The Pirate Bay is like the Napster of the contemporary Internet era. Founded in Sweden in 2003, the BitTorrent site has skirted the edges of the web, providing free movies and music to the masses and becoming public enemy No. 1 for recording companies, film studios and actors and musicians alike. With this as the backdrop, it’s interesting that comedian Russel Brand chose to release his latest DVD, Messiah Complex, via the unapologetic piracy website.
Interestingly, the stand-up DVD is available online on Amazon or BBC for £10. While he stands to lose money that could be made from the actual sales, Brand is somewhat following in the footsteps of fellow comedian Louis C.K. who released his 2011 stand-up routine, Live at the Beacon Theater online in an easy-to-pirate format, simply asking for $5 with a request not to steal it. Surprisingly, C.K. made just over $1 million in the course of a couple days with the ploy-perhaps spurring the move by Brand.
While the entertainment industry continues to persecute the open-source piracy community, it will be interesting to watch how certain aspects of free releases have seeped into popular culture. Today, musicians put out free releases everyday in the forms of mixtape and albums-whose to say we can’t see a similar trend begin to occur in the film/comedy realm as well? It’s not completely out of the question and may be a breath of fresh air.
Before Sean Fanning and Napster turned the Music world on its head in the late 90s, record labels dictated who was hot and what was good-today music is as open as its ever been, allowing fans to dictate prices and artist’s popularity. With movies these days getting less and less creative as directors increasingly pull from remakes, maybe a few free releases wouldn’t be the worst thing.
[via Complex]