Copyrights Cause Copywrongs

By John E. Mitchell, North Adams Transcript, Mass.

Oct. 23--Canadian filmmaker Brett Gaylor's vibrant and informative documentary "RIP: A Remix Manifesto," airing soon on The Documentary Channel, takes a meticulous look at the issue of copyright infringement with the idea that culture -- and knowledge -- is being held up in the name of commerce.

Gaylor's premise is simple -- although put into four concepts organized into a manifesto, it can be well summed up in one: The past is threatening the future. More specifically stated, Gaylor alleges that the business model of the entertainment industry -- both music and film -- is an antiquated structure that corporations are struggling to hold in a stasis in order to keep their profits, even as everything changes around them. In order to do this, the entertainment industry must cling to its history while ignoring ours.

At the center of Gaylor's argument is that copyright laws have been changed to an unnatural model that benefits big businesses that own artwork -- rather than the artists themselves -- and ignores the way culture works. In other words, the entertainment business model of copyrights attempts to stop the progress that should lead to future progress by controlling the tools of creativity and offering product instead of creation -- from Fabian to Britney Spears, this has been the operating model for decades.

In order to prove his point, Gaylor traces the songwriting history of some creative powerhouses, following

the Rolling Stones from working class plagiarists to multi-millionaire plagiarists, as well as Walt Disney, who practically invented the culture of American children by borrowing the older culture of their European counterparts. What allowed such big guns to do so was a healthy public domain that let them take the materials from the past and interpret them to the present and put their own personal creative spin on them.

You know, like a dee-jay.

Popular remixer Girl Talk functions as Gaylor's poster boy for the argument. Plenty of others parade through, from Creative Commons guru Lawrence Lessig and Boing Boing blogger Corey Doctorow to several people sued by the industry for downloading music, but Girl Talk is the constant. Gaylor uses him to great effect, revealing a direct line in musical innovation from the likes of Son House and Muddy Waters to the current field of mash-ups and revealing how popular culture naturally works, building on what has come before, and also depicting the actual work of a dee-jay and how it can be justified as a creative musical pursuit.

One of the largest benefits of Girl Talk's involvement is the inside access to the work and process of what a dee-jay does. This might be well understood by youngsters of a certain age, but if it's the past regulating the future, then it certainly helps to reveal what the man behind the curtain does to the older of us. As witnessed here, sampling and reusing is anything but the simple cut-and-paste exercise that opponents would represent the practice as -- Gaylor even gets an older, digital-Luddite bureaucrat from the copyright office to marvel at Girl Talk's work.

With the silly propaganda that has crept out of the entertainment industry monster, Gaylor's film is important viewing for anyone -- but especially teenagers -- who need to see the other side of the argument and a clear explanation of how the current copyright laws affect all corners of our culture. To his credit, Gaylor also depicts how this business model has crept into many other aspects of our reality, including pharmaceuticals -- it's an important revelation that should empower viewers to take hold of what is theirs.

"RIP: A Remix Manifesto" will air on The Documentary Channel on Monday, Oct. 26, at 9 p.m. It will also be available for viewing online at www.sling.com/network/189/ The -Documentary-Channel. The film's own Web site address is films. nfb.ca/rip-a-remix-manifesto. Gaylor invites viewers to remix his film at www.opensourcecinema.org.

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