''Steal This Film'' is a film series documenting the movement against

intellectual property Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, co ...

directed by Jamie King, produced by

The League of Noble Peers The League of Noble Peers is an organization credited with producing the Steal This Film documentary series. When releasing ''Steal This Film (One)'' the group introduced itself as "a group of friends" that, in 2006, "decided to make a film about ...

and released via the BitTorrent

peer-to-peer Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network. They are said to form a peer-to-peer ...

protocol. Two parts, and one special

The Pirate Bay trial The Pirate Bay trial was a joint criminal and civil prosecution in Sweden of four individuals charged for promoting the copyright infringement of others with the torrent tracking website The Pirate Bay. The criminal charges were supported b ...

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".

Part one

''Part One'', shot in

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic countries, Nordic c ...

and released in August 2006, combines accounts from prominent players in the Swedish

piracy Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and other valuable goods. Those who conduct acts of piracy are called pirates, v ...

culture (

The Pirate Bay The Pirate Bay (sometimes abbreviated as TPB) is an online index of digital content of entertainment media and software. Founded in 2003 by Swedish think tank Piratbyrån, The Pirate Bay allows visitors to search, download, and contribute ...

Piratbyrån Piratbyrån ( "The Pirate Bureau") was a Swedish think tank established to support the free sharing of information, culture, and intellectual property. Piratbyrån provided a counterpoint to lobby groups such as the Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau. ...

, and the

Pirate Party Pirate Party is a label adopted by political parties around the world. Pirate parties support civil rights, direct democracy (including e-democracy) or alternatively participation in government, reform of copyright and patent law, free shari ...

) with found material, propaganda-like slogans and Vox Pops. It includes interviews with The Pirate Bay members Fredrik Neij (tiamo),

Gottfrid Svartholm Per Gottfrid Svartholm Warg (born 17 October 1984), alias anakata, is a Swedish computer specialist, known as the former co-owner of the web hosting company PRQ and co-founder of the BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay together with Fredrik Neij an ...

(anakata) and Peter Sunde (brokep) that were later re-used by agreement in the documentary film ''

Good Copy Bad Copy ''Good Copy Bad Copy'' (subtitled Good Copy Bad Copy: A documentary about the current state of copyright and culture) is a 2007 documentary film about copyright and culture in the context of Internet, peer-to-peer file sharing and other technologic ...

'', as well as with Piratbyrån members

Rasmus Fleischer Rasmus Fleischer (born 19 April 1978 in Halmstad) is a Swedish historian, essayist and musician. He earned his Ph.D. in history in 2012 with a dissertation that was also published as a book of 640 pages: "The political economy of music: Legisl ...

(rsms), Johan (krignell) and Sara Andersson (fraux). The film is notable for its critical analysis of an alleged

regulatory capture In politics, regulatory capture (also agency capture and client politics) is a form of corruption of authority that occurs when a political entity, policymaker, or regulator is co-opted to serve the commercial, ideological, or political interests ...

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 A BitTorrent tracker is a special type of server that assists in the communication between peers using the BitTorrent protocol. In peer-to-peer file sharing, a software client on an end-user PC requests a file, and portions of the requested fi ...

service, in contravention of Swedish law. ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...

'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." It also screened at the

British Film Institute The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves film-making and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery to encourage film production, ...

and numerous independent international events, and was a talking point in 2007's British Documentary Film Festival. In January 2008 it was featured on

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC's ...

's ''

Today Today (archaically to-day) may refer to: * Day of the present, the time that is perceived directly, often called ''now'' * Current era, present * The current calendar date Arts, entertainment, and media Films * ''Today'' (1930 film), a 1930 ...

'', 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 Day After Tomorrow'' is a 2004 American science fiction disaster film directed, co-produced, and co-written by Roland Emmerich. Based on the 1999 book '' The Coming Global Superstorm'' by Art Bell and Whitley Strieber, the film stars De ...

'', '' 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)'' (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. Thematically, ''Part 2'' "examines the technological and enforcement end of the

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educatio ...

wars, and on the way that using the internet makes you a copier, and how copying puts you in legal jeopardy." Early review. 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 A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in which the ...

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

impossible. Adding to this the internet turns consumers into producers, by way of user generated content, leading to the sharing,

mashup Mashup may refer to: * Mashup (culture), the rearrangement of spliced parts of musical pieces as part of a subculture * Mashup (education), combining various forms of data and media by a teacher or student in an instructional setting * Mashup (m ...

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."

Interviewees (in order of appearance)

Yochai Benkler Yochai Benkler (; born 1964) is an Israeli-American author and the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School. He is also a faculty co-director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Univers ...

, professor at

Yale Law School Yale Law School (Yale Law or YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824 and has been ranked as the best law school in the United States by '' U.S. News & World ...

* Rick Prelinger, founder of the Prelinger Archive *Erik Dubbelboer, co-founder of Mininova * Aaron Swartz, co-founder of

Reddit Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") submit content to the site such as links, text posts, imag ...

Fred von Lohmann Friedrich "Fred" von Lohmann is an American lawyer who used to practice as a legal director at Google. Before joining Google in July 2010, von Lohmann was a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, specializing in intelle ...

, counsel at Google *

Brewster Kahle Brewster Lurton Kahle ( ; born October 21, 1960)Alexa Internet profile
, via juggle.com. accessed Novemb ...

, founder of the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

Howard Rheingold Howard Rheingold (born 1947) is an American critic, writer, and teacher, known for his specialties on the cultural, social and political implications of modern communication media such as the Internet, mobile telephony and virtual communities ( ...

, critic and author of ''

Smart Mobs ''Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution'' is a book by Howard Rheingold dealing with the social, economic and political changes implicated by developing technology. The book covers subjects from text-messaging culture to wireless Internet d ...

'' * Dan Glickman, former Chairman of the

Motion Picture Association of America The Motion Picture Association (MPA) is an American trade association representing the five major film studios of the United States, as well as the video streaming service Netflix. Founded in 1922 as the Motion Picture Producers and Distrib ...

Lawrence Liang Lawrence Liang is a professor of law at Ambedkar University Delhi. He is known for his legal campaigns on issues of public concern. He is a co-founder of the Alternative Law Forum and by 2006 had emerged as a spokesperson against the politics of ...

, co-founder of the Alternative Law Forum *Sebastien Lütgert, member of

Pirate Cinema Pirate Cinema is a do-it-yourself cinema. Recently Pirate Cinema has been associated with groups in Brazil, Berlin, Copenhagen, Melbourne and Helsinki, where local Pirate Cinema groups are associated with the anti-copyright movement and squat ...

Elizabeth Eisenstein Elizabeth Lewisohn Eisenstein (October 11, 1923 – January 31, 2016) was an American historian of the French Revolution and early 19th-century France. She is well known for her work on the history of early printing, writing on the transition in ...

, historian * Siva Vaidhyanathan, professor of

Media Studies Media studies is a discipline and field of study that deals with the content, history, and effects of various media; in particular, the mass media. Media Studies may draw on traditions from both the social sciences and the humanities, but mostl ...

and law at the

University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United States, with highly selective ad ...

Robert Darnton Robert Choate Darnton (born May 10, 1939) is an American cultural historian and academic librarian who specializes in 18th-century France. He was director of the Harvard University Library from 2007 to 2016. Life Darnton was born in New Yor ...

, cultural historian *Felix Stadler, media theorist *Adam Burns, director at free2air.org * Eben Moglen, founder of the

Software Freedom Law Center The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) is an organization that provides '' pro bono'' legal representation and related services to not-for-profit developers of free software/open source software. It was launched in February 2005 with Eben Mogle ...

* Seth Schoen, senior staff technologist for the

Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet ...

* Peter Sunde, co-founder and ex-spokesperson of The Pirate Bay *Robert Luxemburg, artist *

Craig Baldwin Craig Baldwin (born 1952) is an American experimental filmmaker. He uses found footage from the fringes of popular consciousness as well as images from the mass media to undermine and transform the traditional documentary, infusing it with the ...

experimental film Experimental film or avant-garde cinema is a mode of filmmaking that rigorously re-evaluates cinematic conventions and explores non-narrative forms or alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working. Many experimental films, parti ...

maker *The League of Noble Peers (represented by a "Vague Blur") * S.K.I.T.Z Beatz, composer and record producer * Wiley, rapper * Raph Levien,

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, n ...

developer and Google employee

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. ''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). The jury awarded a Special Mention for its "unconventional style and provocative look at the media revolution taking place in the world."RED/DBR (11 July 2009)
SPE – RomaFictionFest: edizione da record, sfiorate 43mila presenze
(in Italian). ''ilVelino.it''; il Velino (Italy). Retrieved 16 July 2010
English tr.
/ref>

Festivals, cinema and other screenings

''Steal This Film'' was selected for the Sheffield International Documentary Film Festival 2008, South By Southwest festival 2008 in Austin,

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...

, and the Singapore International Film Festival 2008. Other festivals at which it was shown included Tampere Film Festival, 2008, Salt Spring Film Festival 2007, Rhythm of the Line Festival 2007 and Kerala International Film Festival, India. ''Steal This Film'' was nominated for the

Ars Electronica Ars Electronica Linz GmbH is an Austrian cultural, educational and scientific institute active in the field of new media art, founded in Linz in 1979. It is based at the Ars Electronica Center (AEC), which houses the Museum of the Future, in th ...

2008 Digital Communities prize 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.

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. ''Part 2'' had its theatrical (rather than viewed online) premiere at the openly organised ''Who Makes And Owns Your Work'' artistic seminar in

Stockholm Stockholm () is the capital and largest city of Sweden as well as the largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people live in the municipality, with 1.6 million in the urban area, and 2.4 million in the metropo ...

2007. Despite the principles of the seminar itself (organised via public

wiki A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pub ...

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. 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. Stealthisfilm

The documentary was officially released for

peer-to-peer filesharing Peer-to-peer file sharing is the distribution and sharing of digital media using peer-to-peer (P2P) networking technology. P2P file sharing allows users to access media files such as books, music, movies, and games using a P2P software program tha ...

using

peer-to-peer networks Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network. They are said to form a peer-to-peer n ...

on 28 December 2007 and, according to the filmmakers, downloaded 150,000 times in the first three days of distribution.

Pirate Bay The Pirate Bay (sometimes abbreviated as TPB) is an online index of digital content of entertainment media and software. Founded in 2003 by Swedish think tank Piratbyrån, The Pirate Bay allows visitors to search, download, and contribute magn ...

encouraged the downloading of Steal This Film Two, announcing its release on its blog. ''Steal This Film Part 2'' was also screened by the

Copenhagen in January 2008. The documentary can also be downloaded on the official Steal This Film website.

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 PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support online money transfers, and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper ...

account, from the website. 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."

Donations

The League of Noble Peers asked for donations and more than US$30,000 has been received as of 5 July 2009. 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

. Where Part One contains no personal attribution, Part Two has full credits.

References

External links

* * * * under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License {{Intellectual property activism Intellectual property activism Documentary films about the Internet British documentary films File sharing 2006 films 2007 films German documentary films Politics and technology Documentary films about the media The Pirate Bay Pirate Party (Sweden) Films about freedom of expression Works about copyright law Articles containing video clips Creative Commons-licensed documentary films 2000s English-language films 2000s British films 2000s German films