{"id":11224,"date":"2011-01-01T16:31:24","date_gmt":"2011-01-02T00:31:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=11224"},"modified":"2011-01-03T18:36:54","modified_gmt":"2011-01-04T02:36:54","slug":"barbershop-punk-georgia-c-archer-kristin-armfield-2010-usa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=11224","title":{"rendered":"Barbershop Punk (Georgia C. Archer, Kristin Armfield, 2010): USA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Richard Feilden<\/a>. \u00a0Viewed at AFI FEST 2010 presented by Audi<\/p>\n

\"\"It seems that every time I review a documentary, I say something like this: \u201cGreat subject, everyone \u00a0\u00a0should see it!\u00a0 If only they hadn\u2019t\u2026\u201d\u00a0 Sadly, Barbershop Punk<\/em><\/a> is sadly no exception.\u00a0 In this case the \u2018great subject\u2019 is the concept of internet neutrality, and the \u2018if only\u2019 is the film maker\u2019s inability to stay on topic.\u00a0 Time and again the film wanders off track, losing focus on what it is actually about, and\u00a0the subject is too important to treat in this way.<\/p>\n

Net Neutrality is, as the film points out, something that is hard to pin down.\u00a0 At its most basic it is the idea that information moving across the internet should be treated impartially.\u00a0 That is, data should not be slowed down or restricted by your internet provider based on where it is coming from.\u00a0 You pay for your connection; you should be able to do what you want with it. It\u2019s the same as buying a stamp \u2013 your letter shouldn\u2019t be treated differently depending on what you write.\u00a0 Robb Topolski is the man who discovered that the internet had stopped working that way.\u00a0 When trying to share (legal, out of copyright) barbershop quartet music with others, he found out that Comcast was examining his internet traffic and silently, almost invisibly, preventing him from doing so.\u00a0 Topolski, with many years of computer network experience behind him, noted the interference and published his findings.\u00a0 In doing so he unwittingly drew a line in the sand and placed himself on the front line of the battle for a free and open internet.<\/p>\n

That battle is, or at least it should be, the center of the film.\u00a0 It is an important battle for a couple of reasons.\u00a0 The first of these reasons is the maintenance of the internet as a source of free speech.\u00a0 We look to countries such as China, with their \u2018great firewall\u2019 preventing open communication, with disgust.\u00a0 Yet, here are companies doing just that.\u00a0 Now, barbershop music might not be your idea of an important message, but the same methods could be used to prevent political messages, breaking news videos or anything else that someone with control over your internet connection dislikes.\u00a0 Worse, it could happen without you ever realizing it.\u00a0 The internet is supposed to be the great equalizer, the platform upon which all can make their stand, say their piece, and be judged by the quality of their content.\u00a0 That can\u2019t happen if we don\u2019t have net neutrality.<\/p>\n

Secondly this is important from a commercial standpoint.\u00a0 Internet access providers often have their fingers in other pies, such as telephone services and cable TV.\u00a0 Without network neutrality, there is nothing to stop them crippling your access to products on the internet that they see as competition.\u00a0 Today that could mean losing access to competitors such as Netflix, Skype or Google Voice.\u00a0 Who knows what future innovations might be lost without open access to the net.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m getting off topic \u2013 see how easy it is!\u00a0 This is a film review, not a clarion call for net neutrality. \u00a0So, if the film should be about net neutrality, where does it veer off the tracks?<\/p>\n

The first major detour is concerned with Topolski himself.\u00a0 During the course of his battle with Comcast, he became seriously ill, and the filmmakers, apparently seeing an opportunity to amp up the film\u2019s emotional quotient, spend a good chunk of time focusing on how this affected him.\u00a0 Worse still, when he is admitted to hospital, the film attempts to force us to the edge of our seats with a will-he-won\u2019t-he survive moment.\u00a0 It\u2019d work too, if Topolski wasn\u2019t narrating the film, obviously alive and well.\u00a0 It\u2019s the pointless and transparent trick, and it saddened me to see it in this film.\u00a0 It told me that the filmmakers didn\u2019t have faith in the power of their material and felt the need to bolster it with a tawdry bid for the audience\u2019s heart-strings.<\/p>\n

Additionally, the film gets the very concept of \u2018net-neutrality\u2019 muddled, something it can ill afford to do given how confusing it can be at the best of times.\u00a0\u00a0 It confuses censorship by broadcasters (a Perl Jam concert being shown on the web by AT&T had the sound cut during a song that had been reworked into an attack on George Bush) with interference by internet service providers. \u00a0\u00a0The people broadcasting the concert were perfectly within their rights (no matter how foolish it made them look) to edit the content, just as they would be if they were TV broadcasters.\u00a0 It would only have been a net neutrality issue if an ISP had prevented its customers from watching the concert as it was broadcast, kind of like your cable provider cutting the bits of an HBO special that it decided it didn\u2019t want you to see.\u00a0 Confusing?\u00a0 Absolutely, and all the more reason why this documentary should have taken far more care with its content.<\/p>\n

Having said all of this, net neutrality is such an important subject that I do believe people should watch this film.\u00a0 There\u2019s enough of a primer on the subject here to make it worth watching.\u00a0 The more we come to depend on the internet for our media and, more importantly, our news, the greater the risk that a breach of net-neutrality could have serious, though possibly invisible, consequences.\u00a0 Barbershop Punk certainly isn\u2019t perfect, but it\u2019ll do until something better comes along.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Richard Feilden. \u00a0Viewed at AFI FEST 2010 presented by Audi It seems that every time I review a documentary, I say something like this: \u201cGreat subject, everyone \u00a0\u00a0should see it!\u00a0 If only they hadn\u2019t\u2026\u201d\u00a0 Sadly, Barbershop Punk is sadly no exception.\u00a0 In this case the \u2018great subject\u2019 is the concept of internet neutrality, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afi-filmfest-2010","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11224\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}