Indie movie makers embrace piracy

Imagine the reaction of a Sony pictures suit receiving news that one of the company’s new releases had rocketed to the top of the most shared bit torrent list. We’d hear plenty of complaining, demands for tougher laws and blaming the internet for losses.

The reaction of some indie producers is exactly the opposite. If one of their products rockets to the top of the shared files list, it’s cause for celebration. Why? Viral distribution creates buzz and puts them on the map. That much buzz pushes the indie past the big Hollywood distribution wall and actually helps make sales.

Alan Gerow was the first of a few folks to send in the news that some independent filmmakers not only discovered that their film, Ink, had ended up being widely available via Bittorrent, but that they were quite happy about the exposure. Alan sends over the email that the filmmakers sent out:

Dear Fans and Friends,

Over the weekend something pretty extraordinary happened. Ink got ripped off. Someone bit torrented the movie (we knew this would happen) and they posted it on every pirate site out there. What we didn’t expect was that within 24 hours Ink would blow up. Ink became the number 1 most downloaded movie on several sites having been downloaded somewhere between 150,000 to 200,000 times as far as we can tell. Knowing there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it, we’ve embraced the piracy and are just happy Ink is getting unprecedented exposure.

As a result, Ink is now ranked #16 on IMDb’s movie meter and is currently one of the top 20 most popular movies in the world. (Tech Dirt)