Steal This Film

Infobox Film
name = Steal This Film

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|100px
image_size =
caption =
director =
producer = The League of Noble Peers
writer =
narrator =
starring = Members of The Pirate Bay and Piratbyrån
music =
cinematography =
editing =
distributor = Independent
BitTorrent only
released = August 21, 2006
runtime = 32 minutes
country = UK and Germany
language = English, with some subtitled Swedish
budget = $3,000.00 [ [http://stealthisfilm.wikidot.com/things-you-can-help-with Steal This Film: Things You Can Help With] ]
gross =
preceded_by =
followed_by =
website = http://www.stealthisfilm.com/Part1
amg_id =
imdb_id = Infobox Film
name = Steal This Film 2


image_size = 125px
caption =
director = Jamie King
producer = The League of Noble Peers
writer =
narrator =
starring =
music =
cinematography =
editing =
distributor = Independent
BitTorrent only
released = December 28, 2007
runtime = 44 minutes
country = UK, Germany
language = English
budget =
gross =
preceded_by =
followed_by =
website = http://www.stealthisfilm.com/Part2
amg_id =
imdb_id =

"Steal This Film" is a film series documenting the movement against intellectual property produced by The League of Noble Peers and released via the BitTorrent peer-to-peer protocol.

Two parts have been released so far, and The League of Noble Peers is working on "Steal this Film - The Movie" and a new project entitled "The Oil of the 21st Century". [ [http://www.stealthisfilm.com/Part2/projects.php Steal This Film - Projects] ] Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow called it 'an amazing, funny, enraging and inspiring documentary series'. [ [http://www.boingboing.net/2007/12/29/steal-this-film-part.html Steal This Film - early review] ]

Part one

Part One, shot in Sweden and released in August 2006 combines accounts from prominent players in the Swedish piracy culture (The Pirate Bay, Piratbyrån, and the Pirate Party) with found material, propaganda-like slogans and Vox Pops.

It includes interviews with Pirate Bay members Fredrik Neij (tiamo), Gottfrid Svartholm (anakata) and Peter Sunde (brokep) that were later re-used by agreement in the documentary film Good Copy Bad Copy, as well as with Piratbyrån members Rasmus Fleischer (rsms), Johan (krignell) and Sara Andersson (fraux).

The film [ [http://www.stealthisfilm.com/Part1/ Steal This Film (Part 1)] ] is notable for its critical analysis of an alleged regulatory capture [ [http://www.documentary-film.net/search/video-listings.php?e=57 Documentary Film Video: Listing for Steal This Film] ] attempt performed by the Hollywood film lobby to leverage economic sanctions by the United States government on Sweden through the WTO. Alleged aims included the application of pressure to Swedish police into conducting a search and seizure against Swedish law for the purpose of disrupting The Pirate Bay's BitTorrent tracker.

The Guardian Newspaper called it 'at heart a traditionally-structured "talking heads" documentary' with 'amusing stylings' from film-makers who 'practice what they preach.' [ [http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,1880222,00.html#article_continue Steal This Film, read this article] ] . Screened at the British Film Institute and numerous independent international events, Steal This Film One was a talking point in 2007's British Documentary Film Festival. [ [https://www.britdoc.org/festival/talking.php Britdoc 07 - Talking Sessions] ] . In January 2008 it was featured on BBC Radio 4's Today Programme, in a discussion piece which explored the implications of P2P for traditional media. Found material in "Steal This Film" includes the music of Can, tracks "Thief" and "She Brings the Rain"; clips from other documentary interviews with industry and governmental officials; several industry anti-piracy promotionals; logos from several major Hollywood studios, and sequences from "The Day After Tomorrow", "The Matrix", "Zabriskie Point", and "They Live". The use of these short clips is believed to constitute fair use.

Part two

Part Two of Steal This Film [ [http://www.stealthisfilm.com/Part2/ Steal This Film (Part 2)] ] (sometimes subtitled 'The Dissolving Fortress') was produced during 2007. It premiered (in a preliminary version) at the "The Oil of the 21st Century - Perspectives on Intellectual Property" conference in Berlin, Germany, November 2007. [ [http://oil21.org/?conference Oil of the 21st century] ]

Thematically, part Two examines the technological and cultural aspects of the copyright wars, and the cultural and economic implications of the internet. It includes an exploration of Mark Getty's infamous statement that 'intellectual property is the oil of the 21st century'. Part two draws parallels between the impact of the printing press and the internet in terms of making information accessible beyond a privileged group or "controllers". The argument is made that the decentralised nature of the internet makes the enforcement of conventional copyright impossible. Adding to this the internet turns consumers into producers, by way of consumer generated content, leading to the sharing, mashup and creation of content motivated not by financial gains. This has fundamental implications for market based media companies. The documentary asks "How will society change" and states "This is the Future - And it has nothing to do with your bank balance".

It was selected for the Sheffield International Documentary Film Festival, [ [https://sheffdocfest.com/ Sheffield DocFest] ] South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, [ [http://2008.sxsw.com South By Southwest] ] and the Singapore International Film Festival [ [http://www.filmfest.org.sg/screening-schedule.php?date=2008-03-28 21st Singapore International Film Festival ] ] . It was also shown during the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam [ [http://idfa.nl Homepage Nederland’s | International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam 2007 ] ] where Director Jamie King was a panelist and speaker presenting a rumoured Alternative Compensation project by The League of Noble Peers. Steal This Film has most recently been nominated for the Ars Electronica 2008 Digital Communities prize. [ [http://www.aec.at/en/global/press_detail.asp?iPressID=237&iAreaID=5] Prix Ars Electronica 2008]

Distribution

A cam version leaked soon after the preliminary premiere in Berlin. [ [http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3888314/STF-II_CAM.avi STF-II_CAM.avi - The Pirate Bay] ] Part Two had its 'conventional' (ie, projected rather than viewed online) premiere at the openly-organised artistic seminar in Stockholm 2007. [ [http://www.whomakesandownsyourwork.org] Who Makes And Owns Your Work?] Despite the principles of the seminar itself (all aspects of which were organised via open wiki in a year long process), the involvement of Piratbyran caused controversy with the funders of the seminar, the Swedish Arts Grants Committee, who refused to allow Piratbyran's logo on the seminar marketing materials alongside its own. The seminar initiators' solution was to add a black sticker dot over the logo, which was easily peeled off. Another condition given by the Committee was that an anti-piracy spokesperson be present to balance the debate.

The documentary was officially released on filesharing networks on December 28, 2007 and, according to the filmmakers, [ [http://jamie.com/2008/01/03/the-future-doesnt-care-about-your-bank-balance-but-the-11000-do/ 'The Future Doesn't Care About The Bank Balance'] ] downloaded 150,000 times in the first three days of distribution. Pirate Bay encouraged the downloading of Steal This Film Two, announcing its release on its blog. [ [http://thepiratebay.org/blog/96 The Pirate Bay - The world's largest BitTorrent tracker ] ] Steal This Film Two was also screened by the Pirate Cinema Copenhagen in January 2008. [ [http://www.piratecinema.net/ Pirate Cinema Copenhagen ] ] The documentary can also be downloaded on the official Steal This Film website. [http://www.stealthisfilm.com/Part2/download.php]

The League of Noble Peers asks for donations and more than US$5000 has been received as of January 5 2008. [cite web |url=http://torrentfreak.com/when-pirates-pay-they-pay-good-080105/ |date=2008-01-05 |title=When Pirates Pay, They Pay Good |publisher=TorrentFreak |accessdate=2008-01-08 |last= Ernesto]

Language

Like Part One, Part Two is in English. However, unlike Part One, which only had subtitles in English, Part Two has subtitles in many languages due to great interest in the documentary by volunteer translators. The film has subtitles in Croatian, Danish, French, Finnish, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish and Ukrainian.

Financing

As well as funding from BritDoc, the "Steal This Film" series continues to utilise a loose version of the Street Performer Protocol, collecting voluntary donations via a PayPal account, from the [http://www.stealthisfilm.com/donate www.stealthisfilm.com] website. The filmmakers report that roughly one in a thousand viewers are donating, mostly in the range USD 15-40.

Credits

"Steal This Film" One and Two are credited as 'conceived, directed, and produced' by The League of Noble Peers. Where Part One contains no personal attribution part Two has full credits.

The League of Noble Peers are now working on a cinema release of Steal This Film.

ee also

* Anti-copyright
* Copyright
* Gift economy
* Mashup
* May 2006 police raid of The Pirate Bay
* Pirate Cinema
* Warez

References

External links

* http://www.stealthisfilm.com/
* [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9198224502900953337 "Steal This Film"] on Google Video
* [http://stealthisfilm.wikidot.com/ Plans and Strategies] for the film series
* [http://thepiratebay.org/blog/38 .torrent file tracked by The Pirate Bay]
* [http://www.boingboing.net/2006/08/23/steal_this_movie_doc.html Steal This Movie: documentary on Swedish piracy movement] on BoingBoing
* [http://shootingpeople.org/watch/film.php?film_id=47607 "Steal this Film"] on Shooting People