RiP! A Remix Manifesto with Girl Talk and the Issue of Music Piracy

Thursday, 10 September 2009

rip! A Remix Manifesto.

RiP! A Remix Manifesto, this new documentary film from Brett Gaylor talks about the culture of remixing music and the copyright control, piracy, and fair use issues that go along with it. The film shows us the timely controversy with mashing up music and the wall between users and producers. It's focus is the controversy surrounding the increasingly popular sample-based musical artist Girl Talk and his issues with the world of piracy.

Gaylor’s film goes above and beyond the bounds of most traditional documentaries and fully engages in the issue at hand: he has made his film “open source” and available online for anyone to “remix” themselves. Visit opensourcecinema.org for more info.

Being officially backed up by the Canadian government, you will be astounded by what you see and what is openly discussed in this picture. The concern on matter of copyright in the United States (in particular), dates back at least 200 years and the whole idea of copyright has been evolving throughout the 20th century. While some concentrate on reinventing the wheel (with and, much more often, without success) many draw inspiration from artists of the past and instead of inventing new pieces, rearrange the existing ones to create a mosaic of art novelty. A typical example of a contemporary artist, who does that, is Gregg Gillis from Girl Talk.

Girl Talk, a Canadian born mashup artist from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania specializes in remixing unauthorized samples from dozens of songs to create new ones. When that happens, the interests of corporations are protected by the watchdogs of the industry, be it the RIAA or MPAA. They pull the plug. Leaving us with songs like “Happy Birthday” copyrighted and sealed, protecting businesses, not people. This musical artform can only make it into the public domain 70 years after the author’s death, and by that time its actuality and credibility might be lost, It's meaning forgotten. The amount of information in RIP is overwhelming. Hundreds of examples, dozens of people, who suffered from copyright litigation, outrageous cases and proof that the so-called “original” acts were copyright infringers of their own. Still, Brett Gaylor believes this world has a chance, giving us a glimpse on people working on the Copyleft Revolution, be it the Creative Commons founder, Lawrence Lessig, Brazil’s Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil or pop culture critic Cory Doctorow. This isn’t justifying piracy. This is a must-see film.

Pay What You Want. The film is available in several formats and is available for download now with an interesting Pay what you want price tag. Visit http://www.ripremix.com

View the Trailer

RIP! Remix Manifesto