Meeting the League of the Noble Peers in Sheffield during the premiere of their film Steal this film II. Jamie King explains further plans to develop financing systems for filmmakers. The Concept is called DIstributed, Supportive Payment system (DISPS). DISPS could potentially be applied to Deptford.TV

DISPS is a robust system allowing donors to make Distributed, voluntary Supportive Payments (DISPs) to creators, producers and distributors of media. DISPS is premised on the fact that free sharing of files through p2p networks is irrevocable. Under DISPS, consumers choose to make voluntary supportive payments directly to the producer without the mediation of the file/media as commodity.

Steal this film on Wikipedia:

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 film ^[4]is notable for its critical analysis of an alleged regulatory capture^[5] 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.

The Guardian Newspaper called it ‘at heart a traditionally-structured “talking heads” documentary’ with ‘amusing stylings’ from film-makers who ‘practice what they preach.’^[6]. Screened at the British Film Institute and numerous independent international events, Steal This Film One was a talking point in 2007’s British Documentary Film Festival.^[7]. 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.

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 ^[8] (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, November 2007.^[9]

Thematically, part Two examines the technological and cultural aspects of the copyright wars, and the cultural and economic implications of the internet. It includes an exploration of Mark Getty‘s infamous statement that ‘intellectual property is the oil of the 21st century’. Part two 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 consumer 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”.

It was selected for the Sheffield International Documentary Film Festival,^[10] South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, ^[11] and the Singapore International Film Festival ^[12]. It was also shown during the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam ^[13] 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.^[14]

Distribution

A cam version leaked soon after the preliminary premiere in Berlin.^[15] Part Two had its ‘conventional’ (ie, projected rather than viewed online) premiere at the openly-organised artistic seminar in Stockholm 2007.^[16] 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.

The documentary was officially released on filesharing networks on December 28, 2007 and, according to the filmmakers, ^[17] downloaded 150,000 times in the first three days of distribution. Pirate Bay encouraged the downloading of Steal This Film Two, announcing its release on its blog.^[18] Steal This Film Two was also screened by the Pirate Cinema Copenhagen in January 2008.^[19] The documentary can also be downloaded on the official Steal This Film website.[3]

The League of Noble Peers asks for donations and more than US$5000 has been received as of January 5 2008. ^[20]

Language

Like Part One, Part Two is in English. However, 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.

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.

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.

The League of Noble Peers are now working on a cinema release of Steal This Film.