After reading this post from Jorge Cortell’s site, I downloaded and watched the documentary “Steal this Film”. I have some objections to it.
On the one hand, they have used copyrighted works like pieces from the movie “The Day after Tomorrow”. This makes the documentary a derivative work for which they most probably didn’t get the permission. It is illegal, above all considering that the makers are receiving donations. Not that I dislike the way the beginning of the documentary is constructed. The water flowing through New York represents the catastrophic image most people have about the situation of culture. I also believe it should be legal, but it is not and I think they should have looked for other works that don’t have that kind of restrictions. Besides, with all the existing licenses (even the public domain), why do they copyright it?
On the other hand, what really drives me crazy is that it contains lots of subliminal messages (in this case, text that appears and disappears very fast) which make me feel manipulated, as if it was necessary to convince the audience with obscure tricks, not with reasoned explanations. That information is important and sometimes can’t be easily read even using the lowest speed in VLC because they’re long. Is there any reason to use this technique? Some people say that they are not subliminal because it’s possible to see them. Well, watch for yourself and judge…
My conclusion is that I’m definitely not going to donate any money to this project nor giving them my support if they don’t do things differently.
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