At the turn of this century, the Swedish file sharing platform The Pirate Bay was growing at a phenomenal rate, enabling internet users to share films and music free of charge. But Hollywood in particular does not pull any punches when it comes to such breaches of copyright and, in 2008, the founders of the platform were put on trial. Gottfri Svartholm Warg, Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde live in their own digital world. They can hardly believe it when the court confuses megabit and megabyte. Seeing themselves as technicians whose aim is to run the world's largest web platform, they claim indignantly that their actions are about freedom, not money. The closer the film gets to them, the more pronounced their lofty perspective on reality becomes. In his feature-length debut, Simon Klose sees the Pirate Bay hackers through a very different lens to the one used by Hollywood’s media lawyers. It becomes clear that they are not hard-nosed rip-off merchants but rather unworldly nerds, whose social skills and ability to comprehend the analogue world are somewhat limited. Berlinale 2013
What have you done before the realisation of ""TPB AFK"?
How you came to the subject? Was it difficult to meet the key figures?
Was it necessary to convince them to take part in the documentary?
Is the (file) sharing culture a challenge, a risk or a change for cultural production and creativity?
Do you see the risk that digital culture and web communication leads to isolation, and the disappearing of the public space with all its political consequences?
Was you astonished about the programmers personalities?
What happens with the main figures? Where are they today?
The series of juridical accusation put them in a time prison even outside of a material prison. Are tey still able to work and to trealice their capacities?
Is there a new generation of files sharers and file sharing technology is coming up?
What are new formes of funding cultural projects and compensatsing artists and creators beyond the commercial industry?
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