Steal This Film
Produced byThe League of Noble Peers
StarringMembers of The Pirate Bay and Piratbyrån
Distributed byIndependent
BitTorrent only
Release date
21 August 2006
Running time
32 minutes (original)
52 minutes (trial edition)
CountriesUK and Germany
LanguagesEnglish, with some subtitled Swedish
Budget$3,000[1]
Steal This Film 2
Directed byJamie King
Produced byThe League of Noble Peers
CinematographyLuca Lucarini
Edited byLuca Lucarini
Distributed byIndependent
BitTorrent only
Release date
28 December 2007
Running time
44 minutes
CountriesUnited Kingdom, Germany
LanguageEnglish

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

Two parts, and one special The Pirate Bay trial edition of the first part, 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".[2]

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 The 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[3] is notable for its critical analysis of an alleged regulatory capture[4] attempt performed by the Hollywood film lobby to leverage economic sanctions by the United States government on Sweden through the WTO. Evidence is presented of pressure applied through Swedish courts on Swedish police to conducting a search and seizure against The Pirate Bay to disrupt its BitTorrent tracker service, in contravention of Swedish law.[5]

The Guardian's James Flint called Part One "at heart a traditionally structured 'talking heads' documentary" with "amusing stylings" from film-makers who "practice what they preach."[6] It also screened at the British Film Institute and numerous independent international events, and was a talking point in 2007's British Documentary Film Festival.[7][8] In January 2008 it was featured on BBC Radio 4's Today, in a discussion piece which explored the implications of P2P for traditional media.

Material found 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

Steal This Film (Part 2)[9] (sometimes subtitled 'The Dissolving Fortress') was produced during 2007. It premiered (in a preliminary version) at a conference entitled "The Oil of the 21st Century – Perspectives on Intellectual Property" in Berlin, Germany, November 2007.[10]

Thematically, Part 2 "examines the technological and enforcement end of the copyright wars, and on the way that using the internet makes you a copier, and how copying puts you in legal jeopardy."[11] It discusses Mark Getty's assertion that 'intellectual property is the oil of the 21st century'. Part 2 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 user generated content, leading to the sharing, mashup and creation of content not motivated 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".

Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow called it 'an amazing, funny, enraging and inspiring documentary series', and Part II "even better than part I."[11]

Interviewees (in order of appearance)

Trial Edition

A Trial Edition (also known as '2.5' or 'Spectrial' edition) was released to coincide with the trial in 2009 of The Pirate Bay. This version includes material from Steal This Film I and II combined with new interviews shot with Peter Sunde and others during 2008, some historical background about the Pirate Bay and Dutch printers (who were also considered pirates) as well as interview clips about the legal conflict itself.[12] Steal This Film 'Spectrial Edition' is widely available online and it is thought to be this version that is now available to television stations and others.

The new edition of Steal This Film was part of the Official Selection and in competition at the 2009 Roma Fiction Festival (Factual strand).[13][14] The jury awarded a Special Mention for its "unconventional style and provocative look at the media revolution taking place in the world."[15]

Festivals, cinema and other screenings

Steal This Film was selected for the Sheffield International Documentary Film Festival 2008,[16] South By Southwest festival 2008 in Austin, Texas,[17] and the Singapore International Film Festival 2008.[18] Other festivals at which it was shown included Tampere Film Festival, 2008,[19] Salt Spring Film Festival 2007,[20] Rhythm of the Line Festival 2007[21] and Kerala International Film Festival, India. Steal This Film was nominated for the Ars Electronica 2008 Digital Communities prize[22] and was a semi-finalist in online video-streaming site Babelgum's 2008 competition. Amongst others it has been shown on History Channel Spain, Canal + Poland, Noga Israel, TV4 Sweden and Dublin Community TV, Ireland.

The film is taught in Universities on media courses worldwide, including New York University's Media Culture & Communication course.[23]

Online distribution

The film is famous partly for being one of the most downloaded documentaries to date. Part One was released through an arrangement with The Pirate Bay; the filesharing site marketed Steal This Film in place of its own pirate ship logo. This produced millions of downloads for the film and catapulted it to wide recognition on the Internet after it hit Digg, Slashdot, Reddit and other online centres of attention.

Steal This Film (Part 2) was distributed in a similar manner, but with more trackers and indexes involved, including Isohunt and Mininova. Estimates of the total current downloads of the film hover at around the 6 million mark via bittorrent alone. Since the creators have not attempted to restrict copying, the film is also available on YouTube, Google Video and many other web-based video services.

A cam version leaked soon after the premiere of Steal This Film (Part 2) in Berlin.[24] Part 2 had its theatrical (rather than viewed online) premiere at the openly organised Who Makes And Owns Your Work artistic seminar in Stockholm 2007.[25] Despite the principles of the seminar itself (organised via public wiki in a year-long process), the involvement of Piratbyran roused the funders of the seminar, the Swedish Arts Grants Committee, to prohibit Piratbyran's logo on the seminar marketing materials alongside its own.[26] 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 a moderator or an anti-piracy spokesperson be present to balance the debate.[27]

Film poster mockup used the logo for The Pirate Bay

The documentary was officially released for peer-to-peer filesharing using peer-to-peer networks on 28 December 2007 and, according to the filmmakers, downloaded 150,000 times in the first three days of distribution.[28] Pirate Bay encouraged the downloading of Steal This Film Two, announcing its release on its blog.[29] Steal This Film Part 2 was also screened by the Pirate Cinema Copenhagen in January 2008.[30] The documentary can also be downloaded on the official Steal This Film website.[31]

Language

Both Part One and Part Two are in English, mostly, with the former having some Swedish dialogue subtitled in English. Due to great interest in the documentary by volunteer translators, Part Two has subtitles in Czech, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, French, Finnish, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish and Ukrainian.

Financing

As well as funding from BRITDOC, the Steal This Film producers continues to use a loose version of the Street Performer Protocol, collecting voluntary donations via a PayPal account, from the website.[32] For future financing, director Jamie King (producer) has written that he and the League of Noble Peers propose, a "post IP compensation system" which "allows viewers and listeners to make voluntary payments right from the client in which they play media."[33]

Donations

The League of Noble Peers asked for donations and more than US$30,000 ($40,921 in 2022) had been received as of 5 July 2009.[34] The filmmakers report that roughly one in a thousand viewers are donating, mostly 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.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Steal This Film: Things You Can Help With Wikidot.com, Steal this film Wiki. Anonymous, Last modified February 2006. Retrieved 20 February 2010
  2. ↑ "Steal This Film – Projects". StealThisFilm.com. 2006–2007. Retrieved 10 April 2010.
  3. ↑ "Steal This Film (Part 1)". StealThisFilm.com. Retrieved 20 February 2010.
  4. ↑ "Documentary Film Video: Listing for Steal This Film". DocumentaryFilm.net. Retrieved 20 February 2010.
  5. ↑ Doctorow, Cory (23 August 2006). Steal This Movie: documentary on Swedish piracy movement Archived 31 August 2006 at the Wayback Machine. BoingBoing.net. Retrieved 9 April 2010.
  6. ↑ Flint, James (25 September 2006). "Steal This Film, read this article". The Guardian. Retrieved 20 February 2010.
  7. ↑ Search, Jess; King, Jamie; et al. (27 July 2007). "Britdoc 07 Talking Sessions: Steal This Film". BritDoc Foundation. Archived from the original on 25 July 2011. Retrieved 10 April 2010. Audio parts 1 Archived 25 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine & 2 Archived 25 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine.
  8. ↑ Mayes, Tessa (6 August 2007). "Don’t steal this article – but please do discuss it" Archived 22 June 2011 at the Wayback Machine. Spiked Online. Retrieved 9 April 2010.
  9. ↑ Steal This Film (Part 2). StealThisFilm.com. Retrieved 10 April 2010.
  10. ↑ "Oil of the 21st Century Conference". Oil21.org. Retrieved 20 February 2010.
  11. 1 2 Doctorow, Cory (29 December 2007). "Steal This Film, Part II: the Internet makes us into copiers". Boingboing.com. Retrieved 20 February 2010. Early review.
  12. ↑ Roettgers, Janko (18 February 2009). "New Steal This Film Documentary Just in Time For Pirate Bay Trial". GigaOM. Archived from the original on 2 December 2010. Retrieved 10 April 2010.
  13. ↑ Roma Fiction Festival 2009 selection of Steal This Film II. Archived 15 July 2009 at the Wayback Machine
  14. ↑ DRTV (8 July 2009). RomaFictionFest: il programma di oggi, mercoledì 8 luglio 8 (in Italian). TVGuida.com (Italy). Retrieved 16 July 2010. English tr.
  15. ↑ RED/DBR (11 July 2009). SPE – RomaFictionFest: edizione da record, sfiorate 43mila presenze Archived 22 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine (in Italian). ilVelino.it; il Velino (Italy). Retrieved 16 July 2010. English tr.
  16. ↑ Sheffield International Documentary Film Festival 2007 Film Schedule Archived 16 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine (PDF). SheffDocFest.com. 8 November 2008. Retrieved 10 April 2010.
  17. ↑ South By Southwest 2008 Schedule and Screening Schedule at the Wayback Machine (archived 20 April 2008) SxSW.com, 2008. Retrieved 10 April 2010.
  18. ↑ "21st Singapore International Film Festival". Archived from the original on 12 March 2008. Retrieved 12 March 2008.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) – Screening Schedule 2008.
  19. ↑ Tampere Film Festival 2008 Archived 19 September 2012 at archive.today listing of Steal This Film
  20. ↑ Salt Spring Film Festival 2007 listing of Steal This Film
  21. ↑ "ROTL - Rhythm of the Line Film Festival Berlin - Graffiti, Video, Film, HipHop, Beakdance". Archived from the original on 16 December 2007. Retrieved 16 December 2007.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) (Germany) listing of Steal This Film.
  22. ↑ Prix Ars Electronica 2008 nomination of Steal This Film.
  23. ↑ New York University, Media Culture & Communication 2008 Archived 29 January 2013 at archive.today Course including Steal This Film.
  24. ↑ Steal This Film II – STF-II_CAM.avi(torrent) The Pirate Bay. Retrieved 10 April 2010.
  25. ↑ Who Makes And Owns Your Work? Archived 1 July 2007 at the Wayback Machine Conference, 12 November 2007. Retrieved 20 February 2010.
  26. ↑ Piratbyran Activities, 2007 Archived 24 April 2009 at the Wayback Machine (PDF). Piratbyran.org. 2008. Retrieved 10 April 2010.
  27. ↑ Nygren, Tomas (13 November 2007) Gesamtkunstwerk: Who Makes and Owns Your Work launching at Årsta, Sat 17th November Archived 9 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine TomasNygren.org (photo, portions in Swedish). Retrieved 10 April 2010.
  28. ↑ King, Jamie (3 January 2008). "The Future Doesn't Care About The Bank Balance but the 1/1000 do!". Jamie.com. Archived from the original on 12 February 2008. Retrieved 20 February 2010.
  29. ↑ The Pirate Bay – Blog. Retrieved 9 April 2010.
  30. ↑ Pirate Cinema Copenhagen Archived 8 June 2008 at the Wayback Machine Screening, 13 January 2008. Retrieved 9 April 2010.
  31. ↑ Steal This Film Part 2 Download Official download page. StealThisFilm.com.
  32. ↑ Donations Page Stealthisfilm.com.
  33. ↑ King, Jamie (22 November 2007) Content producers should take advantage of P2P, not fear it Archived 29 September 2011 at the Wayback Machine New Media Age. Retrieved 10 April 2010.
  34. ↑ Ernesto (5 January 2008). "When Pirates Pay, They Pay Good". TorrentFreak. Retrieved 8 January 2008.
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