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Saturday, June 16, 2007

Michael Moore Is Perfectly Happy for You to Download His Movie

Michael Moore is right on in his Health Care Politics and right on in his Copyfight Politics. Listen to him talk about how he feels about people downloading Sicko for free here. Michael Moore is an American hero and a hero of the contemporary American Left, whether you want to approve his every little argumentative move and directorial decision or not. I say, more like Moore, please!

4 comments:

Nato Welch said...

So why is the film "leaked" onto p2p networks (like the Internet), and not just plain released officially under a creative commons or other public license?

Sure, Moore may have no personal problem with "piracy", but he sure as hell can't negotiate distribution deals without commitment to exclude public distribution.

If creators are serious about sharing, they need to do more than just turn a sheepish blind eye to piracy. They need to go legit with a public license.

Dale Carrico said...

Yeah, I definitely take your point, but the angle I took on it was: He's happy to make money (and garner mass-mediated attention) through the conventional plutocratic distributional strategies, but not so wedded to incumbency that he'll protect those profits through the championing of the racket. As we shift from broadcast models to p2p models I expect the calculations of both those who favor democratization and those who favor plutocratization to wiggle quite a bit.

For my personal politics I was just happy to highlight what looks like a serendipitous confluence between technoprogressive healthcare politics and technoprogressive copyfight politics. You're definitely right, though, he's not love's young dream on IP in this recent move of his. But he's inculcating frames that mainstream p2p intuitions, and yoking copyfight to the Moore comet this summer looks like a technoprogressive win-win to me.

Nato Welch said...

I believe there's a section in The Corporation where he describes himself as "driving a truck through this giant flaw in capitalism" that leads media giants to allow anti-corporate content if it makes money.

Moore has been around longer than the Internet, of course, so I guess if his particular arsenal of mainstream film distribution works for him (and us), he might as well use it. I mean, who else has that kind of influence and clout?

Nato Welch said...

http://n8o.r30.net/dokuwiki/doku.php/blog:michaelmooreoncopyrightandthesickoleak