AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

Pirates of Sundance - Slate.com

Forget Sony Classics. Try getting your film picked up by online movie pirates.

Film piracy, the conventional wisdom goes, is a threat to the film industry at all levels. That’s certainly the sense at the Sundance Film Festival, where both the festival and distributors invest heavily in anti-piracy measures, including undercover agents who attend screenings to capture illicit videotapers. But it turns out that they may be wasting their money. Sundance films, present and past, simply do not register in the online pirate world—unless they are one of the few that have already made it big (like Clerks or Little Miss Sunshine). This proves two things: When it comes to content piracy, obscurity, not security, is the best defense. It also demonstrates that movie pirates are fundamentally parasitic, not predatory.

My interest in this topic came from experiencing how difficult it is to get into even very bad Sundance films. For the public, tickets are scarce and assigned by lottery, and even a press pass is no guarantee. That’s why I decided to try using BitTorrent to re-create Sundance in my Park City, Utah, living room. No more cold, no more lines, and no more pesky Q&As with the director, so I reasoned.

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