Yes Men Release Movie Via BitTorrent To Avoid Legal Hassles

from the getting-it-out-there-is-most-important dept

Earlier this year, we wrote about the ridiculous hoops that filmmakers need to go through these days just to get "E&O" or "errors and omissions" insurance. Basically, the lawyers want to make sure that anyone displaying the movie won't get sued, so they force you to get this kind of insurance. To get E&O insurance, you basically have to go through the movie, frame by frame, and show how every single possible bit of content that might possibly lead to a lawsuit has been "cleared" by the rights holder. This includes some ridiculous things like, if your movie shows someone walking down the street, that the businesses seen behind them have signed a legal "ok." It's pretty ridiculous, and many indie filmmakers just don't bother -- making it more difficult (if not impossible) to get their films into traditional distribution channels.

Of course, these days, there are more ways around this -- such as releasing the film yourself online using BitTorrent or some other system. TechnoMage points out that this is the path taken by notorious pranksters, The Yes Men for their latest movie: releasing it via BitTorrent, and asking for donations. Of course The Yes Men have some advantage in that they're already pretty well known, but the legal troubles they faced in getting the movie out were interesting. There's the unique situation in that they're currently being sued by the US Chamber of Commerce for their prank fake press conference, where they pretended to be US CoC officials changing the organization's policy on global warming. The movie includes footage from that event -- and lawyers flipped out about showing such footage while the lawsuit was ongoing.

Of course, stuff like that may be unique to The Yes Men -- but other situations, involving copyright, are not. Take for example this bit of info:

"For us to get our 'errors and omissions insurance' required for any distributor to take it, we had to clear the rights on all sorts of stuff we should not really have had to... including music written in the 17th century, which apparently because of some kind of law in Austria was not public domain according to the interpretation of insurance industry lawyers!

This is a problem many face. It'll be interesting to see if more indie filmmakers jump on alternative distribution platforms not just because they're more efficient, but also because it gets them around having to deal with overbearing E&O insurance issues.

Filed Under: bittorrent, copyright, e&o insurance, hassles, yes men