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What I Learned from My Independent Film Being Illegally Pirated

In today’s new film economy it is getting tougher and tougher for independent filmmakers to make a living with their films. The entire industry is changing faster than anyone can keep track of. Even film distribution companies are struggling to make sense of the new world. The traditional golden gooses of DVD, Blu-Ray, foreign sales, and big upfront guarantees are dying a slow and miserable death.

And if that wasn’t tough enough internet pirates are bootlegging indie films as fast as they are released. My latest film On the Corner of Ego and Desire was on the pirate boards within hours of its release. I didn’t even think of looking for this because I never thought in a million years pirates would be interested in an indie film that cost $3000, was extremely niche and had no star power at all. I was very wrong.

On the Corner of Ego and Desire is about three hapless independent filmmakers who make the trek to the Sundance Film Festival and go through absolute hell in search of an elusive producer who is supposedly going to buy their independent feature film, all within 24 hours. Ignorance, foolishness and above all ego, drive the team to implosion as they struggle to realize their filmmaking dreams.

If you want to learn more about the making of On the Corner of Ego and Desire read Filmtrepreneur Breakdown: On the Corner of Ego and Desire.

As you can see from the images below my little indie film was available around the world within hours.

I only found out about this because someone looking for a pirated copy of my film landed on my site by mistake and I saw the google search term in my analytics. I typed in this search term and found website after website that supposedly had copies of my film. So do I go down the rabbit hole? If you know me you know the answer to that.

I started to investigate and here is what I found. A handful of the pirate sites did, in fact, have a digital copy of On the Corner of Ego and Desire. Either you could stream the film right on their site, which is insane to me, or you can download a file that would allow you to download the film to your hard drive.