Movie Director Steals Clam Chowder to Avenge Illegal Downloads

[Ernesto]

Among most copyright holders and some artists there is an insistence that illegal downloading is tantamount to stealing. A download can result in a lost sale, they argue, thereby depriving creators (or distributors) of revenue.

File-sharers, on the other hand, have their own theories as to what their hobby amounts to. Conclusions vary, from “try before you buy” to satisfying demand unmet by authorized sources. Some merely want content for free but still argue that a copy does not amount to theft.

Director Casey Tebo, on the other hand, strongly disagrees.

Tebo, who has directed live performances for Aerosmith, Mötley Crüe, Judas Priest and Run DMC, believes that piracy is just like stealing. And, after becoming a victim himself, decided to do something about it.

According to the 42-year-old, who won an Emmy for his work on ESPN E:60’s Dream On: The Stories of Boston’s Strongest, the final straw was when he discovered people had been pirating one of his movies.

Tebo wrote and directed 2016 horror movie Happy Birthday (Buy!) and recently discovered that an old friend from school had watched it.

“He said ‘Bro, I saw your movie, it was amazing!’,” Tebo recalled.

When the director asked where he’d seen it – iTunes, Walmart etc – the guy dropped the bombshell. Someone at work supplied it.

“What do you mean, he brings the DVDs into work?” the director asked. “I don’t know what that means?”

In a mocking tone impersonating his former friend’s recollection, Tebo continued.

“He gets ’em off, you know, King Torrent, uTorrent, your fucking mother’s torrent, whatever the fuck it is.”

Noting that his movie only had a small budget with just three investors putting in $500K between them, Tebo said that one of his buddies came up with a plot to get revenge.

“You should go to the fuckin grocery store this cat works at and just fuckin steal some shit,” his buddy said. “And, if you get caught by the cops, just say ‘Hey, he steals my shit, why can’t I steal his shit?'”

In a video posted on YouTube, which he describes as a PSA (Pirates Suck Ass), Tebo reveals what happened next. A sped-up clip shows the director ‘shopping’ for $30 worth of ‘free’ ingredients to make a clam chowder. He then leaves the store without paying. Needless to say, Tebo (who apparently was born with six fingers on his right hand) didn’t get away with it.

Someone from the store came out to Tebo’s car after spotting him on the security camera and threatened to call the cops unless he came back and paid.

“Yeah I know, but this is like a really huge chain supermarket,” Tebo protested. Although subtle, this was almost certainly a dig at people who believe that downloading movies from big companies doesn’t hurt them.

“This is a store, you just robbed it,” the worker replied. Then, Tebo revealed his scheme.

“See, the guy who works at your store likes to download the movies and burn ’em and give them to everybody who works there. You have people in your store who are stealing from my industry, so why can’t I just steal from you guys?” he asked.

The store worker was having none of it. “Give me the bags or i’m calling the cops,” he said.

Again, Tebo underlined his point.

“I just want to know. If you’re the manager of this place and you got guys downloading illegal movies, why can’t I take groceries for free?” he questioned.

“Because it’s fucking stealing, asshole,” came the reply…..

Tebo says that he eventually gave the stuff back. He didn’t, however, explain why he thought it was fair to steal from the grocery store when his aim was to get revenge on one of its employees. Maybe this is the real-life equivalent of holding ISPs responsible for Internet pirates, who knows.

The whole bizarre affair is documented below.





Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and  ANONYMOUS VPN services.


Originally Published: Thu, 19 Jan 2017 09:22:17 +0000
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[xbt]

Stupid retard. Digital content costs nothing to produce or share. You can't make copies of food for nothing. Completely different. Plus, this moron doesn't realize that pirating brings publicity and publicity brings money.

In reality I believe the whole thing was a big scam make up by the MAFIAA to make people think that movie producers making more on a movie than your life earnings combined are "losing money" on the pirating of a dvd that the pirate was never going to buy in the first place.


A better comparison would be go into a supermarket and take a picture of the food. Try to leave with your picture of the food. No one will stop you! Why? Because the digital copy of the food cost the store nothing, but if you stole the physical food it costs them something.

A digital copy of a dvd costs no one anything. It is not theft. Now if you walked into a dvd store and tried to walk ouit with a physical DVD, that is another story. That is theft because the physical dvd costs something. The digital copy does not!!


Say you COULD make a digital copy of food and convert it to real food for free. Would pirating free copies of food be theft? NO! Likewise, pirating free digital copies of media is also not theft.

[joew771]

Of course downloading digital copies of things that you should be paying for is stealing. That's why it's called pirating. duh.

Otherwise it would be called cute happy download time.

[RobertX]

Maybe, but he is a stupid retard anyway.

[Aaron.Walkhouse]

The only way downloading could be called stealing/theft is if the original
were magically destroyed in the process, taking it away from it's owners.

Just because people are copying freely now doesn't make them criminals.
The reason piracy was applied to copyright was due to real counterfeiters
making mass copies of tapes and selling them for massive criminal profit. ‌ That's piracy.

P2P and private copying is not theft and does not equate to lost sales.
That's why I call it what it is: downloading. ‌ [not "pirating"] ‌ ‌

[Sid]

Even if an employee of the grocery store had stolen the guy's car that would not give him the right to steal the car of the owner of the grocery store at which the guy happened to work during his non-car-stealing time.

Nobody would ever even imagine that it would.

So this act of "vengeance", which blatantly targeted an innocent third party, was either the work of a complete moron...or that of a self-centered publicity seeker.

Fairly obviously the latter as a) the level of success he has apparently achieved implies at least average intelligence and b) anyone of even average intelligence can see that the actions were outrageous (and therefore "newsworthy").

Sure enough: media attention. And no publicity is bad publicity.

So: schmuck won. I'd never heard of him or his work before. Now I have.

Now I'm no sucker, and I'm not going to download let alone pay to see any of his shit just because of this pathetic grandstanding; but some fools will be so enticed. The dumb fucks at TorrentFreak clearly were.

[Moe]

Totally an attention seeking move. But there really are people in powerful places who think like that.

[Ernesto]

While Emmy-award winning director Casey Tebo is no stranger to movies, he’s only ever uploaded one video to YouTube. Unusually, it featured him committing a crime.

After discovering that pirate copies of his movie Happy Birthday (starring Aerosmith’s Steve Tyler) were being given away in a local store, Tebo decided to turn the tables.

Camera in hand, he documented himself stealing clam chowder ingredients from the same store. If they can steal from his industry, he can steal from them, he argued.

What most people didn’t know at the time is that the video was mostly a bit of fun. Many commenters on the YouTube video certainly didn’t notice, attacking Tebo with the kind of venom only YouTubers can.

“You look like a fucking asshole, you fucking asshole,” said one.

“That’s obvious. Never denied that!” Tebo responded.

Throughout Thursday, Tebo fended off much of the same from several directions, even posting on Twitter that he’d received death threats.

But despite the negative comments, not once did Tebo bite. In fact, one person who decided to provoke the director by posting links to downloads of his movie was won over by his charm and voluntarily took them down. They now follow each other on Twitter. Might he actually be this friendly in real life?

“One thing we could use in this modern day is people being nicer! I honestly don’t understand some of the hate and insults on the web, holy shit, my god people!!!” Tebo told TF.

Noting that he’d been called a ‘Rob Zombie Wanna Be’ and even a ‘Duck Dynasty Asshole’ this week, Tebo says he’s always wanted to make movies since he was really small.

“I took that same path, making movies with my video camera etc. Then worked my way up doing small music videos, then bigger music videos, then live events, then live tv. Then a short film (one that all the people on YouTube cursing me out now seem to love?) and eventually my first feature, Happy Birthday.”

So how does Tebo, who has directed for Aerosmith, Mötley Crüe, Judas Priest and Run DMC, end up in a grocery store on a piracy protest? Has he been that badly affected by the phenomenon?

“I honestly can’t say it has affected me, a lot, yet. But I like to take risks, and I was quite angry at the time when I found out that a guy I knew was getting pirated copies of movies at work, that’s all. Adam [Tebo’s friend] came up with the idea and it was funny to me,” he said.

“There are arguments for and against piracy, and I can totally see both sides, I really can, but it seems to be a generational split. My kids will NEVER know what it’s like to pay for music – but I will never let them download movies, we buy everything. It goes into the work and money spent making movies.”

While not endorsing piracy in any way, Tebo seems to draw a somewhat wavy line between the effect piracy has on big movies versus the effect on smaller independent productions. Nevertheless, not even he’s 100% sure.

“I think if a hundred million people go see Avengers, then does [piracy] hurt? No. Because those people pay for tickets. But a movie like mine, it’s $500,000 – we sold it for less than that. It doesn’t mean go and steal Avengers, or does it? I’m not sure.”

Casey is in his forties now, so probably quite a bit older than the average YouTube comment assassin. As a result, he can still remember the days when cassette tapes ruled the waves and, more recently, when the CD was king. These days, the former is all but dead and the latter is about to join it. Does holding something physical give content more value?

“I really think it’s a generational thing. We LOVED tapes and CDs. We loved the art, the liner notes, the photos. Kids today will NEVER know that. They just play it on YouTube, and the quality is terrible, so to them, they’re doing nothing wrong,” he explains.

“If you went to a town beach for your whole childhood, then suddenly some asshole bought it and wanted to charge, you’d be like ‘Fuck this guy!’ – and so would I. Trust me, I get it. I really do.

“I guess my argument is, mine was a small film, and if the investors on an indie film lose money, guys who did it strictly for the passion, that kind of sucks for everyone involved. Once you see Transformers 5 make $400 million, if you’re okay with it, download it.”

The whole grocery store stunt began because people downloaded Tebo’s movie Happy Birthday for free. It’s available in a number of places, such as iTunes and Amazon, but there are issues.

When TF tried to buy a copy on Amazon, the US version of the site wouldn’t allow an overseas purchase. Equally, when we asked the US movie industry’s WhereToWatch site for advice, we got nothing. Same result for the UK industry’s FindAnyFilm site. Nothing on Netflix either, which is a shame since Tebo sees services like that as part of the solution.

“I think subscription-based is the way of the future. If Netflix has the best selection, why would you download stuff? Although, people probably like being a little naughty, you know? Like smoking a joint or doing a line of cocaine. This doesn’t mean you’re going to become Escobar – but, hey, have a little fun,” he says.

Grocery video aside, what pushed us to speak with Tebo was the way he handled his critics this week. Is he really this calm in real life when the haters let loose?

“There are homeless people, vets with missing limbs, Donald Trump is going to be our president when you post this. People have family members with cancer, etc. Life is fucking hard, it’s stressful – I honestly don’t understand that kind of hate, I really don’t,” he says.

“People calling me an asshole, haha, okay. I worked my ass off for five years getting coffee and stuff in the music industry, and in 2015 I won an Emmy Award, call me an asshole all you want. I read bed time stories to my kids, I hold the door for people.

“What I’ve experienced in real life, is that you think you hate someone, then you have a few drinks and dinner, and you’re laughing about how much you thought you hated them. Everyone has something negative to say. Take all that time, and go down to the homeless shelter and help out, put some things in perspective. The world is scary, but it’s amazing as well.”

And that was the end of our interview – or so we thought.

On Friday, after carrying out our interview and writing all of the above, we contacted Tebo again, with a request for some photographs for the piece, which he sent through. However, he also had a confession to make.

“I have to be completely honest about something as it kept me up last night – as you guys are so nice. The whole video was a prank. The ‘manager’ was an actor friend – and I would never ever steal anything. Who makes a point on stealing by stealing??!?!?” he said.

“My intention was always and only to get both sides of the piracy argument talking and it worked! For better or worse. And to get people talking about my movie. Whatever indie filmmakers can do to promote their movies.  With piracy there are great arguments on both sides. And maybe I can help both sides better understand each other.”

From here, we understand that Tebo has another video up his sleeve that will appear in the coming days. While the route was unconventional, his opinions are still valid, and he’s certainly got people talking about piracy. And that can’t be a bad thing.


Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and  ANONYMOUS VPN services.


Originally Published: Sun, 22 Jan 2017 19:11:28 +0000
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[Picklock]

ookay...anyone can tell me how to download this guy brains?
aaaand just as this person is trying to make a statement about the concept of Piracy = Stealing physical forms of an commercials products, can I do "cut" his brain physically then "paste' it on my bowl of brains chowder for my pets?
because obviously Tebo doesn't really put a good use of his brains.

[Aaron.Walkhouse]

Well, apparently he's leaving his brain unattended.
Wouldn't want to leave it to waste any further… ‌ ‌