TPB AFK

TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard

Cover art
Directed by Simon Klose
Produced by Martin Persson
Screenplay by Simon Klose
Starring
Release dates
  • 8 February 2013 (2013-02-08) (Worldwide)
Running time
 82 minutes
Country Sweden
Language Swedish
English
English (subtitles)

TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard is a documentary film released on 8 February 2013, directed by Simon Klose, based on the lives of the three founders of The Pirate Bay: Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm.[1] Filming began in Summer 2008, and concluded on 25 February 2012.[2]

Production

The film's website was launched on 28 August 2010, along with a Kickstarter campaign to raise US$25,000 to hire an editor after the Court of Appeal trial. The campaign was fully funded within three days and raised $51,424 in total.[3][4][5] In February 2011, the Swedish government's Arts Grants Committee Konstnärsnämnden[6] granted the project an additional 200,000 SEK (≈ $30,000).[7]

Release

Trailer

The full film was released under a Creative Commons[8] license (BY-NC-ND) onto The Pirate Bay and other BitTorrent sites. Also, a four-minute shorter version was released at the same time for those who wish to remix or re-edit their own version of the film, featuring an edit with certain copyright restricted content removed, under a different Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license.

For those who wish to support the creators, apart from online donations, they can buy the DVD version and digital download. The pre-order price of the DVD is $23 and a digital download is $10, which comes with deleted scenes and bonus material. Pre-orders can be made via the official movie website. TPB AFK's premiered at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival on 8 February 2013,[9] opening the festival's documentary section, and was released online for worldwide free download (or purchase) at exactly the same time on YouTube and on The Pirate Bay.

On 19 February 2013, the film was broadcast on BBC Four in the UK as part of the BBC's Storyville documentary series strand.

Reception

Peter Sunde, one of the main characters in the film, wrote on his blog, that he has "mixed feelings about the movie and the release of it". While he likes the technical side, he has serious issues with some scenes and general attitude of the film. This includes too much focus put on the trial, too dark depiction of it and portraying himself beyond self recognition. Despite having such different views on the subject, he regards the director as a friend.[10]

Censorship by Hollywood

On May 2013, Hollywood studios such as Viacom, Paramount, Fox and Lionsgate started to censor Google Search links pointing to the documentary,[11][12] an action criticized by the director of the film Simon Klose.[13] On June, after the initial controversy, HBO and Lions Gate sent additional bogus DMCA takedown notices to Google requesting the removal of links related with the TPB AFK.[14][15] In response, Simon Klose contacted Chilling Effects which recommended him to file a DMCA counter-notice where he explained that the purpose is "to share the film as much as possible".[16] Two months later, the censored links were reinstated only after public complaints made by the film director.[17]

References

External links

Main sites

Social networking sites

Documentary online

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Saturday, April 30, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.