"all thanks to piracy on the net!"

I was scanning through some of my 500+ unread feeds, when a headline from TorrentFreak caught my eye, it read: "Producer Thanks Pirates For Stealing His Film".

[Wilkinson] writes: “Our independent movie had next to no advertising budget and very little going for it until somebody ripped one of the DVD screeners and put the movie online for all to download. Most of the feedback from everyone who has downloaded “The Man From Earth” has been overwhelmingly positive. People like our movie and are talking about it, all thanks to piracy on the net!”

To illustrate this, on IMDB the film received close to 700 votes with an average rating of 8.2 which makes it one of the most popular movies of the last 2 weeks.

Wilkinson continues to praise the pirates and adds: “What you guys have done here is nothing short of amazing. In the future, I will not complain about file sharing. YOU HAVE HELPED PUT THIS LITTLE MOVIE ON THE MAP!!!! When I make my next picture, I just may upload the movie on the net myself!”

Some people, I'm sure, might argue that leaking a Hollywood'ish film on the internet deos not have a positive effect, like it might compared to a low budget project. I would say that it definitely does, word of mouth is still the best advertisement.

And I've seen countless examples of people benefiting, in the both the short and long term, from giving their films / music / hard-work away (knowingly or unknowingly) on the internet for free. If you're doing something that people will enjoy, and it's obvious to people that money is not the bottom line, then they are much more likely to support that kind of open environment.

But... that's just in my humble opinion :) What do you think?