Movie Director Uses BitTorrent as Lawyers Chase Those Downloading His Movie
Written by enigmax on November 23, 2007The director of a successful Norwegian ‘Kill Bill’ parody movie who admits to downloading TV shows via BitTorrent himself, doesn’t support his distributor as they take legal action against his fans. Fourteen people accused of sharing the movie have been reported to the police by MPA copyright lawyer, Espen Tøndel.
Tommy Wirkola is the director of ‘Kill Bill’ parody, ‘Kill Buljo‘, which has been one of this years most discussed Norwegian movies.
Having started as a joke and despite its feeble $163,700 budget, its been a success, and has so far pulled in 90,000 domestic admissions and 62,000 DVD sales in 26 territories.
Inevitably, ‘Kill Buljo’ was available for download from file-sharing networks around 6 weeks before the DVD was due its commercial release.
However, in a interview with Thomas Talseth of VG Nett, director Wirkola reveals that he’s not concerned about people downloading the movie and feels that they probably wouldn’t have bought it anyway, which is quite an unusual stance for someone in the movie industry.
This article is in part, direct translation of the original Norwegian interview. Many thanks to Håvard and RayJoha.
Wirkola believes it is an honor to have people download your movie and reveals he is a BitTorrent user himself, downloading TV-shows such as ‘The Sopranos’ and ‘South Park’. He explains why:
“I download lots of TV-shows, I’ll admit that. But it’s also about them already having been aired on TV, and have kinda been accessible for free already. I also think it’s stupid to have to wait for six or seven months to get to watch a TV-show that’s already been aired in the USA.”
Despite the pro-sharing stance of Kill Buljo’s director, the distributor of the movie CCV and their lawyer (uh oh, here he is again) Espen Tøndel, are going on the offensive against BitTorrent users. This week they sent a letter to the Norwegian police wishing to press charges against 14 individuals it accuses of sharing ‘Kill Buljo’ on The Pirate Bay BitTorrent tracker.
Director Tommy Wirkola doesn’t think that downloading causes any problems, on the contrary, he believes the opposite is true:
“I understand that CCV is pressing charges, and feel the need to protect their movie. But it’s flattering that people are making copies of the movie and releasing it on the internet. Besides, all movies today are released onto the web. It would have been worse if no one wanted to share the movie.”
“The artist in you feels some pride?” asks Thomas Talseth, the interviewer.
“Yes, you can say that” admits Wirkola. “I love watching movies in the cinema, in large theatres, and I don’t like the bad quality you often find on the versions floating around online. But I have no moral position on this.”
Lawyer Espen Tøndel, representing both CCV and Norwegian Videogramforening (they distribute all films in Norway), disapproves of Wirkola’s downloading habit:
“No, he shouldn’t be doing that” Tøndel tells VG adding that there’s no difference in downloading TV-shows or motion picture movies: “The laws on copyright have not introduced any way to make a difference between this kind of material, independently of what sequence the TV-show has been aired around the globe.”
Tøndel is making quite a noise around Norway at the moment. It’s a shame he doesn’t listen to people like Wirkola and Eric Wilkinson - he might learn something.
Previously: Poor Anti-Pirates: E-mail About Leaked IFPI Email Gets Leaked
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How come everyone is so surprised at this? Obviously distributors are taking legal action.
If they wouldn’t they’d have been out of business long ago. The directors and writers can’t be replaced. The distributors can. And they will. Given time..
I love how time and time again they claim to be protecting the artists rights, yet as shown here, the artists rights have been ignored in favour of money grabbing. I hope I am in a position to treat the RIAA and its lackeys for cancer one day, I may just decide its in there best interests to not treat it and sue a dog, beings as they like to involve themselves in pointless tasks.
^^the guy above me spams pretty much every topic these days. ipban?
anyways. this news, as stated in post 26, really shouldnt be that surprising. And this Tondel guy is good, isnt he? hehe.
Espen Tøndel
Trosterudv. 9 C
0778 Oslo
home telephone: +47 22137089
private cellphone: +47 97595347
work cellphone: +47 92044966
et@simonsenlaw.no
employer: http://www.simonsenlaw.no/
Office adress: C J Hambros plass 2 D
0164 Oslo
Salary in 2006: 3.576.353 kr
Don’t post personal information here, that is just plain stupid, even though he is an asshole, posting personal information about someone is just stupid!
I downloaded the movie and watched it, it was a really good movie and wow the female cops are HOT in the movie!
That was really funny picture. Where can i download this movie ?
Eliena Andrews
http://happy-funtime.blogspot.com
@31 - Karl
You sir, are a douche bag. I would post a fucking map to the guys house here if I could.
p.s.-
Espen Tøndel
Trosterudv. 9 C
0778 Oslo
home telephone: +47 22137089
private cellphone: +47 97595347
work cellphone: +47 92044966
et@simonsenlaw.no
employer: http://www.simonsenlaw.no/
Office adress: C J Hambros plass 2 D
0164 Oslo
Salary in 2006: 3.576.353 kr
It’s freely available on the internet. There is no reason why he can’t post it on here. Though it may be somewhat against proper behavior.
The biggest problem for Norwegian pirates these days is Espen Tøndel - not because he actually creates problems for us, personally, but because he’s ruining our reputation as honest upstanding citizens =/
Btw, Kill Buljo is an awesome movie. I downloaded it right after it found its way onto the web, and bought the DVD right after it was released :)
[quote comment="222248"]So, do we buy the DVD to support the director, or do we download the movie to boycott the studio?
This is a dilemma…[/quote]
The real question is will he get legal action against him if he downloads then seeds his own movie?
Seems in this case the distro. company is ignoring the creators rights.
As a very excellent director you may make a very excellent film from my story which has the title ” The man with the killer eyes” You can read 5 chapters from my story on my own 2 web sites which are:
http://www.samyeissawi.freeservers.com
http://www.orgsites.com/dc/samycity
Please tell me if it is possible to make it film. All rights reserved.
Samy
If you all knew how little money there actually is in distributing movies (unless it is a HUGE studio movie) you might feel differently about this issue.
I’m not sure what you do for a living, but imagine if your boss said he was going to cut your salary in half because there were enough people out there doing the work for free? Sure, maybe you’d find a new job in a different field, but you also might have a moment of resentment that after investing X amount of time and money on becoming qualified in your field, you suddenly find yourself struggling to survive.
This isn’t an us versus them issue. I think the debate gets framed that way because it makes it easier to feel better about pirating.
Obviously electronic distribution is the future, and to fight it is retarded. But you can’t fault a distributor who is trying to protect their investment of time and money they has put into a film.
For the filmmaker it is a different story–they get paid once the movie starts production. And if it is successful, and if they made a good deal, then perhaps they might make some additional money once it is released. But you can’t really champion Tommy’s position in this case as a demonstration of the righteousness of the piracy cause.
He already got paid.
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