The topic I chose for my final paper is illegal music downloading. I couldn’t find a movie that dealt with the issue of illegal music downloading. Therefore, I went to google.com and found a video that was almost an hour long, and dealt with the issue. The video was a documentary called, Steal This Film: Part 2. It was created on December 31, 2007. J.J. King worked on the production and the direction of the film. Alan Toner, J.J. King, Jan Gerber, and Sebastian Lutgert worked on the concepts of the film. The research for the film was done by Alan Toner, J.J. King, and Luca Lucarini. The whole concept of the documentary is to explain the ways that we produce, distribute, and consume media. One of the main arguments that was presented in the video was, “Is it good or bad that there are now laws which make it harder to get information that’s not your own, and sell or use it"? This film relates to my final paper because I want to know exactly why consumers chose to download illegally. Many people spoke about their views on the subject throughout the documentary. Chairman Dan Glickman says, "Piracy will never be stopped. We just have to try to make it as difficult and as tedious as possible. And we have to let people know there are consequences if they are caught". Attorney Fred Von Lohmann believes that, “law enforcers sue a few people and then punish them severely in order to intimidate a larger number of other people". Law enforcers think that intimidation alone is enough to change peoples’ behaviors, but as we all know it’s not enough. One of the quotes that were said in the video was," Intellectual property is the oil of the 21st century". Mark Ghetty, owner of Ghetty images, is the owner of this quote. Although Ghetty himself was not in the film at all, Sebastian Lutgert explained what the quote means to him. He basically explains that the quote means war, meaning that we fight for our rights to use natural resources. I agree with this quote. I believe that people want to use any resource that’s available, no matter what the cost. If it’s available, we want to use it.
This film compared downloading music illegally to the history of printing. When printing was first invented, printers were the ones being sued for people stealing other’s ideas, just like how record companies were the ones being sued for people illegally downloading. People began smuggling books because they simply didn’t want to pay for them, similarly to people stealing music today because they don’t want to pay for it. Illegally downloading isn’t the only form of, “stealing music” that was discussed in the film. When someone copies a CD from somebody else, this is considered to be stealing too! Consumers have many reasons why they decided to illegally download.
Technology advancement has made it very easy for people to want to copy and share music. According to the film, that’s one of the main reasons why people choose to do so. Another reason is that people love to network with one another. According to Attorney Fred Von Lohmann, “People like the fact that nobody’s in charge of networks, and everybody is in control over their own communications”. It’s so fast and very inexpensive to make copies and distribute them. The film stresses that piracy will never stop because: People like to communicate, share things, and transform things. In the video, down loaders of this illegal activity gave their thoughts and opinions.
Many illegal down loaders were interviewed. A few unknown people in the film were music producers who make their own music. They say they like the fact that they can make music, download it onto the computer, and have others download it. To them, it shows that people like listening to their music. One unknown producer talked about how he likes the fact that people like to remix the songs that he makes, because once again it shows that people like his music. Once one copy of music, etc. is put onto the internet, many copies can be produced.
If one copy gets onto the net, then it suddenly becomes available to everyone to use. There was a funny example of this that was shown in the film. A girl and her mother went to a pet store to get a rabbit. The prices of the rabbits were too high, and the man at the pet store refused to sell the rabbits for any price cheaper. Somehow two of the rabbits got lose from the cage. The little girl then grabbed the rabbits and ran out of the store. This is obviously considered to be stealing. That whole scenario relates to people illegally downloading, and the film stressed that. Like mentioned before, if people feel that the prices of buying a CD is to high, then why not download it online for free? Then more people will download from that source, and so forth. There isn’t just, “one”, computer that’ll stop piracy. In order to completely stop piracy, we would have to go to every single computer and block access to illegal downloading, which seems to be impossible. Trying to find the film’s genre was confusing for me.
The film didn’t have any particular genre, since it wasn’t a movie. It was a documentary. Therefore, it just talked about the issue of illegal downloading and sharing information and how others felt about the issue. There was no action, adventure, comedy, etc. that was presented in the film. I did critique the way the director and others in the movie were.
The director and all of the other people in the film weren’t dressed in any particular way. Some of the people who had more importance were dressed up in a business-like way. For example the attorney and the director himself were dressed business-like. Those who were interviewed from the street were dressed in casual wear. After watching the entire film, I formed my opinion of the film.
My overall opinion of the film is I liked it. I liked the examples that were given throughout the movie. Like I previously mentioned, the rabbit example was one of my favorites. I found it to be funny because it’s a great example of exactly how music starts to spread illegally. The fact that the film interviewed real consumers that illegally download was interesting to me. I myself have illegally downloaded in the past, so I feel like I can relate to these consumers and their opinions on it. It’s so easy to download illegal that it becomes hard to resist at times.