A Pirate's Life For Me
By AnonymousDecember 4th, 2007, 3:00 pmComments (1)
As the WGA strike drags on, America is perhaps more aware than ever of the issue of compensation for web-based content. With piracy an everyday fact of life for the studios and more internet content being produced every day, opinions on web issues are coming fast and furious from every corner: Jaron Lanier, an internet content provider (and former author of the manifesto "Piracy is Your Friend") has become an internet apostate and now sides with the striking writers who demand to be paid for web work, as his editorial in the New York Times makes clear. At Bit-Tech, however, indie producer Eric Wilkinson admits that his film, Jerome Bixby's The Man from Earth, is getting as much attention as it is largely due to its having been widely pirated by Bittorrent sites. Perhaps our favorite take on the piracy issue comes from The Office writer/actress Mindy Kaling (who's currently on strike). Addressing movie theater PSAs that compare pirating films to stealing a car, she says, "You know what? I would steal a car, if it was as easy as, like, touching the car, and then thirty seconds later, I owned the car. . . and if, by stealing the car, the person who owned the car, they got to keep the car."
Comment ( 1 )
Ahhh, there's that word "pirate" again. Why not refer to it (them) as the "P2P file sharing community". Doesn't the word "community" sound so much nicer?
Anyway, I am posting a comment to expand upon Leonard's short article.
Without question, P2P put this movie on the map (good thing we made a movie that the "community" liked). In my opinion, the value of the awareness that P2P created, was more than worth what we may (or may not) have lost in DVD sales. Let's face it, in a million years I would have never thought that during the week of our DVD release, "Jerome Bixby's The Man From Earth" would be the 5th most popular movie on the IMDb MovieMeter (not to mention the #1 sci-fi movie and #1 independent film). Even 4 weeks later we still have a respectable chart position of #149 (we are #19 on the sci-fi chart and the #13 most searched for sci-fi title). As I write this we have an exceptionally high 8.4 rating on IMDb with 3,000+ votes. Not bad for a little movie that probably costs the same as a day of craft services on the Transformers movie.
Instead of attacking the community, We (director Richard Schenkman and my producing partner) just reached out to them. Whether we liked it or not, TMFE would have ended up on the 'net anyway. By reaching out to them (https://www.rlslog.net/piracy-isnt-that-bad-and-they-know-it/), we motivated them into further supporting the movie with thousands upon thousands of posts and emails from all over the world. (At this point we are using this very data to help sell the film overseas). In addition, we have received countless donations from all over the world from the "community" (many of which were exceptionally generous) to support this little indie. And even a month later, they are still talking about it.
In closing, for those who are reading this and have seen "Jerome Bixby's The Man From Earth", please, head on over to our IMDb message board at:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0756683/board
...and read, read, read! You can also "rate" the film and post a review.
Check out our website at www.manfromearth.com and send us a "friend request" at www.myspace.com/manfromearth (if you have a myspace page).
Thanks again. Great little article. I'm bookmarking this site.
Sincerely,
Eric D. Wilkinson
Producer
Jerome Bixby's The Man From Earth
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