I’ve moved Shooting From The Hip over to Wordpress so the design might be a bit wonky while I iron out a few teething problems. We are also in the process of launching a brand new blog called TOOLS which will be live very soon. TOOLS will be full of great resources for DIY production and distribution and it is something I have wanted to do for a long time so I am very excited that it’s finally happening.

Speaking of tools, check out the very handy DIY Manual from Hunter Weeks, the director of 10MPH. Weeks shares info about the distribution of 10MPH from festivals to theatrical to digital downloads and includes lots of great links to other useful resources. You can buy a printable version for just 99cents.

International copyright is such a tricky issue. On the one hand I understand that artists and businesses need to make money in order to survive personally and commercially, but it is also clear that the winds of change are blowing and, as one man says in Steal This Film, “When the winds of change are blowing, some people build shelters while others build windmills.” People thought that the VCR was going to destroy the film industry but it didn’t. What will happen now with the Internet, downloads, file-sharing and peer to peer networks? Some of the windmill builders are the people behind The Pirate Bay, a huge bittorent tracker and the subject of the first part of Steal This Film. I’d love to know what others think about this issue because I have to admit I feel really out of my depth.

Watch the first part of Steal This Film and post your comments.

Some useful resources for those willing to wade into these shark infested waters are the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, the brainchild of Lawrence Lessig, the Center for Social Media, the Electronic Frontier Foundation in the US and The Open Rights Group in the UK, and Cory Doctorow (co-editor of Boing Boing) who is particularly eloquent on the problems with DRM. And of course Creative Commons - allowing content creators to decide which rights are reserved.

UPDATE: Check out the Steal This Film podcast from BRITDOC 07 here.