The European Green party has just launched the site iwouldntsteal.net in response to the media industry’s lobbying efforts on sharing media. It has a funny video in which they make fun of the ridiculous clips (you see them when you rent a DVD) in which copying, dowloading and sharing (of copyrighted material) is compared with stealing. On the site it says: “The media industry has failed to offer viable legal alternatives and they will fail to convince consumers that sharing equals stealing. Unfortunately, they have succeeded in another area – lobbying to adapt laws to criminalize sharing, turning consumers into criminals. They argue that their laws are necessary to support artists but in reality all they’re protecting is their own profits.”
Also download the inspiring video Steal This Film – Part II has been released a month ago. Boing Boing writes: “Part II is even better than part one — it covers the technological and enforcement end of the copyright wars, and on the way that using the internet makes you a copier, and how copying puts you in legal jeopardy. Starting with Mark Getty’s (Chairman of Getty Images) infamous statement that “Intellectual Property is the oil of the 21st century,” the filmmakers note that oil always leads to oil-wars, and that these are vicious, ill-conceived and never end well. This leads them to explore the war on copying — which ultimately becomes a war on the Internet and those of us who use it.”
Apparently, Part 2 is already a great success with over 150,000 downloads in the first 4 days. Interestingly, people are being very generous with their donations, which have already passed $5000.
Jamie King, producer of the film gives the following explanation on his blog: “Over 90% of people donating are deciding to go over the artificial $15 threshold we set. But I don’t think people literally ‘want that gift’; I think they want an excuse to be generous!”