Go steal this and watch it! Steal this film is an excellent and thoughtful documentary about sharing files, ideas, images and culture. Half way thru I decided to start taking notes; you should too. Write them down them come back here later and post your thoughts. I’d love to hear what other artists are thinking about some of these ideas:

• Artists and authors used to sell these containers of their work; paintings on canvas, written or printed words bound; digital containers are really easy to share and that’s a good thing for culture, but what does it change about artists or artmaking? The nature of these very separate roles as creator and audience are changing.
• Does the idea of giving away copies of your work have to compete with our ideas of making a living? How do our means of making an income adapt to this shift in distribution?
• Isn’t giving your work away for sharing and (free) distribution a good thing for artists? Our work will become more culturally accessible and important.
• Computers are making everything easier to copy and access and people like that; so why is the corporate trend is to make that harder?
• Sharing is a basic social need; technology makes that super easy — and we like easy.
• People who want to prevent copying are preventing the spread of culture; yet they’re contributing to it and want you to watch. That seems a little “have your cake and eat it too” right? You can watch this in this environment under these rules, but if you want it another way then to hell with you!

More thoughts on this very soon…