是的男人 Documentary Prospers with P2P Distribution

Peer-to-peer distribution is turning out to be a lifeline for documentary filmmakers, and The 是的男人 are pointing the way.

P2P or peer-to-peer distribution is an efficient and inexpensive way to send large video files around the inter网. While the technology is better known as a simple method for pirating music and movies, that easy accessibility can be used for legitimate reasons too. Political activists The 是的男人 (http://theyesmen.org) turned to P2P distribution to get their latest documentary seen when other avenues were closed to them.

The 是的男人 Fix the World was made in 2009; it chronicles the pair playing button-down, 面无表情, wildly irreverent pranks on powerful corporations and agencies, embarrassing Dow Chemical and Halliburton, 等. The documentary was first shown on HBO, which was a mixed blessing.

“We were really lucky to be able to sell TV rights to HBO. 他们只会, 就像, 一年10个医生, but we were lucky enough to be one of those,Mike Bonanno说, the nom de guerre of Igor Vamos, 一个唯唯诺诺的人. “但要成为HBO的纪录片, they had to premiere it on television, which meant we couldn’t do a conventional theatrical (release). But then again, there wasn’t really anyone lining up to do that, either.”

The 是的男人 managed a theatrical run afterward, but only a small one. Working with Shadow Distribution in Maine, they got the film shown in around 80 to 100 theaters, but it wasn’t a standard distribution contract where a distributor buys the rights to a film.

Getting their work distributed was especially difficult given the subject matter and a legal action hanging over their heads. 美国.S. 商会, the pro-business lobbying organization, sued them over a prank (“We impersonated them last year and announced a new position for them on climate change,”博南诺说。, and there’s always the possibility of future lawsuits from any company or agency in the film. Networks or distributors would require errors and omissions (E&O)保险, a type of business liability insurance, 放映这部电影, which is prohibitively expensive. 

“Right now there are sort of legal hoops you have to jump through. To do something officially through established big businesses—television broadcasters, things 就像 that—costs a lot, and you sort of have to pay to play,博南诺说. “Releasing on peer-to-peer is a way around that, because it’s not 就像 we were breaking the law with anything we were doing—it’s all fair use—but you still have to pay for a lawyer, or, 在很多情况下, pay for rights simply if the insurer requires it.”

P2P拯救世界

In order to get their work seen and raise some revenue at the same time, The 是的男人 turned to P2P distribution. Through a partnership with Vodo (http://vodo.net), a site that works with P2P clients to organize distribution of low-budget works, the movie has been downloaded many times and The 是的男人 have raised more than $25,捐款额达5万元. 

杰米•王, Vodo的创始人兼首席执行官, brought the idea of P2P distribution to The 是的男人 when they were in the Edinburgh for the Edinburgh International Film Festival. 

The 是的男人 Fix the World won plenty of accolades but no conventional theatrical distribution, which meant that the producers retained the rights to distribute the film further themselves.