Free Documentary - Steal This Film II
I’d half expected this documentary to be one long pro-piracy rant trying to justify piracy, going on some of the comments I’d read about it.
It was then a pleasant surprise to find it is actually an intelligent, well produced documentary examining some of the reasons why piracy, file sharing and just plain information sharing exist and why it won’t go away. It’s by no means comprehensive but it raises some very valid points and I thought the comparison with the rise of the printing press was an interesting one.
All in all, worth a watch.
These are strange times indeed. While they continue to command so much attention in the mainstream media, the ‘battles’ between old and new modes of distribution, between the pirate and the institution of copyright, seem to many of us already lost and won. We know who the victors are. Why then say any more?
Because waves of repression continue to come: lawsuits are still levied against innocent people; arrests are still made on flimsy pretexts, in order to terrify and confuse; harsh laws are still enacted against filesharing, taking their place in the gradual erosion of our privacy and the bolstering of the surveillance state. All of this is intended to destroy or delay inexorable changes in what it means to create and exchange our creations. If STEAL THIS FILM II proves at all useful in bringing new people into the leagues of those now prepared to think ‘after intellectual property’, think creatively about the future of distribution, production and creativity, we have achieved our main goal.
