Tag: piracy

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Truly Free Film

The Really Good Things In FilmBiz 2014

Let's look at the bright side!
Let’s look at the bright side!

Some rituals help keep us focused throughout the year. This marks the 4th time I have looked back at all the good things that occurred in the film biz and listed them out for all of us. Tracking them through year, keeps me from abandoning hope. Sometimes they may just be the silver lining in the storm cloud, but nonetheless they keep me going, keep me convinced that in fact we truly are: building it better together. I hope they do something close to that for you. It’s been a good year, and I have thirty two morsels to tempt you with. And of course the year’s not through yet, so perhaps you have some to add to this too. 

If you’ve encountered elements of this list earlier on my postings in Film Comment and on Keyframe, pay careful attention as I have weaved some new points into all for your reading pleasure. And if you like a little of the bitter to wash down the sweet, don’t forget the list of 30 Bad Things In 2014’s Film Biz here.

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Issues and Actions The Next Good Idea

Sometimes We Forget To Do The Obvious

If the best solution is the easiest solution, what takes us so long to do it?  The film industry complains about piracy.  But what do we do about it?  If you want to find a movie available illegally, all you have to do is search for it.  But what if you don’t want to have the artists or their supporters suffer? What if you want to make sure that they are compensated for the work they have created? How do you find the legal sites?

Now there is a solution.  Finally…

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Truly Free Film

What Issues Do Filmmakers Need To Track?

If filmmakers don't track core issues, they will find their form abandoned in the parking lotA creative life is a precarious thing.  Actions occur that could profoundly effect your ability to earn a living doing what you love.  We get blindsided again and again, sometimes not recognizing things until they are too late to alter them.  It’s one of the reasons I have tried to meticulously track for you what are the good thing and bad things happening in indie film these days.  Yet, it seems to me we all need to do a better job of tracking them if we don’t want to get trapped in a future we won’t be part of..

My thought is that we should be able to define a series of issues in which we can put events, ideas, and articles into as they occur, helping each other stay on top of them. 

The first step is to define the issues.  That is what I am doing today .

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Issues and Actions

What Does The Film Industry REALLY Think?

Stephen Follows and his team surveyed 1,235 film industry professionals, all of whom have attended at least one of the three major film markets (Cannes, Berlin or AFM) within the past five years and asked questions on a variety of hot topics including piracy, the appeal of 3D, gender, and how optimistic industry professionals are for 2014.

To receive a free 25 page PDF containing all the results,  sign up for his email mailing list at

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Truly Free Film

10 Must Read Or Watch Film Biz Articles Of 2013

  1. Steven Soderbergh’s “State Of Cinema” Address at SFIFF56: http://vimeo.com/65060864. This served as the framing for AO Scott’s 2013 Cinema overview.
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Truly Free Film

The Digital Recession, Pt 2: The Problem With Piracy

By Jim Cummings

The amount of digital piracy in a country is correlated to the average internet speed. It would be very time consuming to download Avatar on a dial-up modem, so many in El Salvador will have to buy a hard copy, but Americans often watch movies online for free simply by googling the movie’s title followed by the word “streaming”. As if this isn’t already easy enough, advancements in internet speeds will only make watching movies for free easier, or in my opinion, ubiquitous.

In 2010, a filmmaker friend of mine raised

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Truly Free Film

Keeping the Pirates at Bay

by Andrew Einspruch

Filmmaker Andrew Einspruch recently attended the Australian International Documentary Conference and wrote a series of articles for the event, which he’s graciously allowed us to reprint here. These articles originally appeared in Screen Hub, the daily online newspaper for Australian film and television professionals.

It comes down to money.

Ultimately, money is the reason most people steal (or “pirate”, “borrow”, “find”, “preview” – call it what you will) digital content, although other factors can come into it, like not wanting to wait for something to become available legally.

And money is the reason there is a problem with those people who are doing it, since it represents potential lost revenue to the content creator. “Piracy takes distribution out of your hands,” said Lori Flekser, from the Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia. “You can’t control how you distribute it or how you monetise it. That is the worst thing about piracy to me.”

Flekser cited research from the Intellectual Property Awareness Foundation, who anonymously surveyed 16,000 people over 18, saying the the myth that “everybody does it” is just not true. While the survey missed the crucial under-18‘s demographic, it still showed that only 73% of those surveyed said they had pirated material. Of the 27% who do pirate, the vast majority (86%) said they do it because it is free. The bad news is that of those who regularly pirate, they would still do it even if a paid option were easily available.

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