Opinion: Stop Downloading, You Selfish People

Gawker hasn’t been having a good month. First up, Lena Dunham launched a scathing attack on the media site and its corporate sister Jezebel via an unflattering cameo in a new episode of Girls. Lead man Adam Driver’s rant against the site declared it a snarkfest run by “a bunch of judgmental creeps, celibate against their will... who make a living appealing to our basest desire of seeing each other kicked when we’re down.” Which may have seemed harsh – until Gawker went and proved it all true.

Quentin Tarantino released his latest script, western The Hateful Eight, to several actors, one of whom apparently cannot be trusted as it soon began circulating around media outlets. Tarantino declared that, due to this breach, he would no longer direct the feature – a spontaneous decision that may or may not have stuck. But while many outlets mourned the loss of an anticipated Tarantino film, Gawker posted a link to the 146- page script on its Defamer blog.

Tarantino is suing the site, which has previously been under legal fire for its sharing of sex tapes from Hulk Hogan and Rebecca Gayheart, as well as its posting of a book proposal by the aforementioned Dunham. These facts make it harder to argue with Tarantino’s assertion that: “Gawker Media has made a business of predatory journalism, violating people’s rights to make a buck”.

Gawker aside, the sheer volume of people who downloaded the leaked script begs the question: has a skewed sense of entitlement caused us to lose sight of both the rights of the artist, and of what art is for in the first place?

Surely film fans would be happier to see an actual Tarantino film than merely read a draft of the script? The upshot is that the completed work is unlikely ever to hit the screen.

Nowadays, downloading seems like an inescapable problem for filmmakers. We no longer feel the need to wait or pay for films. It’s easy to understand why so many film and television directors are in despair.