Steal This Film is a film series documenting the movement against intellectual property released via the BitTorrentpeer-to-peer protocol. Two parts have been released so far, and it has been reported that a third part is in production, slated for 2008/9 cinema distribution in the US. BoingBoing's Cory Doctorow called it 'an amazing, funny, enraging and inspiring documentary series'. [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 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 Guardian Newspaper called it 'at heart a traditionally-structured "talking heads" documentary' with 'amusing stylings' from film-makers who 'practice what they preach.'[3].
Screened at the British Film Institute and numerous independent international events, STEAL THIS FILM I was a talking point in 2007's British Documentary Film Festival.[4]. 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.
The film [5]is notable for its critical analysis of an alleged regulatory capture[6] 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.
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 [7] (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 in November 2007.[8]. A cam version leaked soon after.[9] It was officially released on file sharing networks on December 28, 2007 and, according to the filmmakers, [10] downloaded 150,000 times in the first three days of distribution.
Thematically, Part Two examines the technological and cultural aspects of the copyright wars, and the implications of the internet for copying. It includes an exploration of Mark Getty's infamous statement that 'intellectual property is the oil of the 21st century'. It was selected for the Sheffield International Documentary Film Festival [11], South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, [12] and the Singapore International Film Festival [13]. It was also shown during the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam[14] 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.[15].
As with the first part, Part Two is free to distribute over P2P networks. The producers however ask for donations and more than US$5000 has been received as of January 5 2008.
[16]
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.
Part Two had its 'conventional' (ie, projected rather than viewed online) premiere at the openly-organised artistic seminar [17] in Stockholm 2007. 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.
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 www.stealthisfilm.com website. The filmmakers report that roughly one in a thousand viewers are donating, mostly in the range USD 15-40.
Production
Steal This Film 1 and 2 are credited as 'conceived, directed, and produced' by The League of Noble Peers. Where Part One contains no personal attribution (possibly due to potential issues with copyright infringement)[citation needed] Part 2 has full credits.
