20130818: Documentary Review--Barbershop Punk

Barbershop Punk

1. American live action feature film, 84 minutes, released in 2010, NR, documentary.
2. IMDB, 7.8/10.0 from 30 user reviews.
3. Rotten Tomatoes, 'No consensus yet...', 67% from user reviews; 83% of audience ratings.


4. The ignition point was ordinary enough.  Robb Topolski wanted to share some barbershop music on the web.  This seemed harder than expected.  He started testing how the flow of his uploads proceeded.  He found a lot of blocking by Comcast, 24/7.  He tested and re-tested, and wrote up his process.  He contacted some investigators in the Associated Press, which eventually reproduced his results, and went beyond them.


5. Common Carriage laws (surface mail, telephone, radio) are contrasted with Net Neutrality laws (Internet); that is, the change of transmission type has new laws.  What net neutrality means is still under debate.  The film spends a fair amount of effort on this.


6. Comcast and Verizon were shown to have blocked certain content that had no business being blocked.  Getting to this place was quite an effort.  Some of the legal decisions against these two companies were later overturned.


7. The number of ultimate service and content providers seems to be shrinking.  About seven such companies own most of content providers, radio/tv stations, ISPs and the like.  For instance, Comcast owns NBC, which controls SyFy, USA, and so on.  The CBS constellation is at least as big.  Large numbers of brands are controlled by a small number of upper level corporations.  So the problem that initiated the debate has the potential of getting much worse.


8. The film is well put together, and does a good job at getting to underlying issues as it goes.  The main two issues I saw toward the end of this film were: (a) the first amendment is about protecting the people from the government versus (b) we have a small number of providers who are stifling free speech, and we need the government to protect us from them.


9. The debate goes on.  The listing of large money contributions to active politicians were very depressing, as were the assertions by the large corporations that they should be able to block whatever they want to whenever they want to.


10. One line summary: Fine documentary about the issues surrounding Internet neutrality.

Statistics: 

Cinematography: 8/10 Usually fine.  Sometimes off-the-wall irrelevant.

Sound: 8/10 Occasionally soft and weak.

Acting: N/A This was mostly interviews, and very few people seemed to be acting.

Screenplay: 10/10 Well organized.

Final Rating: 9/10  I strongly recommend this documentary.