Steal This Film II

  Steal This Film I & II are amazing documentaries about copyright, filesharing, and the internet in general. They are probably the most straightforward, down to earth views on the current crisis our society is facing whereas “intellectual property” is concerned.

I saw the first Steal This Film during my senior year of college. The only reason I found it was because at the time I found myself arguing against copyrights in several of my classes. I met with much resistance when arguing, surprisingly not from the professors, but from my fellow classmates, people who statistically are the largest group of pirates today. The professors surprised me however, recommending several books, and naming Lawrence Lessig. I ended up writing papers and giving presentations in at least 4 classes over the course of that year.

Then Steal This Film came out. The movie has a way of simply explaining the history of copyrights and arguing how the system is broken, and even how dangerous that is for our new internet based society. And now this week Steal This Film II has just been released which expands even further on the subject.

The underlying theme behind it all is that in this day and age with so much power being given to the computer and the internet the playing field is being leveled between creator and consumer and how frightened the industries that have profited so much have become. Technology has given so much power to artist who simply want to create and have their work received, and it is possible for one to accomplish this completely independently now.

The printing press, which was met with much resistance from publishers, led to the first enlightenment.  Now, with the internet, we can lead ourselves to a new enlightenment.  we just need to overcome the resistance.