DIARY

March 24, 2003

Taping our April Fools’ Day Video: Smile! April Fools

Pieter “remodeled” his office and turned it into a set. Figuring out the actual story that had to be told was not an easy task. The text had to be no longer than two and a half minutes. The initial text, the “short” version of the Honest Thief story was more than 5 minutes long! Cutting it down to 2 minutes was a painful process. But it was obvious that 5 minutes would be too long. How can you sum things up in two minutes? You can’t. But it had to be done. After some practice runs the story was taped a couple of times. This would give Floris some material to work with. We didn’t want it to look like Pieter was a news reader telling tomorrows weather forecast so Floris would have to edit the tape to turn it into a mini confession / documentary / April Fools’ Day joke.


The text:

Hello!

I am Pieter Plass speaking to you from Holland.

I am the man behind The Honest Thief file-sharing venture.

It so happens that today is April Fools’ Day … what a coincidence.

Only a month ago The Honest Thief did not exist. On February 21st the Wall Street Journal reported, “No one has ever heard of Pieter Plass,” but now hundreds of news stories later, The Honest Thief is a “serious” player in the world of file-sharing.

Our story was concocted similar to a meal in a pressure cooker: we carefully selected our ingredients, turned on the fire, waited patiently and voilà, dinner is served.

As there is the overwhelming mass of information that is showered on society each day to compete with, you can’t just tap people on the shoulder and ask them politely: “May I have a word?” So what do you do? You become creative. Then, once you’ve got their attention, you need to have a message: something that will affect them.

Well, guess what April Fools! The Honest Thief file-sharing venture was no more than a publicity stunt.

Our goal was first and foremost to get some attention for our book: The Honest Thief. Secondly we wanted to confront the public with the practice of honest stealing: the tools that everybody uses to have success. Very few people will openly admit that they use these tools. In this respect our campaign was an attempt to create success to get our message across: everybody, in one way or another, is an “honest” thief.

Whether we have failed or succeeded, we hope that people won’t forget the honest part of honest stealing.

In keeping with the file-sharing spirit, the campaign is documented in the form of a diary on www.thehonestthief.com .

Even in these very serious times, don’t forget to smile every once in a while. It is April Fools’ Day.

Thanks.