What’s All The Fuss About Piracy?
So piracy is wrong but it isn’t stealing (see below for details). In film making there is, however, another confusion and our own beloved Shooting People website is a very good example of it.
Filmmakers, especially those who make short films, are constantly encouraged to give their work away for free. So much so that it can often be seen as quite an affront if you refuse to do so. Shooting People offers a superb online streaming service where members can watch each other’s films for free. Youtube offers the same freedom to anyone with a broadband connection. There are plenty others doing the same thing.
For some, like Shooting People and the BBC Film Network the benefit to the company is a mixture of kudos and what we were set up to do. For many though, the benefit is to monetise the dead-air (or advertising space) on either side of the film. Not all platforms and producers share the revenue generated in this way with the filmmakers. If you challenge this then usually the response boils down to the idea that if you’re making a short film you should be grateful for the chance to get it shown and stop whinging.
As I said before, with other creative industries, giving away your work can make economic sense if you can use it to create an audience for a live show or other thing that can generate you money. For filmmakers this hope generally lies in getting either a feature film or television project commissioned.
However I think the logic of this jump is skewed because we’re not dealing like with like. A performer who is funny in a two-minute clip on the internet is probably going to be funny again in a two-minute sketch on BBC 3. A director who makes a funny two-minute clip on the internet probably isn’t ready yet.
Perhaps I’m being overly cynical but I don’t actually know of any writers, directors or producers who have built true commercial success on the basis of internet clips. I do though know a great many execs who would need a great deal more than a short film on youtube to convince them that a director was ready to take on a bigger project.
I’m not saying that having your work online will hurt, or that it will not help at all. But remember the core of the piracy argument is not about stealing, it is about lowering the value of your creative work. As filmmakers we have no one to blame for this but ourselves.
So how’s about this for an argument – for the majority of Shooters reading this the fuss about piracy is like the fuss over changing the rate of inheritance tax so that you can keep the first million. You may feel like you want to be able to keep that first million as something to aspire to, but in truth it’s not going to impact on your life.
Why are we getting hung up about piracy when we’re mostly all willingly giving our work away for nothing anyway?
Come on you Vikings – pirate this:
Or alternatively – don’t pirate it – click here and vote for it instead.