Steal This Film 2 footage open sourced

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The documentary on the future of intellectual property, copyright, filesharing and distribution has launched a new section of the website comprising source footage from the film to view full interviews. Visitors can search the footage through text transcripts, and download video files to view and remix.

The intention behind this archive is to try and catalyze the development of a world of collaborative filmmaking, making use of the low costs of distribution and online communication

Footage from the film has been released and permissions cleared from interviewees to release it under an attribution share-alike license from Creative Commons. The website contains video files searchable by text transcripts with Howard Rheingold, Bram Cohen, Rick Preminger, Yochai Benkler, and others on ‘cultural industries in the age of digital reproduction’, ‘innovation and the commons’, ‘appropriating, scratching, and decoding’.

This all might sound great for academics, and the resource is sure to be a goldmine for many a media thesis, but the subjects talked about are timely and relevant for all artists and creatives engaged with online content and creation.

“The intention behind this archive is to try and catalyze the development of a world of collaborative filmmaking, making use of the low costs of distribution and online communication. A significant cost facing low-budget documentary makers today derives from the expense of travel, accommodation, food and equipment hire involved in filming; sharing footage is a means, albeit imperfect, of mitigating these costs. It also offers the chance to open film to criticism in a new way, by reworking the materials in a way that undermines the closed nature of the filmmaking process. ”

Videos can be viewed in Ogg Theora format on-site, while high-definition video of the interviews can be downloaded via Bittorrent. 

Posted by Admin on 2008/05/21

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Posted by Admin (2008/05/26)

Video playback is cumbersome using the Java applet embed on the page, would have been nice to have a flv option.