Mouse (creator of the now infamous 'grey album'), Lawrence Lessig (founder of Creative Commons), the lads from the Pirate Bay, and even some guy from the MPAA. Here is a link to the torrent."
Why would I get this off the web for free when I can pay for it at a store?
--I'm not talking about dance lessons. I'm talking about putting a brick through the other guy's windshield.-
Or maybe they're just clever and realise they can get lots of free publicity on sites like /. by releasing the programme as a torrent. Don't think we'll ever know, but you're reading this article aren't you?
Unfortunately am in Canada and Bittorrent has been banned by the Internet Police over here, so we're not allowed to download files.
That's way too old. ...
It has been circulating around for about a year or so
It appeared shortly after the movie Steal This Film
In fire we trust http://www.getoto.net
You can download just fine on Rogers. I sure do. Just be sure to use the "Encrypt Traffic" option on Azureus, and set yourself up with a non-standard port. Check out the Azureus Wiki on NAT Problems on how to do this. I suggest using a port like 25522 or something like that.
UTF-8: There and Back Again
Also, the producers' work will be viewed by thousands of people, and probably reviewed by tens of professionals and might reach production company managers, who may hire them for their next movie...
If you are unknown, then this can be the perfect entrance to the industry. But you have to be good so that your free product is at least somewhat impressive.
Well of course the "blurred line" won't appear when you counterpoint two extremes: short clips on the one hand (clearly fair use) versus distributing full copies to millions of people on the other hand (clearly copyright infringement, according to current laws).
However, your implication that there is no "blurred line" isn't fair. The example given in the summary is DJ Danger Mouse, who mixed two different works to create something totally original. The music labels said that this was "clearly infringement" whereas many artists and fans said this work was novel and original, and clearly something that should be allowed under fair use (whether or not it actually is fair use is for courts to decide, I suppose, but the arguments regarding copyright are not so much about what the law is, but rather what it should be). This is one case where there is disagreement about how to interpret the actions, hence a "blurred line."
Lawrence Lessig (in his books, blog entries, talks, etc.) provides many other examples of activities which straddle this line (e.g. a film-maker begin told to pay thousands of dollars because a Simpsons clip was playing in the background of one of the scenes in a documentary). Sometimes they are legal yet still legally persecuted by the big-labels. Sometimes they are illegal yet many people feel they are legitimate personal uses, or important creative uses. These fringe cases are very interesting.
Now, I have not watched the documentary under discussion, so I can't say whether they tackle these fringe cases in a thoughtful way. However, I can honestly say that there is a dangerous blurred line between what you are allowed to do according to "fair use" and what you are going to get in trouble for doing according to "copyright law." The fact that this line is so ill-defined is what leads to all the questionable lawsuits against artists and end-users... and to a chilling effect in the production of creative works (which Lessig worries about constantly).