AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

NewTeeVee

The creators of the copyright-critical movies Steal This Film and Steal This Film 2 are building a platform aimed at helping filmmakers get paid for releasing their works on file-sharing networks. The project, which goes by the name of VODO (it stands for “voluntary donations”), is based on lessons the two filmmakers have learned from publishing their own movies for free on the Internet.

The Steal This Film Project was partially underwritten by grants from the British Documentary Film Foundation, but the filmmakers also asked their audience for donations. The duo was recently quoted as saying that an estimated 0.1 percent of Steal This Film’s audience ended up donating within the first two months of its release. Their hope for VODO is to get a response rate of up to 15 percent. So how do they want to reach this lofty goal? By plugging themselves right into the P2P distribution chain.

The idea is to make VODO a feature of P2P clients as well as media players, so users can donate right when they download or watch a movie. VODO also wants to use video fingerprinting to reliably recognize downloaded movies so that filmmakers can get their fair share. From the VODO web site:

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