In an attempt to connect filmmakers with the distribution power of the file-sharing community, Steal This Film director Jamie King has launched VODO. The project includes partners well known to the file-sharing community like Mininova, The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, Miro, Vuze and Frostwire, who have pledged to promote the works of VODO films.

Today, VODO announced the first release titled ‘Us Now‘, a documentary that looks at how ‘user’ participation could transform the way countries are governed. It tells the stories of the online networks whose self-organizing structures promise to change the fabric of government forever. Needless to say this is an ideal debut film with obvious connections to the file-sharing community. ‘Us Now’ is currently featured by Mininova and the other partners are expected to follow shortly.

With a strong backing from the BitTorrent community, including former BitTorrent President Ashin Navin and former Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde, VODO hopes to establish itself as a top brand for high quality film downloads that are of interest to file-sharers. The filmmakers on the other hand will have an audience of millions of users, and the ability to generate revenue through donations, which can be quite lucrative.

“Followers of release groups like aXXo will be familiar with the model. But VODO is a release group with a twist. Not only are artists voluntarily sharing: downloaders can choose to make voluntary donations to creators. VODO lets creators manage their own donation links, with all donations going directly to the filmmaker,” The VODO team told TorrentFreak.

In the coming months VODO aims to release at least one film per month, including the premiere of ‘In Guantanamo’, a documentary by first-time director David Miller that
provides unprecedented access to the Guantanmo prison camp. “During 2010 VODO will build out a series of revenue opportunities for its creators, with the free-to-share model at their core,” King explained.

VODO is an exciting and ambitious new project that harnesses the power of the file-sharing community to support independent artists, while bringing high quality entertainment to the masses. It is P2P at its best, it’s what P2P is meant for.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Later this year, the League of Noble Peers plans to release the third part in the series, covering the Pirate Bay story from the day it was raided in 2006, right up to the trial currently taking place. Judging from the massive attention the trial is attracting, we have no doubt that the latest film in the series will be at least as popular as its predecessors.

Producer Jamie King told TorrentFreak that the trial edition, released just an hour ago, should be seen as part 2.5 – a trial for the ‘final cut’ so to speak. It includes some new material and shows how Peter Sunde (Brokep) and Fredrik Neij (TiAMO) prepared for the court case, together with a pretty funny reenactment of the police interrogations.

The League of Noble Peers is currently shooting at the spectrial in Stockholm for the ‘final cut’. In the days to come we will release some exclusive footage of the trial here on TorrentFreak.

As always, the Steal This Film project is backed by many members of the BitTorrent community. IsoHunt is currently seeding the film on a 50Mbit line, and Mininova is helping out as well. As the League of Noble Peers say, we’re all on trial today.

The film can be downloaded at the STF website, please share, remix and redistribute!

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The League of Noble Peers, creators of Steal This Film, have been very upbeat about donations to the project and the possibilities of P2P for creativity. However, despite hundreds of donations, the project still isn’t out of the red yet. All is not lost, though. Fans of the Steal This Film series have another chance to help the Peers as they raise money to continue the project.

Steal This Film II is currently running 3rd in the Babelgum Online Film Festival’s documentary category. Babelgum is a Joost-like service that allows you watch free and full length videos, full screen.

Babelgum will add up the votes of users from their professional jury to find three films in each category to be judged by Spike Lee. If they win their category, the Peers stand to win $30,000 (EU20,000) towards the project.

All you have to do to help is download the client, search for “Steal This Film” and cast your vote to let the jury know what you think.

“It sucks to have to download a client, we know, but the cash would come in handy for the next phase of the film,’ said Jamie King of the League of Noble Peers. “And it would be fun to meet Spike – we dug ‘25th Hour‘! Big thanks to anyone who takes time out to lend us their support again.”

Of course, Steal This Film remains free to download and redistribute at stealthisfilm.com. For those who haven’t seen it yet, it’s a must watch.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

When Part 1 was released, “The League of Noble Peers” asked downloaders to donate $1 (or more) if they wanted to support the project. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority donated just that. However, for the new release the majority donated $15 or more. Why? Well it could be that donators were motivated by a mystery gift they were offered when they gave more than $15, but there are alternative explanations as to why pirates may be more generous than people assume.

Jamie King, producer of the film gives the following explanation on his blog: “Over 90% of people donating are deciding to go over the artificial $15 threshold we set. But I don’t think people literally ‘want that gift’; I think they want an excuse to be generous!”

This could be true, the people who donate (still only a small percentage) are obviously dedicated to the cause, but there is more. It could also be that they donate more because they now don’t have an excuse to donate only $1, even pirates don’t want to look miserly. Most importantly perhaps, is that it shows that it can be wise to avoid psychological reactance, and leave the choice about what to donate or spend on a film or a music album up to the consumer. It is a challenge to build business models around free will and free content, but the Steal This Film project shows that there are opportunities.

Another interesting point raised by Jamie in his post is the need for alternative payment models. Sure, PayPal works but they take away too much money – it’s replacing one money sucking middleman with another. Take the Radiohead release for example, you could get the album virtually for free, but you still had to pay the credit card company nearly $1. This is probably why most people decided to pirate the album, instead of getting it for “free”. It seems that The Pirate Bay agrees on this, as they are working on a p2p based payment model that will probably be released by the and of this month.

TorrentFreak briefly talked to Brokep about this upcoming project a while ago, unfortunately we are not allowed to give you any more details, but it’s certainly an interesting project with a lot of potential. Brokep did reveal a bit on Jamie’s blog as he said: “I think that people will pay if there’s a simple solution. The payment solutions of today are not built for the new, network economy — they’re built around the old one. As we move away from the old economy, we’re here without a new payment solution.”

We will definitely keep you informed on this upcoming project. BitTorrent opens up possibilities for independent filmmakers. Distribution costs are now non-existent, and new business models are slowly starting to emerge. The future of film making looks bright and will be in part funded and formed by the innovators who were once called pirates.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.