Finally we compare the consumption of European film in theatres with the availability of seeds and leechers for European cinema in P2P networks. For this, we start by clarifying the emerging global P2P phenomenon we then stipulate what we mean by European cinema, outline its peculiar traits, and contrast it with North American cinema. Our hypothesis is that this offensive runs the risk of condemning a potential open distribution network and commons business model at its birth. And yet the results of the movie industry’s calls-including those voiced by its European players-for stronger legislation against these same distribution channels are making their way through Europe by means of enforcement tools like HADOPI and other graduated response programs. The steady decline in traditional film distribution channels for European productions-cinema theatres and direct sales or renting-is leading to the emergence of new distribution channels. In this article, we ask whether file sharing networks will affect the survival or potential growth of European cinema. But the economic effect of file sharing on the film industry remains difficult to determine. The new peer-to-peer (P2P) technologies have impacted the film industry, which advocates sanctions against the downloading and sharing of products found on the Internet.
In the final section, I review the way the torrent system is positioned against the copyright industry and consider whether it could be effective in creating an alternative copyright regime. Today, copyright constitutes a legal mechanism meant to maintain an artwork’s aura, while Internet and the torrent systems are the technological devices providing the opportunities for its reproduction and massification. Benjamin described the relationship between the rise of art’s social function that emerged in parallel with its ‘massification’, and the fall of an artwork’s ‘special atmosphere’, or ‘aura’, as a result of mechanical reproduction. In the section that follows, I reflect on the issue of file sharing as the final stage of what Walter Benjamin (1936/2008) in the 1930s described as the ‘Age of Mechanical Reproduction’.
I then move on to discuss the legal case against The Pirate Bay and the discourse of BitTorrent support articulated in the documentaries Steal This Film I & II.
This chapter consists of five sections beginning with the major Hollywood film studios response towards file sharing.
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