Slacker Uprising Lawyers don't understand what 'free' means
Mikey 5 comments
Hands up who gets a laugh out for Lawyers who don't understand the Internet? That's a lot hands I see reaching for the sky. Then you'll get a kick out of this.
As you may or may not know, a couple of weeks ago film director Michael Moore released his latest documentary 'Slacker Uprising', and stated that it's free to download, burn, pass on too you friends, whatever, no strings attached. It's free in every aspect of the word - as long as you live in the US of A.
But even when something is as black and white as this, there is a certain breed of people who can still find something 'wrong' about the situation. This particular breed has several terms of endearment affiliated with them, blood sucking leech is a common one, but most people just call them Lawyers.
It seems blood sucking leeches Lawyers representing Westside Productions (owners of the Slacker Uprising copyright) have a problem with the movie making it's way outside of America, which unsurprisingly happened thanks to the magic of Torrents. Westside made 3 laughable mistakes.
Firstly they sent a take-down notice to BTJunkie's DNS provider instead of BTJunkie, requesting the 'file' be removed from their server.
EasyDNS, who were the wrong recipient of the take-down order had this to say:
"But really, come on folks, please tell us that isn’t the basis for this take down request. Anybody with half a clue knows the net doesn’t work like that. In any case, I’ve sent them our standard ‘we’re not the web host, we’re just the lowly DNS service’, but I did point out this seeming contradiction in Michael Moore’s message vs his lawyer’s actions."
The second mistake was the dumb assumption that the movie would only ever remain inside the US. That one cracks me up the most.
And the third mistake, was the misguided belief that US laws apply to Sweden.
Ladies and Gentlemen, give it up for the Lawyers.
Gong
Sunday 5th October 2008 | 01:39 PMgive it up indeed
smart guys they are, making all this publicity
Nicole
Monday 2nd March 2009 | 02:38 PMSo I'm a 16 year old, and don't get my wrong I download free movies all of the time, but I can definitely see where lawyers are coming from. This movie is being watched for free all over the world so what money are the director, actors, and everyone else involved getting for it? It's called stealing because you're enjoying something thats not yours, being that it wasn't paid for. And lawyers are just doing their job, keeping justice and trying to get paid like everyone else in the word, it only takes a real ignorant jerk to write an article on how their job isn't fair to us that don't want to obey the law. News flash, thats what they went to college for all those years for.
...in response to this comment by Nicole. "lawyers are just doing their job, keeping justice and trying to get paid like everyone else in the word"
While there are many admirable people in this profession, the overwhelming majority of Lawyers involved with the RIAA, MPAA and other organisations have consistently proved they out of touch and ignorant.
I think you missed the point Nicole. This isn't about stealing, it's about how stupid the Lawyers are to think that putting something on the Internet only makes it available to that country, and that US laws apply in other countries.
You have to understand as well that this movie is irrelevant outside of the USA, and Michael Moore knew this when he let everyone have it for free. His biggest market is in America but he said Americans could have the movie for free. Moore knows what that means to box-office sales but he is more interested in spreading the message than making money on this one.
The Lawyers should be smart enough to know that this film being available for download outside of America isn't going to effect what ever bottom line there was going to be. If a film is going to make zero dollars, stopping the spread of it is still going to equal zero dollars.
Robyn
Thursday 21st May 2009 | 10:23 AMYou do realise lawyers only act on instructions right?
Lawyers apply the law, and in some cases can get it wrong. But lawyers aren't the one's suing people, their clients are.
Jake
Friday 3rd October 2008 | 08:24 AMIt would have taken all of 17 minutes for someone with a high speed internet connection to download the movie and upload it as a torrent, Michael Moore knows this all too well. He also knows that dispite the download of his movies, free or otherwise, people will still pay to go see his talking-blogumentaries.
I would be very, very surprised if Michael didn't know this even before he pitched the idea of the free download to the studio.