Steal This Film is a spectacular documentary on Sweden's piracy movement — The Pirate Bay BitTorrent site, The Pirate Bureau think-tank and The Pirate Party, a political party. Steal This Film ingeniously combines Hollywood footage, scare-interviews with Hollywood execs, Hollywood anti-piracy PSAs and footage of interviews with Swedish pirates, politicians and people on the street.
I was really interested to hear how deep a chord the MPAA-ordered police raid on The Pirate Bay's Swedish servers struck in the heart of Swedes, who quite rightly view threats of trade sanctions and US corporate intervention in their national laws as a serious incursion on their national self-determination.
It's a kind of macrocosm for the way that industry customers feel when they find themselves frustrated by DRM: I bought this DVD, I own it, I want to use it in my house in the way that I want. Who is Hollywood to take away my autonomy and impose their policies on me from a distance?
(Thanks, Jamie!)
