Dear Mr. Moore,

in your latest edition of Mike’s Letter, titled Join Me in Making History, you offer your film Slacker Uprising for free download. You say you’re doing this

as a gift of thanks for coming to my films over the 20 years (you)‚ve been a filmmaker„.

Yet, in your announcement, you say:

That’s why I’m giving you my blanket permission to not only download it, but also to email it, burn it, and share it with anyone and everyone (in the U.S. and Canada only).

You know, us few billions Rest-Of-The-World-citizens, we went to your movies, too. According to imdb.com,

  • Bowling for Columbine made €6,137,367 just in my home country of Germany as of September 28, 2003 (1,176,885 Admissions),
  • Farenheit 9/11 made $103,251,549 outside the US as of January 23, 2005 (751,992 Admissions in Germany until August 29, 2004),
  • even Sicko, which was even more US-specific than the other films I mentioned, made $8,565,313 outside the USA until October 2007.

So I ask myself: Why can’t we download your new movie for free? Is it because we can’t

help get out the vote November 4th„?

Meaning since we can’t vote for your President? But why then allow the download for Canada? They don’t vote for the next US President either. And if it’s just because they’re your neighbours, I guess the Mexicans might be a bit annoyed right now.

Also, if there will be a

low cost DVD available“ „For those of you who don’t download„,

and its price comes at really affordable $9.95 (at today’s exchange rate that’s about €6.88. One stein of beer at the Oktoberfest comes at about €8.00, and Sicko is €17.95 at Amazon Germany, which again is $26.54 at today’s rate), why bother selling at all? I’m not so sure people over here will buy the DVD. And it might be a wee bit more expensive than €6.88 when (if) it comes out, I’m pretty sure about that.

You know, you’d really made history if you made this film freely available to the whole world: On the one hand, you’d be pulling people’s attention to the next US Presidential election (let’s face it, this is something that affects us all), on the other hand you could show the big financial and copyright people that not every drop of juice has to be squeezed from any given lemon and this actually can be survived. And if I’m not mistaken, it might have become the biggest download, like, ever.

But so, people outside the US and Canada may get grumpy, think of this whole download effort more of making politics instead of making history, and so on.

I for my part, with parts of my family actually living in the US, now can’t egg anyone on with the kind of kinda-funny-yet-to-the-point-nonetheless argument you usually deliver in your movies. Of course, I’ll try the traditional way, but since I won’t have even seen that „free for everyone“ movie you made, they’ll think: „Who is he anyway, sitting around somewhere in Europe, sipping Espresso and not knowing a thing about US politics?“. Other people might very well not even have heard of it by the time they egg their US relatives on.

So, I have just a simple idea: Allow free downloads worldwide, at least in some medium quality or maybe watermarked, and everyone who wants the film on a high-quality DVD for his or her Michael Moore collection can just buy the one you also offer. The rest of us can watch the film and hope for the better man to win that utmost important election. Also, I would like to take part in making that particular history, too.

Thank you for your time.

J. Reischl

5 Gedanken zu „Dear Mr. Moore,“

  1. I don’t really see much of a problem here, because…ähm, Moment, wieso kommentiere ich das jetzt in Englisch…?! Ist ja nicht so, als würde Moore meinen Kommentar lesen…

    Wie dem auch sei — wenn es heißt „to email it, burn it, and share it with anyone and everyone“ so bedeutet das für mich letztendlich, dass jeder der innerhalb der USA und Kanada den Film geladen hat, ihn auch dem Rest der Welt zu Verfügung stellen kann und so manch einer dies auch tun wird…!? Ist zumindest meine Auslegung des oben gelesenen… 🙂

    Aber grundsätzlich stimme ich natürlich dennoch zu: Schwache Leistung von Herrn Moore…

    Da ich allerdings ohnehin einen Account im amerikanischen iTunes-Store habe, werde ich mir den Film vielleicht dennoch mal herunterladen und dich dann wissen lassen, ob er es überhaupt wert ist…! 😉

  2. Naja, ich werde ja kaum schriftlich in meinem eigenen Blog Filmpiraterie ankündigen („einen Film zu kapern“ sozusagen). Nachdem man auf der Webseite auch nur durch Klick bestätigen muss, dass man US-Amerikaner ist, dürften die wenigsten darin eine Hürde sehen. Ich weiß nicht, ob es eine IP-Rückverfolgung mit Landes-ID gibt und das Laden dann verhindert wird, aber mir geht es ja auch eher um die offizielle Variante der Sache. An den Film irgendwie ranzukommen, ist sicher weniger das Problem (sei es legal durch Kauf oder eben sonstwie), aber mich stört halt die politische Dimension der Sache, also das „US and Canada only“.

    (This comment and the one before is mainly about how easy it might be to get the movie anyway. I add that nevertheless I am not happy with the official dictum of „US and Canada only“.)

  3. Ein „Hinweis“ oder „Tipp“ – wie auch immer man es nennen mag – von mir: Da Moore den Film über BitTorrent verteilt wird es bzw. ist es ihm so gut wie gar nicht möglich die Verteilung des Films weltweit einzuschränken. Das Torrent ist auf der eingschlägigen Seite „The Pirate Bay“ auch bereits verfügbar. D.h., man muss um sich den Film herunterzuladen nicht einmal fälschlicherweise angeben man sei US-Amerikaner oder Kanadier. Das macht die ganze Sache dann ja schon fast „so gut wie“ legal. 😉 haha

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