“Steal This Film” is a documentary about the Catch-22 of the information age. We have infinite information and data at our complete disposal, thanks to the Internet, but as the adage goes, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Should we have to pay for what we use?
“Intellectual property is the oil of the 21st century.” — Mark Getty, Chairman of Getty Images
As the film points out, “piracy is failing because of social reasons — people like to share.” And there is no easy way to stop this very basic human desire. The film also claims that “fighting fire sharing is fighting the fundamental structure of the Internet.”
This can often get people into trouble — hence the case of Fairey VS. AP where a street artist took an AP image of President Obama and manipulated it for his own monetary gain.
“People’s lives are determined by images they have no rights to whatsoever and that’s an unfortunate situation.” — Steal This Film
But for journalists, this should all be old hat. Just because the information is available, does not mean that we have the rights to it. Before the internet, stealing things and passing them off as our own would be wrong and frowned upon.
“Not many people go out of their way to ask, ‘please, can I use this?’ ” says one talking head in the film. But that’s the key — permission! We must remember that with great power comes great responsibility, and in order to access the wealth of information we have, we have to communicate and ask to use it. As the film points out, piracy has gone beyond a civil case to a criminal one, so journalists must be careful and considerate.
