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Music Piracy Documentary Released As Torrent
Posted by
kdawson
on Thu Aug 02, 2007 09:24 AM
from the eating-the-dogfood dept.
from the eating-the-dogfood dept.
goodbye_kitty writes "The producers of a new documentary film analyzing global music piracy have decided to 'put their money where their mouth is' by releasing the film as a free Xvid download (hosted by the Pirate Bay, as one would expect). The film explores the blurred line between 'fair use' and piracy, and includes interviews with DJ Danger Mouse (creator of the now infamous 'grey album'), Lawrence Lessig (founder of Creative Commons), the lads from the Pirate Bay, and even some guy from the MPAA. Here is a link to the torrent."
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Music Piracy Documentary Released As Torrent
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Put their money where their mouth is (Score:3, Informative)
(http://filer.case.edu/~bct4)
Re:Put their money where their mouth is (Score:5, Interesting)
Or maybe they're just clever and realise they can get lots of free publicity on sites like /. by releasing the programme as a torrent. Don't think we'll ever know, but you're reading this article aren't you?
Unfortunately am in Canada and Bittorrent has been banned [torrentfreak.com] by the Internet Police [rogers.com] over here, so we're not allowed to download files.
Re:Put their money where their mouth is (Score:5, Informative)
(Last Journal: Wednesday February 15 2006, @01:31PM)
Re:Put their money where their mouth is (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Monday January 08 2007, @02:45PM)
However, your implication that there is no "blurred line" isn't fair. The example given in the summary is DJ Danger Mouse, who mixed two different works to create something totally original. The music labels said that this was "clearly infringement" whereas many artists and fans said this work was novel and original, and clearly something that should be allowed under fair use (whether or not it actually is fair use is for courts to decide, I suppose, but the arguments regarding copyright are not so much about what the law is, but rather what it should be). This is one case where there is disagreement about how to interpret the actions, hence a "blurred line."
Lawrence Lessig (in his books, blog entries, talks, etc.) provides many other examples of activities which straddle this line (e.g. a film-maker begin told to pay thousands of dollars because a Simpsons clip was playing in the background of one of the scenes in a documentary). Sometimes they are legal yet still legally persecuted by the big-labels. Sometimes they are illegal yet many people feel they are legitimate personal uses, or important creative uses. These fringe cases are very interesting.
Now, I have not watched the documentary under discussion, so I can't say whether they tackle these fringe cases in a thoughtful way. However, I can honestly say that there is a dangerous blurred line between what you are allowed to do according to "fair use" and what you are going to get in trouble for doing according to "copyright law." The fact that this line is so ill-defined is what leads to all the questionable lawsuits against artists and end-users... and to a chilling effect in the production of creative works (which Lessig worries about constantly).
Pay time (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Monday August 16 2004, @06:16AM)
Why? (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.scrapplebrothers.com/)
Oldddd (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.getoto.net/)
It has been circulating around for about a year or so
It appeared shortly after the movie Steal This Film [stealthisfilm.com]
I'm sure glad they have a trust fund... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'm sure glad they have a trust fund... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.yonatanz.com/)
If you are unknown, then this can be the perfect entrance to the industry. But you have to be good so that your free product is at least somewhat impressive.
infamous == bad (Score:2, Informative)
very good movie! (Score:2)
it also has interviews from some of the key players in this copyright fight.
now i want to find some techno brega music!
OMG ur so busted (Score:1)
seriously tho. All I want to know on the subject i've already read here and other sites. People most comfortable with downloading movies using torrents have better movies to get and I would guess aren't that interested. Only thing I would even be remotely interested in is some of the qoutes from the mpaa guy just to see one individual's scewed opinions, but I'd rather have it in text format.
On youtube? (Score:1)
(http://www.bartosoft.com/)
The producers will starve (Score:1)
Betallica's... (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Thursday June 14, @11:03PM)
no love for da usenet? (Score:3, Funny)
TPB doesn't host the movie (Score:1, Informative)
Technically TPB doesn't host movies, which is why they are still around.
Since some users don't have bittorrent (Score:2)
(http://unixclan.no-ip.org/ | Last Journal: Wednesday December 27 2006, @12:59PM)
Short Review of the Film (Score:2)
(http://www.bernsrite.com/ | Last Journal: Monday June 27 2005, @11:36PM)
I watched the first third of the film, then skipped around in the rest of the film. The first section of the film discussed an important copyright infringement case surrounding the use of samples. However, in spite of the clever editing employed, the movie didn't illuminate the issue very well. I was left wanting to understand more about the sample itself (which I couldn't hear well at all), and whether it fell under fair use.
The second section of the file discussed another important musical work based on sampling: DJ DangerMouse's Grey Album, which combines vocals from Jay-Z over samples from the Beatles' White Album. The interview with DangerMouse intrigued me, but the movie again left me wanting to understand in more depth. I decided to cut to the chase and listen to the Grey Album itself.
Back to BitTorrent I went, and downloaded the Grey Album from the Pirate Bay. I felt even cooler this time around! While the album downloaded, I watched a bit more of the movie, in which the Pirate Bay guys talked about their site. To be honest, I found their position to be nearly incomprehensible, but I couldn't tell if this was because of the movie being vague or the Pirate Bay guys themselves being hard to understand (language issues, maybe?). But when they invoked Freedom of the Press in defense of the Pirate Bay, I decided I had seen enough.
By then, the album was nearly downloaded. When it finished, I cued it up in Winamp (how cool am I now!!!), and started it playing. The Beatles samples were very nicely done (I'm a big Beatles fan), but every time Jay-Z opened his mouth, I cringed. Hearing him sing/talk about N*ggers over the intro to While My Guitar Gently Weeps was nearly more than I could bear.
I thought to myself: What does Paul McCartney think of this? He probably doesn't like it much (and who could really blame him). What does Jay-Z think of this? He probably loves it! Is that enough to give DangerMouse the right to distribute Jay-Z's vocals with the Beatles as backup musicians? Interesting idea, but not persuasively executed. It's just not compelling enough to overthrow the existing paradigm.
And that's pretty much how I felt about the movie as well.
"The death knell for hip hip..." (Score:2)
If so, I'm all for it...
License? (Score:2)
(http://trog.qgl.org)
I assume that it is freely redistributable, given that it is a torrent, but it'd be nice if the authors could make this clear on the website. (It could be embedded in the video at the end or something but I don't have time to check.)
Re:Doesn't work (Score:2, Informative)
(http://elmuerte.com/)
Re:Doesn't work (Score:2)
(http://www.richardmac.com/)
Re:WTF XVID (Score:1)