

Ask HN: What do you think about this movie distribution model? - jasongullickson

We're trying an experiment with one of our feature films.  Alongside the full-featured, full-priced DVD we're making available a "Bootleg Edition" of the film which is produced as cheaply as possible (DVD-R, no special features, no fancy packaging, etc.) for about a quarter of the price of the "Standard Edition".<p>http://2soc.net/breakdown/bble.html<p>In addition to making the discs cheaper however we've made one other change to the Bootleg Edition copies:  They come with absolutely no copyright restrictions whatsoever.  Not only do we encourage customers to duplicate the film themselves but we explicitly encourage them to do this for-profit.<p>Our hope is that some creative folks will take what we have made and cut it up, part it out and recycle it into something new, and when they do, we want to allow them to distribute it however they see fit, as a new, separate piece of art.<p>We'll see what happens and we encourage anyone who takes us up on the offer to share their work with us we can contribute to promoting what they have done.  We're not exactly sure where this is going to lead but if it turns out interesting, we're planning to do the same thing with future releases as well.<p>We're curious what the Hacker News crowd has to say about this, as consumers, producers and entrepreneurs.
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romland
Interesting. This might be that added value that opponents of the current
digital distribution model is looking for.

Since you want this to be as widely spread as possible with the underlying
concept attached to it, you might want to get in touch with PirateBay (and
similar). They seem to like this kind of stuff and might give it front-page
attention.

It will inevitably become an illegal* torrent sooner rather than later, but
you might appeal to the group that thinks the current model of making money
off of media is far from optimal.

* illegal: I might be a bit thick, but am I getting the rights to distribute (fileshare) this after I have bought the DVD-R, or can anyone do it? Filesharing today generally means torrent, which means that everyone downloading the torrent is also sharing it... I guess my question here is: I can share it, but can anyone legally download it from me?

I find the concept intriguing and I'm really looking forward to what other
people here will say. Will keep an eye on where you're going from here!

PS. Not that I ever use PirateBay, of course.

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jasongullickson
You're getting the right to distribute so you could certainly rip it and
torrent it without any legal repercussions.

The only way I can come up with that you might be able to break the law with
the Bootleg Edition would be if you used the disc as a weapon :)

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romland
It's a shame this did not make it to the main page, I was hoping to read some
input from the community.

Did you have bad luck with the time you submitted the story, or so? During
lunch hour? A lot of other submissions? I would genuinely have thought this
would be of interest.

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jasongullickson
Me too :)

If I hear anything interesting elsewhere I'll post an update here.

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Kliment
Sounds amazing. NIN tried this recently and got some pretty amazing mixes out
of it. You could consider starting a remix/fan/discussion forum and a featured
work youtube channel.

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mos1
I'm mostly surprised that your 'bootleg edition' is cheaper than the regular
edition.

Sure, it doesn't have a box... but it has a lot of rights granted to it, and
it has some cachet.

