NOTE: It appears that the website “mixeye” is no longer. Here’s the original article in it’s entirety:

The Bread Duplicator

According to the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), “(piracy) is no different from stealing a person’s shoes or stereo”. At the risk of stating the obvious: When you knick somebody’s shoes, you’re depriving the rightful owner of her footwear. But when you’re downloading a piece of software or a song, you’re creating a brand new copy for yourself. This is a crucial difference, if ever there was such a thing.

If I had access to a bread duplicator that could copy a baguette with the same ease with which one can replicate a digital file, would the MPAA argue that using this technology to feed the hungry is in some way damaging to the creator of the original? How much energy would they invest in the quest for a copy-protected baguette?

Why does virtually everyone I know share music? How can undiscovered digital artists afford to run expensive software such as Photoshop or Final Cut Pro on their machines? Are we all criminals by nature? Is our respect for the law directly proportional to the chance of getting caught, and the fact that some crimes are riskier than others the only reason we ever obey any laws at all?

I doubt it.

Perhaps my generation’s willingness to sidestep copyright is actually a  conscious rejection of a capitalist utopia founded in artificial scarcity and gauging.

The word “piracy” traditionally referred to “robbery at sea”, which is indeed a form of stealing. Now the word is used to describe many things from pirate radio to yoga piracy. Each of these different types of “piracy” carries its own set of moral quandaries, and it is important not to confuse them with each other, or with theft in general.

The “piracy” that has the MPAA tied in knots is copyright infringement. Is it wrong? Perhaps. But copyright infringement is not the same as stealing and to claim otherwise mires the issue in absurdity, which is not helpful to anyone.

The old-style capitalists are dinosaurs. In their world, scarcity has always been the natural order of things – something they could exploit by controlling access to limited resources. They set the price and reaped the benefits.

In the face of new technologies, they are hopelessly lost. Their instinctual response is to create an artificial scarcity where none should exist, failing to acknowledge that their model represents the worst of all possible worlds.

No one is suggesting that digital media ought to be free or that content creators shouldn’t be paid. But no one should be denied access to something that exists in infinite supply for the mere inability to pay.

Content creators don’t benefit by depriving those who can’t afford the going rate.

The dinosaurs, of course, believe that if you make something abundantly available, people will take freely without giving anything in return. Such a lack of imagination is the hallmark of the shallow and the greedy who imagine all of humanity in their image. Scarcity is of no concern to those whose greed has made them rich.

Where does this leave the greater half of humanity, who have been generous enough to remain poor?

The dinosaurs fear abundance above all else, because in a world of abundance, greed becomes meaningless. What they fail to grasp, however, is that the model they so desperately cling to is already dead. The capitalism they love is a utopia of cutthroat competition where only the most successful candidates can live comfortably. But we’ve competed ourselves to the brink of extinction. Their utopia implies the end of the species.

Since survival has become our common purpose, continued mindless competition over dwindling resources is antithetical to the kind of cooperation that is now required. Consider the complexity of our current technology: There is not a genius alive, who has the combined knowledge to construct something as simple even as a blender without leaning on the help of others who have constructed the various component parts.

The future requires the unimpeded flow of information. The future is open source, because it has to be.

Why open source? It’s all about finding ways to share. Here are a few thoughts on the topic, first posted at mixeye.com:

According to the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), “(piracy) is no different from stealing a person’s shoes or stereo”. At the risk of stating the obvious: When you knick somebody’s shoes, you’re depriving the rightful owner of her footwear. But when you’re downloading a piece of software or a song, you’re creating a brand new copy for yourself. This is a crucial difference, if ever there was such a thing.

Read on.

About Gwen and Oscar we know this: Gwen has symmetrical red marks on her cheeks. Oscar has Green hair. If you wish to add a scene featuring Gwen or Oscar, please keep these distinguishig features in mind.

The product in Oscar’s hair is:

“what the funk is in my hair” color streakers – monstrous hold styling paste

The beauty of this product, apart from its healthy neon glow, is the fact that it washes out with shampoo. This is good news for all potential Oscars out there…

For each scene that is contributed, we will post the contributors. Anyone who takes it upon themselves to create a new movie is requested to credit the original cast and crew.

Gwen – Gwen Haworth
Oscar – Michael Hey

Cinematography – Chad Galloway and Darren Dauncey

The song Pathfinder belongs to Windows 78

Yesterday we shot the first images of the first ever open source movie. Perhaps the scene will be a little shorter, and even more open ended than I had anticipated. When the battery died, our shoot was over.

Soon this scene will be posted in our movie blog. We are asking you to jump in and take over. Please write the next scene for us, or better yet, grab a camera and shoot it (or a continuation of the one we’ve started – we were just getting to the dialogue bits).

It’s all up for grabs…

Ways to contribute:

1.) You could write a scene and post it here. If you email your script to brilliantmovies@gmail.com, I will post it in the main blog.

We treat each suggestion as a challenge. If you write it, we will try to interpret your scene for the movie. Feel free to work with existing characters, or to introduce new ones. There are very few rules, and no limits. If your suggestions are gratuitously pornographic, hateful or generally distasteful we will delete them. Sorry.

Keep your ideas simple, from a production standpoint. We will try to meet creative challenges, but we are not a CGI studio. The more workable your suggestions are, the more likely that we will be able to achieve something worthwhile.

2.) You could shoot a scene and post it on Blip TV. We will cross-post your scene into the main blog. However, we have one request: Please burn your scene in its native format onto a DVD, and send it to us in the snail mail way.

In the near future, film cooperation will happen over the network. Footage will live on a giant server where collaborators all over the world can have instant access to it.

We’re not there yet. We are relatively poor, so we’ll have to be luddite about this. We promise to maintain a catalogue of all the scenes that are being created, and to pass them on to anyone who needs access to the footage. This can only work if you agree to send in your scene. If we do not receive your DVD in a reasonable time frame, your contribution may be removed from the movie.

The liscense agreement stipulates that in order to participate, you must make your scene available to other artists. Any suggestion as to how we can simplify or streamline the process is always appreciated.

3.) You could start a new blog to follow a different story line. The main blog will follow the story that evolves from the most loved scenes. This will be established through viewer feedback. It is likely however, that there will be competing story lines. When you create a new blog, you decide what goes in and what stays out – and you pick the order.

4.) You could create a new, completely different movie. Contact us with a wishlist, and we will throw the scenes you need onto DVD’s. To cover the costs of materials, postage and administration, we will charge a nominal fee for this service. You are free to edit, distribute and even to profit from you movie – just remember that you don’t own it.

This video was compressed with Quicktime Pro h.264, 30fps de-interlaced, 427*240, limited to 700 mb/s. The audio settings are AAC compression, 44.1 khz, 128 kb/s.

The whole thing was uploaded to Blip TV, where it was flash encoded. We think this looks pretty good.

For consistency, we suggest that contributors to the open source movie aim to emulate this look. If you don’t have access to the h.264 plugin you may use something else that works. Do try to shoot widescreen (16*9), and match our dimentions: 427*240.

We highly encourage you to share your scenes using Blip TV. It will make it easy for me to add scenes to these pages and to create a consistent look and feel. Blip TV supports the open source concept and feels like a natural fit to us.

We will elaborate more on the concept in the upcoming days. If you have any questions, feel free to contact Michael: brilliantmovies@gmail.com

This video was originally shared on blip.tv by brilliantmovies with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

Gwen is walking through an alley. She spots a dumpster and takes a running jump. In an incredible moment of freak timing, she ends up mere inches from the face of Oscar, who was about to emerge from the dumpster. Oscar freaks and falls into the trash.

GWEN

                    Who threw you out?

OSCAR

                    Fuck you. Find your own dumpster.

GWEN

                    I suppose there’s no point looking, now that you’ve compacted everything.

OSCAR

                    I don’t fucking believe this. Someone make this satanic apparition go                     away.

Gwen extends a hand and helps Oscar out of the dumpster. Oscar is holding an Big Mac.

GWEN

                    I’m Gwen.

OSCAR

                    Oscar.

GWEN

                    You’re joking, right?

Oscar ignores her. He’s eating his Big Mac.

GWEN

                    (pointing at his cheeks)
You got something there.

Oscar has two symmetrical markings on his cheeks. Oscar swats her hand out of the way.

GWEN

                    So? Someone threw out an entire Big Mac.

OSCAR

                    Uh huh.

GWEN

                    I haven’t touched that shit since I’ve seen Super Size Me.

OSCAR

                    Suit yourself. I’m lovin’ it.

Gwen gives Oscar a hard look. She’s trying to figure out if he’s trying to be funny or not.

GWEN

                    This guy, Spurlock, eats nothin but McDonald’s shit for two months…                     Breakfast, lunch and dinner.

OSCAR

                    Oh yeah? How’s it end?

GWEN

                    I think he dies in the end.

Oscar stops and emphatically throws his uneaten Big Mac into a trash can. He turns to face Gwen.

OSCAR

                    Why are you still here? I was having a fucking good day.

GWEN

                    I can smell that.

OSCAR

                    Which way are you gonna go? Right or left?

GWEN

                    What’s it to you?

OSCAR

                    You pick first.

Without a word, Gwen turns 90 degrees to the left and walks off.

GWEN

                    (mumbling under her breath)
White Trash.