MSN Sponsors Anti-Piracy Film Contest

(SARCASTICLY:

HURRY UP! SHOW YOUR SKILL! LICK BOOTS! GET A JOB IN THE INDUSTRY!)

MSN UK is holding a contest for both youths and adults aimed at teaching the evils of intellectual property theft - an issue Microsoft is constantly battling to protect its software. The short film competition, aptly titled Thought Thieves, requires entrants to make a commercial-length video about how IP theft affects society.

"Think about it: what would a world look like without protection for intellectual property?" Microsoft asks. The winning films will receive £2,000 of film and video equipment vouchers; runners-up will receive a free trip to London where all of the entries will be screened at a special event.

"Looks like the idea is to tell a compelling story in rather quick fashion why stealing copyrighted material is bad. In a nice touch, the competition is not restricted to 18 years and older. Microsoft has a second 14-17 year-old category," noted Jupiter Research senior analyst Joe Wilcox.

Films will be accepted for entry until July 1 on CD or DVD in any format compatible with Windows Media Player. Microsoft encourages originality, but reminds contestants that entries "should not include any third-party materials (such as music in which you do not own the copyright)."

"I have to give the Microsoft UK folks credit for creativity. The competition is an intriguing way of educating would-be filmmakers about intellectual property theft," added Wilcox. "Of course, they would learn as soon as their rocking film started making the BitTorrent circuit."

"Think about it: what would a world look like without protection for intellectual property?"

I don't know, why not go back 30 years when the concept if "Intellectual Property" [sic] DIDN'T EXIST?

""Looks like the idea is to tell a compelling story in rather quick fashion why stealing copyrighted material is bad. "

This statement is pute oxymoronic bullshit, with strong emphasis on the moronic part. "Copyrighted" and copyrights deal with copying. Copyrights and copyrighted works can be violated, deleted, duplicated, restricted in copying (until hacked), and hacked, but it is impossible in practice, legally, and philosophically to "steal" it because of the nature of the 1s and 0s in the act of copying, unless of course you deleted the file from the computer you downloaded it from, then the "stealing" factor might come in.

*pure, not pute. Sorry.

£2,000 of film and video equipment vouchers; runners-up will receive a free trip to London where all of the entries will be screened at a special event.
Who is the thief here! The theft of intellectual property. It seem to me that for this voucher. They get a commercial-length video. This theft in it self. What a rip off of children. By calling it a contest. As for the adults!!!! your just with dumb and dumber.

I would need 1 to2 million for it, and a thousand $ every time it would be on the air. Not that I would do it.

"Think about it: what would a world look like without protection for intellectual property?"

No record labels! Hurray!!

This is Microsoft, so remember that there are 'forbidden words" like liberty, democracy and human rights. I'm not even sure you can use the phrase "intellectual property" without evoking the Microsoft Thought Police.

Hmmm. I haven't seen any comedy shorts since the days of "The Three Stooges". This ought to be good.

What happens if you enter an 'anti' copyright film? Gets buried I guess.

Typical American business bullshit as usual.

"Think about it: what would a world look like without protection for intellectual property?"

The Renaissance?

Google the story a bit further and you'll find that the winner is required to hand over all rights to the film. What hypocrisy!

Thanks, gfmlck, that was my next question--Microsoft gets the rights? I figured. Now they'll have a whole bunch of anti-piracy videos without all the work to make them! How nice for them!

HA! I get it now.

Microsoft creates a "competition" where they get a bunch of young movie artist, who generally don't care about the rights to thier work as long as they are getting noticed (just like in music), to hand over hundreds of films about how piracy is bad, along with the rights to the movie, so that they only have to give 2,000 pounds to the winner, instead of paying 50,000 pounds to make the movies themselves so that they can force the films on us at movie theaters and on new DVD's.

Wow, dosen't that sound fun?

Hail Mp3!!!

They just want to recruit future multimedia-tech professionals to their side, and teach them how essential it is for any creative person to hoard all the rights they can get hold of, before they are attracted to Creative Commons or a similar model that competes with Microsofts 'ten-page eula' model.