This is Jason Scott, director, editor, cameraman, interviewer and general creator of BBS: The Documentary, which is the .torrent in question in this thread.

The documentary took about 4 years to make, requiring about 20,000 miles in travel, 200 interviews, 8 months of editing and a bunch of other sweat equity. It was a ton of fun and it was incredible to meet the heroes of my own past in person, ask them questions, and generally have a great time. I wouldn’t trade any of it.

In the world as we have it today, digital media is easily copied, easily transferred, and from the point of view of someone who doesn’t spend a lot of money on digital media, it makes no sense to purchase something you can get for free.

Recognizing this, I released the BBS Documentary under a Creative Commons, Attribute-Sharealike 2.0 license. This license is explained over at the CreativeCommons.Org website in greater detail, but it basically says that you can, with proper attribution, copy, share, mix, rip, change, reference and generally do with the BBS Documentary DVD anything you want. You can even charge money for what you do with it.

I wrote a essay on my weblog about my choice to do this, but I can summarize it this way:

– I made a kickass product, and worked hard on the packaging and DVD features
– I loathe threatening people with laws and stupid rules for digital media
– I realize some people will not pay, and I will not punish everyone for that

I mention this also because you have to realize the DVD set (there’s 3 DVDs with 8 episodes) are released with no copy protection, no region encoding, and no silly menus you can’t break out of. So INFOFALLOUT talking with pride about their “release” is not unlike someone delighted how much he saved on food because he was able to bring home two handfuls of sugar packets and ketchup from the local McDonalds. Bon Appetit!

The license means this creation really can’t be “pirated” or “warezed”; it was released to the world generally.

So why would you buy it?

Well, for one thing, the packaging is absolutely kickass. On the ordering page for the documentary, you can see some of the package; it looks great.

Also, there are a ton of features this “release” is not giving you, besides the obvious ease of popping in the DVDs and getting some great episodes. There are subtitles on all the material, so you can understand people more easily. There are commentary tracks by myself for every episode as well (although later ones are mostly 10 minute “statement of purpose” commentary, since I figured 5 hours of commentary would be a bit much). There’s also additional subtitle tracks with “non-technical” information on what people are saying. The people in this forum might not be interested in that, but it makes it easier to explain to the family what you’re watching.

Finally, there are over 70 minutes of bonus footage across the three DVDs, including easter eggs and hidden tracks and all that. AND, there’s a DVD-ROM section on the third Disc with additional interviews, photos, and artifacts you won’t get with just the ripped films. And it’s a good price for all this.. $50!