Theft of creative work on the Internet is one of the biggest issues most artists face in their careers, pursuits that are typically both intimately tied to and reliant upon this medium that facilitates stealing with relative ease.
That’s why it’s so difficult for some smaller companies to leverage their know-how and corporate IP when it is so prone to digital download theft.
FStoppers, one of the largest photography websites around, like many in this niche, makes money from photography tutorials and instructional videos, some of which end up on torrent sites for free download.
In a hilarious response to this trend, FStoppers recorded the latest installment in its “Photographing the World” series, “Photographing the World 3,” but with a twist – the team behind it created a mock-tutorial exclusively for torrent downloaders.
That is, they made a fake tutorial, titled it with the name of the next installment in the series, and flooded the web with it. Pretty genius move if you really think about it. For reference, the series travels the world with a professional photographer and teaches viewers how to approach various photographic scenarios.
The fake tutorial continues this tradition but, unlike its forebears, not in an exotic locale, unless you consider an Olive Garden restaurant parking lot a vista worthy of visiting.
In other words, the whole thing was on its face fake and not meant to be taken seriously. That didn’t stop complaints from coming in, however, and as they rolled through the team at FStoppers was just baffled that people, ostensibly photographers themselves, would not only steal something but then complain about what they had stolen.
The team at FStoppers is taking it all in stride and emphasizes the humorous spirit of the whole thing, a sensation not wholly lost on their audience some of whom are familiar with the Internet’s tendency to “troll” other people.
Here's the FStoppers mockumentary.
You can view the video response by clicking here.
