Free Culture @ NYU

Free Culture @ NYU's own weblog … information on events, meetings, and goings on in the free culture world

Quick links: content, navigation, search.

Navigation

Steal This Film! Screening w/creator Alan Toner

Tuesday, 11.11.2008 – Category: Events & Recaps

FC NYU is proud to be sponsoring this screening with Computers and Society:

Stf

Released in December 2007 by the League of Noble Peers (Alan Toner, J.J. King, Jan Gerber, Sebastian Luetgert, Luca Lucarini, and others), Steal This Film 2 tries to go beyond the current discussions around file-sharing to look at what kinds of social change are precipitated by massive changes in our capacity to communicate. The film argues that the changes wrought by networked, peer distribution are historical on the scale of the printing press and tries to explain why.

For many of you these argument will be familiar. These are strange times, in which to many of us the battle already seems to have been won. Yet governments continue to enact harsh laws expanding the scope of copyright protection and increasing sanctions for its infringement, lawsuits are levied against filesharers, fines imposed and arrests made – all intended to destroy or delay what is an inevitable change in how we look at creative work.

At the same time there has developed a burgeoning area of cultural production outside of both the institution of copyright and the historical channels of distribution, be they television, cinema or music stores. Deep beneath the sand the playing field of culture is shifting, in no small part due to the combined actions of millions of peer produsers.

Alan Toner, one of the peers responsible for the film’s production, will be present for a discussion afterwards, during which there will
also be a demonstration of STF’s footage archive.