Saturday, November 24th 2007
Independent Artists Benefit From 'Piracy'
While government agencies such as the RIAA and CRIA seek to shut down every pirate search engine in existence, they also seek to "educate" the public. If you listen to the RIAA, piracy is an amoral crime, and should be treated like any number of other heinous crimes. Internet Service Provider Comcast has even gone as far as to filter bandwidth, preventing pirate software from working correctly in the first place. However, independent artists, who don't get five cents every time someone buys their song off of iTunes, benefit immensely from what we have come to know as 'piracy'.
The film The Man From Earth by Jerome Bixby had next to no advertising budget, and so almost nobody knew about it. That is, until someone boldly ripped a DVD and made it available as a torrent on one or two "piracy" sites. Since then, the movie went from the 11,235th most popular movie to the 5th most popular movie on IMDb, at one point beating such high-budget movies as Bee Movie and Lions for Lambs. While the ratings for The Man From Earth have since dropped, the movie has still been seen by 23,000 people over the past 12 days. See "read full story" for the letter of thanks that torrent tracker RLSLOG.net got from the film's maker.
To Whom It May Concern:
My name is Eric D. Wilkinson and I am the producer of a small independent film called "Jerome Bixby's The Man From Earth" (our review).
I am sending you this email after realizing that our website has had nearly 23,000 hits in the last 12 days, much of it coming from your website. In addition, our trailer, both on the www.manfromearth.com site and other sites like YouTube, MySpace and AOL has been watched nearly 20,000 times AND what's most impressive is our ranking on IMDb went from being the 11,235th most popular movie, to the 5th most popular movie in 2 weeks (we are also the #1 independent film on IMDb & the #1 science fiction film on IMDb). How did this all happen? Two words: Torrent / File Sharing sites (well, four words and a slash).
More specifically, RLSLOG.net. Our independent movie had next to no advertising budget and very little going for it until somebody ripped one of the DVD screeners and put the movie online for all to download. After that happened, people were watching it and started posting mostly all positive reviews on IMDb, Amazon and other places. Most of the feedback from everyone who has downloaded "The Man From Earth" has been overwhelmingly positive. People like our movie and are talking about it, all thanks to piracy on the net!
Am I upset… surprisingly no. Thanks to everyone who has downloaded this torrrent and watched the film, our awareness level is through the roof. For that I say, "THANK YOU"!
What you guys have done here is nothing short of amazing. In the future, I will not complain about file sharing. YOU HAVE HELPED PUT THIS LITTLE MOVIE ON THE MAP!!!! When I make my next picture, I just may upload the movie on the net myself!
The film The Man From Earth by Jerome Bixby had next to no advertising budget, and so almost nobody knew about it. That is, until someone boldly ripped a DVD and made it available as a torrent on one or two "piracy" sites. Since then, the movie went from the 11,235th most popular movie to the 5th most popular movie on IMDb, at one point beating such high-budget movies as Bee Movie and Lions for Lambs. While the ratings for The Man From Earth have since dropped, the movie has still been seen by 23,000 people over the past 12 days. See "read full story" for the letter of thanks that torrent tracker RLSLOG.net got from the film's maker.
To Whom It May Concern:
My name is Eric D. Wilkinson and I am the producer of a small independent film called "Jerome Bixby's The Man From Earth" (our review).
I am sending you this email after realizing that our website has had nearly 23,000 hits in the last 12 days, much of it coming from your website. In addition, our trailer, both on the www.manfromearth.com site and other sites like YouTube, MySpace and AOL has been watched nearly 20,000 times AND what's most impressive is our ranking on IMDb went from being the 11,235th most popular movie, to the 5th most popular movie in 2 weeks (we are also the #1 independent film on IMDb & the #1 science fiction film on IMDb). How did this all happen? Two words: Torrent / File Sharing sites (well, four words and a slash).
More specifically, RLSLOG.net. Our independent movie had next to no advertising budget and very little going for it until somebody ripped one of the DVD screeners and put the movie online for all to download. After that happened, people were watching it and started posting mostly all positive reviews on IMDb, Amazon and other places. Most of the feedback from everyone who has downloaded "The Man From Earth" has been overwhelmingly positive. People like our movie and are talking about it, all thanks to piracy on the net!
Am I upset… surprisingly no. Thanks to everyone who has downloaded this torrrent and watched the film, our awareness level is through the roof. For that I say, "THANK YOU"!
What you guys have done here is nothing short of amazing. In the future, I will not complain about file sharing. YOU HAVE HELPED PUT THIS LITTLE MOVIE ON THE MAP!!!! When I make my next picture, I just may upload the movie on the net myself!