I had not heard about The Nines or you till it popped up on a torrent site that I frequent. My friends girlfriend also had not heard of the movie or you until, I urged her to sit down and watch it. She repeated the words “WOW” and “I really love movies like this” many times after sitting down and I felt the same. I am sick of going to the cinema and paying a lot of money to do something which is the equivalent of torture 80% of the time, both because of the dribble that is constantly released and the very poor quality of cinemas and the entertainment industry over here. However I would gladly transfer three times that amount in gratitude for you making this movie. I already have an electronic copy of the movie so no ofcourse I’m not going to go out and contribute to the current environmental problem by buying a DVD that I might never even open, even if it means you don’t get paid for your work. However I sincerely wish I could just send money to a bank account every time I see a movie that I like and I’m sure there are many others out there who feel the same way.

We know that in order for movies to keep getting made we need to pay for them. But really, why stick to such a crap distribution model when all it would take would be for you to set up a torrent and an international bank account. I would not be surprised if your profits ended up being far greater with such a distribution system. Then after the obviousness of the system became apparent the big guys would set up a better system probably around a subscription model. You pay a set fee every month and can download any movie you want and you get to say what percentage of your fee goes to each movie.

Ehhh…. who am I kidding, logic never wins out in this world.

I have to say that BitTorrent is not what is to fear, but rather http://quicksilverscreen.com/ Have you been there? It’s a very scary thought. Specially for me because this is the industry that I work in.

I really do think that it is a shame that such hard work is displayed in such a manner.

Romina

I’ve read the comments here and feel compelled to say, in a nut, the comments indicate that the Hollywood distribution system is broken; and not just a little broken, but extremely broken. Torrents are a workaround to that broken system.

No one here, including me, wants to steal from Mr. August. We know that and he knows that. Someone mentioned that John should put up a PayPal link to receive payment from those who have downloaded The Nin9s. I would donate but don’t expect to see the PayPal button anytime soon because Sony and or another distribber would likely sue Mr. August for contract breach heretofore and forthwith ad legal nauseum. Did I mention that the system is broken?

I put my short show, Memoir, up on BitTorrent last year and several hundreds of folks got to see it who would otherwise not have had the… experience :)

But I didn’t have a studio deal or 68 lawyers ready to climb my colon, and etc.

Is there a solution? Of course, there’s always a solution. The trick is finding a solution that most, if not all, of the players want to play with.

My only idea is to establish a fund contributed to by distribbers, studios, and even film viewers that allows a creator to be compensated no matter how the show is distributed. So, if The Nines is DLed 9,785 times from 35 torrent trackers, then everyone on the residual list gets their cut.

Maybe it’s too simple.

When you buy a movie and loan it to a friend, there is a copy bought, and the number of people who can borrow it in a given amount of time is limited by the fact that it’s a physical object and can only be in one place at once.

With file sharing, one source file can be distributed to thousands of viewers at once.

You’ve obviously convinced yourself that what you’re going isn’t immoral or illegal. But if you’re trying to get others to condone what you’re doing, it’s not going to happen.

It is a subject I am passionate about, not downloading as such but the film industry as a whole. I am deeply concerned for the way things are going and of course I want a future for the industry hence why my posts my seem a little passionate, I have a tendency to wear my heart of my sleeve so to speak – maybe a fault but a bit old for changing now.

The whole industry needs a shake up, the world has changed, the way people view movies has changed, I am not alone in really getting tired of going to the cinema – I have given up on chains, the experience is no longer worth the expense. I like many others have spent an incredible amount of money building a state of the art home theatre system and I much prefer watching my movies at home. Delivery over the Internet is by far the most convenient method and there is no doubt that it is the future of movies, like it or not it is a fact.

I love movies, I watch loads of them, maybe 7 movies a week – I never watch TV anymore. There are many movies I would never have got to have seen unless I had downloaded them, some of them I have even bought in DVD since seeing them. I cannot afford to go to the cinema 7 times a week, besides many of the movies i download do not even get a cinema run in Australia! Do you really think that it is better for a movie not to be seen as long as it was not watched illegally? There is a lot of choice out there, the small movies quite often need the exposure of illegal downloads to get their name about – this is a fact. illegal downloading actually does help the independent movies gain an audience that would never have had the chance to see them.

So the quicker that the studios stop messing about and get their go to market strategy inline with the expectations of the new generation of customers the quicker that the piracy issue can be addressed and hopefully ended. The people who are making these movies available are only fulfilling a need that is not being addressed legally. But we are getting there, iTunes, Netlix etc.. in the states are getting somewhere, soon hopefully in Australia (though a long way off I fear). Big Pond in Australia are offering downloads of very old movies but only to Windows users (this is fairly typical, the BBC have an online service too but only for Windows users). But we are getting there.

I do not agree with criminalizing downloaders until there is a legal alternative source for them to get their movies. One we have a system where latest releases are available to anyone who want to pay for them then I will agree with shutting down the illegal source and if needed fining people who carry on illegally downloading. But it is stupid to spend so much money doing it now, I mean come on is their not enough crime in Australia already without having the police spending all day arresting people for downloading a movie?

Trust me, one day soon a movie release will mean a simultaneous cinema, DVD and download release worldwide and will be the illegal downloaders who would have made that market possible. And so what if movies make less money because of it, I hope they do. Lets all go back a few years and stop with the $200 MIllion budgets with $50 MIllion marketing funds and $20 MIllion paychecks for Will Smith. The Industry will be much better off when it stops being all about money and people like John gets to make more movies than they get the chance now.

I know what you think of downloaders, and you are perfectly entitled to your opinion, you have valid reasons to think that but the issue is nowhere near as black and white as you seem to think.

This is a really grey area, Let us say for instance that I downloaded The Nines this morning, Yes you are 100% correct I have made a copy, reproduced that disk on my own computer. But once I have watched it I delete it, so that copy ceases to exist. It was a temp copy if you like, so no there is not another Illegal copy of that movie in the wild.

Now DVD players buffer do they not? They read ahead in the movie and commit it to memory so that if the DVD skips or jumps it does not affect the movie you are watching. They actually temporarily make a copy of that movie that is useful for viewing and then dumps it as soon as it is viewed.

Thus is watching DVD illegal too? it sure sounds the same to me.

Most lawyers will tell you that (apart from the US that is) it is not illegal to make a copy of a DVD you own, same thing as it is not illegal to rip CD’s into itunes. I myself rip all of my bought DVD’s as soon as I buy them for storage in case the original gets lost or damaged, this is not illegal. In some countries it is not illegal to download movies, I am not even sure it is illegal anywhere, by the current laws it is very difficult to prosecute someone for simply copying a movie.

When the Australian police talk about piracy or IP theft they are not talking about downloaders, they are talking about people who copy and share copyrighted materials for commercial gain. In order to be a pirate you need to be compensated for what you do, that is piracy. They are going after the people who make this content available to others, not people who download a movie for their own use. Yes they want to stop it, they are under enormous pressure from hollywood to stop it but they are tackling the issue from the only legal way they can and that is not try to stop the sharers and pirates.

Same way that nobody in there right mind would arrest anyone for buying a fake pair of Nike Trainers even though technically they are breaking the law, they of course would like to arrest the people selling the fake Nike trainers.