I stumbled across this article a while back. The producer an independent film called “Jerome Bixby’s The Man From Earth,” wrote a letter to rlslog.net, thanking them for pirating his movie. Because of digital pirates, his movie became extremely popular, and even made it to the top of Amazon. So I thought I’d do my part to promote goodness.
Even before this, some people had already embraced the inevitable. For example, “someone” released 4 episodes long before the season began — which created a huge online following, and tons of people watching on tv. The creator, Jenji Kohan seemed happy about it.
I encourage you to do your part (on the top article mostly), to digg, stumble, and spread the word.
7 responses so far ↓
1 Eric D. Wilkinson // Jan 13, 2008 at 9:49 pm
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?
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 2 months later we still have a respectable chart position of #183. As I write this we have an exceptionally high 8.4 rating on IMDb with 7,400+ 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, I 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 (http://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:
http://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 http://www.manfromearth.com and send us a “friend request” at http://www.myspace.com/manfromearth (if you have a myspace page).
Thanks again.
Sincerely,
Eric D. Wilkinson
Producer
Jerome Bixby’s The Man From Earth
2 Mister Poo // Jan 14, 2008 at 7:19 am
Piracy is artistic freedom. Another word for…
stealing?
another word for… liberty?
All values are from the beholders view. It is always this way.
Luckily the pictures of human excrement on my site are copyright free. You can copy as much as you want.
3 C-Squared // Jan 15, 2008 at 2:49 am
Now, if only the record companies could understand that. They have viral marketing already. Why haven’t they gotten the idea of viral P2P? I can bet you it costs less than all the ads and glamour they churn out every day.
4 edzme // Jan 15, 2008 at 10:27 am
@Eric - Congratulations on your movie. I’m so glad you decided to reach out to the P2P community. With that one letter you gained the respect of thousands of viewers and saved millions on advertising. Best of luck on your next one!
@C-squared - Thats true, its like epidemic viral marketing. They should just do a lot of in show advertisements, like “Its A Grind” does in Weeds.
5 Eric D. Wilkinson // Jan 17, 2008 at 10:43 am
edzme,
Thanks for the kind words. Check out the movie. I am sure you will like it.
E
6 Scrabulous VS Mattel/Hasbro // Jan 17, 2008 at 3:33 pm
[...] Eric D. Wilkinson on Internet Piracy Isn’t All Evil365 To Freedom dot Com » Available Domain Names, Feeds To Read, and Dumb New Bloggers on Domain [...]
7 ptc // Apr 17, 2008 at 8:04 pm
Interesting topic to think about!
Well, (Mister Poo), I don’t think “piracy” can be an alternative to “liberty” … and no doubt, it comes pretty close to “stealing”
When someone’s put a lot of effort creating something nice, exploiting that creation (just because you can’t be traced) without giving back anything to that creator ain’t called liberty … it’s rather exploitation of the freedom.
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