Steal This Film: Pirate Bay Trial edition

The creators of the Pirate Bay documentary "Steal This Film" have released footage from their next installment in honor of the trial of the Pirate Bay's founders (yesterday's hearings ended with a bang, when the prosecution dropped half the charges -- the more serious half -- after realizing they couldn't make the case stick).

Today the Pirate Bay are on trial, and we are proud to support them with this trial edition of Steal This Film. STF 'Trial edition' contains unseen footage, including Brokep and Tiamo preparing for the trial, and re-enactments of their police interviews.

STEAL THIS FILM: DOWNLOAD THE TRIAL EDITION (via Waxy)

• [presto]

  It’s encouraging that the heavier charges were dropped. The government’s case is looking a lot weaker now than it was before. In case nobody knows about that, this came from Threat Level:

  (Dropping charges) may have been prompted in part by the defendants’ opening statements. On Monday, Pirate Bay co-founder Fredrik Neij discussed so called “trackerless torrents,” which use a Distributed Hash Table, or DHT, and don’t rely on a torrent tracker at all.

  “We believe he dropped charges after having googled all night about DHT,” an upbeat Peter Sunde, one of the defendants, told Wired.com later. Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg boasted that they were just scratching the surface of the flaws in the government’s case, and that they would raise deeper technical points later in the trial.

  It remains to be seen whether facilitating making torrent files available is enough to commit the criminal act of assisting in copyright infringement.

  “Absolutely not,” claimed Rick Falkvinge, the leader of The Pirate Party. “If they can claim that facilitating for others to publish a torrent file, which contains no copyright protected information whatsoever, then this shows that they want to shut down the internet for good.”

  I have long been a believer that although there are aggregious acts of copyright violation, the benefits of file sharing outweigh the negatives. People can download obscure masterpieces, like Luis Bunuel movies for example, and broaden their education and horizons in ways that would not exist without P2P. Movies like Belle de Jour don’t come on television, and aren’t available at most video stores even to rent. That’s just an example, and this is just my opinion.

• [HeruRaHa]

  Well said Presto. Well I may have watched a few “blockbuster” movies online over the years — both via torrents and via services like Hulu and Netflix Streaming — by and large my Internet-based viewing has leaned heavily towards difficult to find and obscure films and shows, documentaries, art pieces, and personal projects distributed under some kind of commons license or no license at all…. It really is sad to see the “it can be used for a crime” justification being used to shut down P2P services. A car could be used to run someone over or get away from a bank robbery, but we still allow folks to own these giant death-mobiles with hardly any restriction whatsoever.

• [HeruRaHa]

  True, true… we’re likely talking more about our own tastes than any inherent good of P2P… I’m sure for every person like me who spent hours scouring the Internet looking for bootlegs of Jodorowsky’s films before they *finally* digitally remastered and re-released them on DVD, there are 150 kids with every single Britney Spears CD illegally downloaded from Limewire… *sigh*

• [redrichie]

  Hi Heruraha: I’m inclined to agree. You’re right, P2P has worked for me because I’ve been able to hear (some great) music that I would not be able to hear without acess to filesharing.

  That said, I suspect we may well be in the minority and this is why I find it hard to start berating the fat cats at the record labels or the scumbags at the RIAA. Not becuase I don’t hate them, you understand. My response, though, is one of “meh,” I just haven’t listened to the drivel that the majors insist upon pumping out for years.