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The art collective MSCHF is stirring up some trouble on the internet again. For its latest project, ASCII Theater<\/a>, the group will broadcast a popular new film daily in ASCII format that anyone can watch for free. Just paste the command<\/a> on your Mac or PC\u2019s terminal, and you can watch films like Barbie<\/em> exactly as, well, virtually no one has intended.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n ASCII art films are nothing new and date back to the early days of the internet. They are made by converting a film, frame by frame, into lines of text characters. Instead of pixels, you\u2019ll see text. One of the most famous examples is the ASCII art version of the original 1977 Star Wars<\/em> movie, which was completed by New Zealand-based programmer Simon Jansen<\/a> in 1997 and is still available online<\/a>. You can also find clips of ASCII films<\/a> such as The Matrix<\/em><\/a> scattered throughout YouTube. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n But full-length ASCII films are rare, and MSCHF\u2019s ASCII Theater promises to stream a new title every day. Following Barbie<\/em>, the theater will screen an ASCII version of the 2018 horror film Hereditary<\/em>. A look at the site\u2019s trailer<\/a> reveals ASCII versions of multiple popular films, including Shrek<\/em>, Pulp Fiction<\/em>, The Shining<\/em>, The Lion King<\/em>, Star Wars<\/em>, and others. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n MSCHF\u2019s director of marketing Matt Steiner told The Verge<\/em> that the collective plans to keep the ASCII Theater live \u201cuntil it gets shut down.\u201d As for the legality of such a venture, Steiner seemed unsure of that himself: \u201cmaybe? idk?\u201d admitted Steiner in an email when contacted by The Verge<\/em> earlier this month. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n The legal murkiness around the ASCII Theater is part of the lure for MSCHF. The internet collective has been served cease-and-desist letters by multiple companies and even sued by the likes of Vans<\/a> and Nike<\/a> for having too <\/em>much fun with copyright law. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cCopyright has always been conceptually productive for us. It\u2019s one of the most personally-impacting areas of legal grey area. It\u2019s also a place where people experience subverting restrictive systems in casual life,\u201d wrote Steiner in an email on Monday afternoon. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Productive or not, the ASCII Theater is likely in violation of copyright law. \u201cThis latest project would appear to violate a copyright owner\u2019s derivative works right, which gives a copyright owner the right to prevent unauthorized adaptations of a copyrighted work like a film,\u201d Xiyin Tang<\/a>, assistant professor of law at UCLA, wrote to The Verge<\/em>. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n But Tang isn\u2019t convinced studios will go through the trouble of suing. The actual damages done to each film studio will be \u201ctiny,\u201d since MSCHF isn\u2019t charging viewers and is only broadcasting each film for 24 hours. There\u2019s also a (very slim) chance that MSCHF could successfully argue the ASCII films fall under fair use, according to Tang. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Under the Copyright Act, if the art collective loses in court, the copyright owner may be entitled to statutory damages \u2014 a maximum of $150,000. \u201cGiven that the going rate for hiring a firm and bringing a lawsuit will likely exceed that amount, it\u2019s unclear what monetary benefit will accrue to a studio for suing, especially given the limited run and exposure (24 hours) each film will have,\u201d noted Tang. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n