Steal This Film is a documentary about file sharing and the grand daddy of all file sharing sites The Pirate Bay. It outlines many of the legal problems that The Pirate Bay has had and its current state. Steal This Film also looks at communication throughout the centuries and draw some very interesting comparisons. Of course one can imagine that the blank cassette tape was greeted with the same welcome as P2P and file sharing networks but did you know the printing press was too. Scribes thought it would bring about the decline of their trade and certainly the fine art of literature, does the argument begin to sound similar yet?
After the film there was a discussion of current legislation in France aimed at stopping file sharing. Luckily none of it will work. The presenters also outlined some strategies in order to compensate the artists for their work while still preserving the nature of file sharing. They did a case study on 9 Inch Nails releasing an entire album for free via P2P networks but choosing to sell a few hundred collectors sets they put together. Since they did it all themselves with no middle men, READ music industry types, they made more money than if they had sold a comparable number of units but through traditional music industry channels. That was not surprising but certainly an eye opener. The problem isn’t file sharing, it is the bloated and parasitic nature of the music industry.
If you have not been to the Utopia Theater in Toulouse yet you should go. It is a true art house cinema, the likes of which are constantly in decline. The cinema always shows the original version and not dubbed versions. There is an enormous calendar with movies from all over the world covering all styles and genres. Often they have discussions in the theater after the films. It was a real treat to go.
If you want to download Steal This Film or its sequel Steal This Film II you can follow either of these two links. They wholeheartedly encourage you to steal and share this film, in fact they will mock you if you fail to do so.
Finally I also made acquaintance with a local Toulouse organization called Toulibre which is about the promotion, dissemination, and defense of free and open source software for computers. I am going to their Party January 7th for the galette des rois. Articulate and honest, the speaker really was thoroughly entertaining and precise in his details of all that is available.
All in all this evening was a huge success for me. Check out the links if you have any interest at all.
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