Michael Moore decided to give away his latest film ‘Slacker Uprising’ for free, but only to people in the US and Canada. However, since he chose to use BitTorrent, and open trackers such as The Pirate Bay, it was fairly easy for the rest of the world to download it as well. Was this done on purpose? Moore responds.
Like many other filmmakers, Moore wants his film to be seen by as many people as possible. However, the ‘rights holders’ have other interests. They want to sell the movie to as many people as possible, making sure they get every penny they are entitled to.
Moore’s latest documentary, Slacker Uprising, is only available for free in Northern America. People who attempt to download the torrent elsewhere get this annoying “Sorry” message. Since there are no geographical restrictions on the official torrent file, however, it was easy to share the film with the rest of the world. It would only take one person to upload the torrent to another site, and the rest of the world would have access to it. That’s exactly what happened.
In last week’s article, we asked the question: “Is this deliberate, or accidental?” Since it is so easy to share the documentary with people outside the US and Canada, we hinted that this might have been done on purpose. A few days later, Michael Moore contacted us, with a direct response to the question we posed.
“What do you think I’m up to? I know it may not be obvious to most, but I think you guys get it,” Moore wrote to us. “I only own the US and Canadian rights. So my hands are tied. But this is the 21st century. What are ‘geographical rights’ ?” Moore continued. “I’ll say it for the hundredth time: If I buy a book and read it, and then give you the book to read, I have broken no laws. Why is that not true for all media?”
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