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Music Piracy Documentary Released As Torrent
Posted by
kdawson
on Thu Aug 02, 2007 09:24 AM
from the eating-the-dogfood dept.
from the eating-the-dogfood dept.
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."
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Put their money where their mouth is (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Put their money where their mouth is (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [torrentfreak.com] by the Internet Police [rogers.com] over here, so we're not allowed to download files.
Parent
Re:Put their money where their mouth is (Score:5, Informative)
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And their method of accomplishing that are becoming more draconian, they seem to be hitting both ports and encrypted data.
It used to be that you only needed to encrypt the data itself, now you need to encrypt the headers, it's going to get worse before it gets better too
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Unfortunately am in Canada and Bittorrent has been banned [torrentfreak.com] by the Internet Police [rogers.com] over here, so we're not allowed to download files.
Wow. That's totally freaking insane!
Next time I download an OS via BT, I'll think of you... I'm really sorry, man.
That said, I'm a little surprised and disappointed at Slashdot's reaction to this documentary. Someone does a documentary about file sharing, puts it up on BT and we attack them for it... sad. I would have thought we'd be glad to see that someone is finally starting to smell the new media. Do they want their documentary seen? Of course, they do, but if this works out, you know there will be tho
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http://teksavvy.com/ [teksavvy.com]
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They put it on BT because their target auditory uses BT, not because they are "smelling new media".
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---------
Created time: 2007.07.11 11:19:34
Finish time: 2007.07.11 14:29:53
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Apparently I downloaded this last month and it was so great that I forgot to even watch it.
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Anyways, "blurring the line between fair use and piracy" is a red flag to me. I really won't agree with an argument that somehow fair use can be blurred to the extend that distributing entire works (entire songs, entire albums, entire movies, entire TV episodes) to potentially millions of people is somehow fair use. Fair use has usually been interpreted as short clippi
Re:Put their money where their mouth is (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
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IANAL, but it doesn't seem to me that the concept of fair use was well-defined in the first place (and therefore has never been anything but blurry). Certainly there have been decisions by courts that some particular use is fair, but it does not necessarily follow that all other uses are unfair and punishable. My understanding is that even a conservative legal attempt to define "fair use" would be a bit like trying to define "self defense". It's not a cut-and-dry issue, but rather one that has to be inte
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yes, it needs to be determined on a case-by-case basis, by the courts... not by corporations, not by lobbyists, not by useless technologies, not by ISPs, not by site operators, not by high priced legal goon squads and not by trade groups.
the problem is that you can use the
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Pay time (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's at least partially funded by Denmark's national broadcasting corporation. It was produced and aired here more than three months ago, so part of the salaries are paid by the Danish television license fee payers (not including myself).
They ask [goodcopybadcopy.net] for donations though.
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Why? (Score:4, Funny)
Oldddd (Score:5, Informative)
It has been circulating around for about a year or so
It appeared shortly after the movie Steal This Film [stealthisfilm.com]
I'm sure glad they have a trust fund... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'm sure glad they have a trust fund... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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This is certainly an opportunity for the creators, here. This world of today is so concerned with cash that we seem to forget the value of things which do not produce cash.
Really, those like the FSF, Creative Commons and the EFF should in fact be sponsoring these kind of productions. That would then be genuine revenue for the creators.
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"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..."
Ah yes, the "design my website for free" argument.
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I hate to be negative, but I can't see some producer saying, "Gosh, these radical dudes really did a great job undermining the reason why I'm able to get million dollar paychecks. I think I'll hire them to do my next movie. And I'll pay them millions even though they have argued that file sharers shouldn't ha
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My guess is that the folks in Hollywood are much more likely to see crowdsourcing and Creative Commons as a way to get cheap material. They'll pat this guy on the head, give him $1000 to set up some stick-it-to-the-man website, and then collect the results into a movie that's then released to theaters. The t
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Why couldn't they maybe, just maybe, want this to be free, be willing to put this documentary out there so that anyone can see it for free, even at a (monetary) loss to them? What is wrong with contributing to the public good without focusing on what you are going to get in return?
Capitalists. Yech.
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That's precisely the story of the teams who made the Half Life mods CounterStrike and Portal. They were noticed by Valve Software and hired. Even if they weren't they'd have a heck of a portfolio for their next job interview.
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Consider this script:
Lackey: One of our viewers is on the phone, sir. Do you want to take the call?
Moneyman: Why?
Lackey: They downloaded a film and loved it enough.
Moneyman: Great. What do they want from me?
Lackey: They want you to pay the guy and broadcast the film.
Moneyman: Why? So they can see it again?
Lack
infamous == bad (Score:2, Informative)
whoa there.. (Score:2, Insightful)
the word infamous means famous in a disgraceful way. it's a bad thing. you're not using it right.
(Infamity ftw)
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Well, thank you for your ruling your honor.
Once upon a time, breaking the law was thought of as vaguely 'bad' and 'disgraceful', so the term sounds fine to me.
And then we were flooded with stupid laws, laws that most people don't want, and laws that were just downright immoral to enforce.
Saying that breaking a law (like the "blacks in back" from the 60s) is always
very good movie! (Score:2)
it also has interviews from some of the key players in this copyright fight.
now i want to find some techno brega music!
no love for da usenet? (Score:3, Funny)
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Rule number 1: we do not talk about the USENET.
Rule number 2: we do not talk about the USENET.
Since some users don't have bittorrent (Score:2)
Short Review of the Film (Score:2)
I watched the first third of the film, then skipped around in the rest of the film. The first section of the film discussed an important copyright infringement case surrounding the use of samples. However, in spite of the clever editing employed, the movie didn't illuminate the issue very well. I was left wanting to understand more about the sample itself (which I couldn't hear well at a
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it DOES have a negative financial impact on the producers of that content.
How do you know?
You have to factor in the fact that seeing a movie/listening to a song is advertisement for that work and for the creators of that work. I don't know if this is going to be enough to counter the loss from the people who download the work instead of buying it (not all "pirates" are in this category, but I digress), but it does need to be considered.
If you have evidence (a study, statistics) that there is a negative impact, I would be very interested to see it. (Any study done by the MPAA
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I doubt it's very feasible to do a real, independent study on this.
I tend to agree with you on this.
/. post)
But it doesn't [washingtonpost.com] stop [com.com] people [harvard.edu] from [princeton.edu] trying [unc.edu].
(The last two are PDFs)
I never said that it outweighed, or even matched the lost revenue, I said it might which means you can't say for sure that piracy has a negative impact.
I tend to believe that piracy doesn't have a negative impact though because of an interesting observation that I read somewhere. (but I can't for the life of me remember where, could have been a
There are 3 types of pirates:
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If i want to buy and view the movie "300" but a friend comes over with a movie of his and we watch that instead, I am no less inclined to eventually purchase and watch the movie 300. If he made me spend money to watch his movie, then I would be less inclined.
Even if the movie in question WAS 300, I'd still be willing to go and purchase it if I decided it was worth my money, and a lot of movies are.
The argument you're implying is that getting something for free makes
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The reason these guys hunt down and victimize kids and college students is because they can write off their legal expenses as a cost of doing business and hopefully slip into a lower tax bracket, cheating the American people out of tax money.
That makes no sense. They have to have some reason other than saving a little tax money, because they have to spend more than what they'll save. The tax savings may partially offset the legal expenses, reducing somewhat the risk of litigation, but they don't even eliminate all of the litigation expenses much less produce a net gain.
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Regardless, you can't prove otherwise.