Dutch movie director Martin Koolhoven sent out an unusual request on Twitter a few days ago.
While many filmmakers fear The Pirate Bay, Koolhoven asked his followers to upload a copy of his 1999 film "Suzy Q" to the site.
The filmmaker had become fed up with the fact that copyright issues made his work completely unavailable through legal channels. "Can someone just upload Suzy Q to The Pirate Bay?" Koolhoven asked. To his surprise, pirates were quick to deliver.
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A new scheme aimed at redeeming the UK's illegal file-sharers from their law-breaking ways will see emails sent out to persistent offenders from next year.
The government-brokered Voluntary Copyright Alert Programme (VCAP), agreed between ISPs and organisations representing content creators, hopes to educate web users, alerting them to file-sharing illegality.
Offenders will receive up to four emails a year under the scheme, but no further action will be taken if they send those warnings directly to the trash can and continue illegally downloading music, movies and books.
BT, TalkTalk, Sky and Virgin have already signed up for the Vcap scheme with several smaller ISPs expected to do so soon.
El Reg reports:
The Pirate Bay has poked Big Content's sore spot again, by erecting a site for mobile devices at themobilebay.org. [blocked in some countries]
The new site doesn't do much beyond features offered by The Pirate Bay's other ventures. The site's overseers told Torrent Freak that "The normal version of the site renders like crap on mobile devices", an experience the small-screen version seems designed to improve.
BitTorrent clients exist for Android, iOS devices (after jailbreak), and BlackBerry, so the existence of a mobile site does make it possible more torrents will land in mobile devices.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday July 25 2014, @01:32PM
Cue legal back-arsewardness as various legal entities now sue and/ or prosecute him for causing his own work to be distributed online...
(Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Friday July 25 2014, @01:50PM
Grabs popcorn
(Score: 3, Funny) by present_arms on Friday July 25 2014, @02:36PM
takes a handful and runs
http://trinity.mypclinuxos.com/
(Score: 2) by meisterister on Friday July 25 2014, @03:05PM
(Manages to create infinite free clones of the popcorn using only electricity and time. Gets sued by popcorn manufacturers association)
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Friday July 25 2014, @02:57PM
This depends. He may be the Director, but just as Kaskade was in favor of Michelle Phan using his music, he might not own the rights to distribute that music. So yes, it's quite possible that the publisher will lash out at the director for this action.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Friday July 25 2014, @03:20PM
It doesn't really matter, as he didn't upload it himself. Can he be charged for encouraging someone to commit a copyright violation? Really, I'd consider it political opinion.
(Score: 1) by ThG on Friday July 25 2014, @03:30PM
> Can he be charged for encouraging someone to commit a copyright violation?
That depends on whether or not it's a US court.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Friday July 25 2014, @06:24PM
Conspiracy to corrupt public morals (an offence under the common law of England and Wales) - "This offence covers situations where, for example, a publisher encourages immoral behavior through explicit content in a magazine or periodical"
there's also encouraging or assisting crime [wikipedia.org] under English law.
jurisdiction doesn't seem to exist anymore when it comes to "intellectual property crimes", so it doesn't really matter where he lives, and if they really wanted to bust him, whoever has jurisdiction over him could probably get him charged with Conspiracy.
(Score: 2, Informative) by mckwant on Friday July 25 2014, @03:52PM
Hell, doesn't even have to be the distributor. In this case, it was the soundtrack.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sita_Sings_the_Blues#Copyright_problems [wikipedia.org]
Key bit (emphasis mine):
"Although the filmmaker initially made sure these recordings were not covered by US copyright law, a number of other copyright issues surfaced, including state laws prior to US federal copyright law on recordings, rights to the compositions and the right to synchronize the recordings with images."
My understanding is that the last bit was the big problem. Now, to be fair, part of the music used was the "Am I blue? Am I blue? Ain't these tears in my eyes tellin' you?" song, but still.
(Score: 2) by mrider on Friday July 25 2014, @02:47PM
Now I need to watch it. Apparently there's no legal way to get the movie, so I can't purchase it if I like it, but I can keep an eye out for more stuff by the same group of people. Maybe spend money watching something else by the same director...
Doctor: "Do you hear voices?"
Me: "Only when my bluetooth is charged."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2014, @04:55PM
> I can keep an eye out for more stuff by the same group of people.
The director's most recent movie, Winter in Wartime, [imdb.com] is good. It is out on bluray.
Although I admit to having watched a pirated version...
(Score: 1) by skullz on Friday July 25 2014, @02:57PM
Looks like it starred someone you appeared on that Game of Thrones thingy so its got Got GOT to be viewed!
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm540782848/nm0396924?ref_=nm_phs_md_5 [imdb.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2014, @02:57PM
He already made all the money he could legally make off this movie, so now, all of a sudden, he doesn't care how people watch his movie, so for free is fine. When it was still for sale he wasn't so cavalier and didn't want it on pb. Meanwhile he is sending the wrong message. If everybody uses pb and nobody buys then there will be no more movies made. That's why I pay for my movies (on DVD).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Friday July 25 2014, @03:33PM
You're arguing against your own viewpoint...if he already made all the money he was going to from the movie, why should he care whether it's given away free? Are you seriously arguing that the MPAA needs to be able to make more money?
It sounds more like he's sending the exact RIGHT message. Copyright was never intended to protect works in perpetuity, only for a limited time anyway. (Although in this particular case one might argue that 15 years isn't long enough.)
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2014, @03:50PM
Alright, I guess you'd better save the poor, poor movie industry since this guy's tweet asking a legally unavailable movie to be not lost to the sands of time will definitely finish them off. I mean, the industry only made about $11 billion [wikipedia.org] in the box offices in NA alone last year, so I'm sure the MPAA members are crying to their families that they've no bread for supper tonight.
So go on, AC, save the poor fellows by buying Suzy Q on DVD. Oh, wait... Watch it on TV then... No? Uh, theatre? Broadcaster's website? ... Hm.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by zzw30 on Friday July 25 2014, @04:00PM
"If everybody uses pb and nobody buys then there will be no more movies made."
The process may shift away from profit-centric industries making them, but I'd say that the plethora of free content on Youtube shows that this isn't the case. People want to tell stories, and the equipment to tell those stories is only getting cheaper. Look at the explosion of bedroom DJs as an example; 20 years ago, if you wanted to DJ, you had to make a huge investment in equipment and records, and the time to go find those albums. Nowadays, anyone with a computer with a halfway decent internet connection and a $200 controller can try their hand at mixing. Movies are the same way; the hardware to film at a decent quality keeps getting cheaper, the common computer can do the special effects that used to require render farms, etc etc. Look at Youtube channels like Drive and Geek&Sundry to see very high quality content being made outside of the industry.
Maybe if we remove a large chunk of the profit, we can get copyright lengths reduced to something sane. How cool would it be to see someone else's take on Star Wars? If we had a 25-year copyright, Star Wars would have become public domain in 2012. Can you imagine a Kevin Smith re-write? Or a version directed by Tarantino? Or the complete opposite direction and Edgar Wright did? I'm not sure that any of them would be interested in investing the time/effort into it, but we'll never know what could've been.
(Score: 1) by jbWolf on Friday July 25 2014, @08:38PM
In a sense, many others have made Star Wars in their own image. Check out Star Wars Uncut [starwarsuncut.com]. It's a bunch of 15 second segments made by a bunch o' people and edited together into "the" Star Wars movie. (I had nothing to do with it, but I think it is really cool. It's an interesting project, for sure.) Empire Strikes Back is currently in production.
I'll also give a shameless plug for my Star Wars parody [jb-wolf.com] script which follows the movie as closely as possible without going to the dark side and plagiarizing. It is my personal take on Episode IV and I'd love to see someone make that into a movie. Also, because it is a parody, it should be totally legal.
As for the 25 year copyright, I personally think that is way too long, but I'm totally with you on getting stuff into the public domain so others can build on that work. Personally, I'd go for 10 years which would make Episode III fair game in two years. I have plenty of details about my "Ten Year Idea" on my website.
www.jb-wolf.com [jb-wolf.com]
(Score: 2, Informative) by jbWolf on Friday July 25 2014, @08:48PM
Yeah, I suck. I'm replying twice, but I've got something else for you.
Check out What if Star Wars Episode 1 Was Good" [youtube.com] followed by What if Star Wars Episode 2 Was Good" [youtube.com]. I would have loved to have seen this guy's version of Episodes 1 and 2. He makes a lot of radical "what if" changes to Episode 1... and by Episode 2, he's taking a radically (and much different) path from Lucas story wise. I think it's friggin' awesome. Hope you like it.
www.jb-wolf.com [jb-wolf.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by dcollins on Friday July 25 2014, @05:11PM
Your argument is self-defeating -- if all the money has been on this movie, then copyright serves no further purpose in motivating a work such as this.
Copyright is supposed to be for "limited Times" (Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the U.S. Constitution). Originally copyright only lasted 14 years -- and hey, look, that's exactly the amount of time since this movie was released. After that amount of time has passed an artwork deserves to be part of the public domain and our cultural heritage. Having stuff be locked up and inaccessible for centuries so Disney lawyers can squeeze a few more cents out, long after the makers are dead, is a major corruption of the system.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Friday July 25 2014, @11:43PM
NOW does everyone see why we need a NO AC button? Because no matter how high you surf at you will still get pants on head retarded AC crap like this. hell 5 seconds with a functioning brain would show how stupid this is, because if it were so then we'd have no art prior to IP laws but last I checked we not only had plenty but it was more diverse. The ONLY ones that are helped by these fucked up IP laws is rich old white men that haven't created a damned thing in their miserable greedy lives but have enough money to buy the rights (as well as congress critters) and make that single purchase last for all eternity, see Valenti and his "forever minus a single day" shit.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 26 2014, @12:44AM
> NOW does everyone see why we need a NO AC button? Because no matter how high you
> surf at you will still get pants on head retarded AC crap like this.
Any idiot could have written that, AC or not. It is not a particularly unique opinion.
Besides, a +2 mod does not qualify as "high." That's what you post at by default.
Seems to me your focus on the tangential characteristic of AC is a logical short-circuit.
Like holding all blond and blue eyed men responsible for Nazism.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 26 2014, @10:48AM
...which seems weird to me, because he seems to be an otherwise smart guy. I mostly agree with his comments, except for his constant bitching about me.
(Score: 2) by present_arms on Friday July 25 2014, @04:17PM
How did the Movie write the summary for the article?
http://trinity.mypclinuxos.com/
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2014, @04:51PM
For that, you'll have to watch the movie.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Freeman on Friday July 25 2014, @04:44PM
According to the Torrent Freak article the issue is with the rights to the Music in the movie. The movie itself was actually funded using Public Money. This is not the first time I have heard of Music jacking over what should be a Public Domain video. Also according to the Torrent Freak article Martin Koolhoven posted a copy to You Tube himself and the video has remained. The only thing You Tube did was checked with him to see, if he had rights for the music. Which he does not. Maybe You Tube is now the best way to Archive your Public Domain stuff?
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 28 2014, @02:41PM
Unfortunately this is not a lone exception but the rule. These are called orphan works. And you really really need to know about them to have a enlightened dialogue about copyright policy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_works [wikipedia.org]