What began centuries ago as a concept created to promote education and creativity has denigrated into a money-driven struggle over who owns exclusive rights to intellectual property and ideas.
RiP: A Remix Manifesto is a 2008 documentary directed by Bret Gaylor that discusses issues of copyright in the information age. The film centres on the work of remix musician Girl Talk, a mash-up artist whose songs are composed of samples taken from pre-existing albums by artists of all genres.
His work is illegal, since he hasn’t bought the rights to any of the songs used in his work.
Other protagonists include Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig, Brazil’s former Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil and pop culture critic Cory Doctorow. These experts sound off on issues surrounding the legal and creative battle between corporations and individuals who adapt the work that they own.
Mark Ellam, cinematographer and associate director of RiP, sees remix culture not as a kind of theft, but as a form of conversation.
“Immediately once [an artist] is up there, someone says, ‘Wow, that’s amazing, I’ve never heard anything like that. I want to make my own remix of her work,’ ” Ellam said. “And so begins this conversation that we’re having, or that you can witness on the Internet, and it’s a function of the laterality and the availability of digital tools.”
In this sense, “remix can be considered a way that we keep not only our democratic culture alive, but past culture, fresh. In presenting our past culture to a new generation, we can move forward and recreate copyright laws in a model that works for the digital age we’re in,” Ellam said.
In the past five years, this medium has taken the world by storm. With video clips, samples and entire albums available for download on the Internet, people are now able to take and rearrange what they like — or what they don’t like — and create something new.
“We have moved quite naturally from being consumers to being producers,” Ellam said.
“Certainly as I grew up, you came home, you watched television and then you would talk about television, and then with the advent of the Internet, all of a sudden from a leaned-back position we’ve moved to this leaned-forward position, [where] you can create your own ‘something’ just by manipulating what’s out there.”
Other people living in poverty use remixing as a form of self expression out of necessity. Part of the documentary looks at children living in Brazil who learn to make mash-ups in community centers.
“The kids that we met that were making this kind of music, they can’t afford instruments,” Ellam said.
“They can go to the community centre and use the computer, but we talked to kids and they were like, ‘Yeah, I used to have a drum, but somebody stole it.’ ”
With digital tools at their disposal such as the Internet and sampling programs, they are able to create fascinating electronic music at almost no cost — since they haven’t paid for the rights to the music they’re modifying.
In recent years, copyright terms in the United States have been extended to be as long as the original artist’s life, plus 75 years if the rights to the material are reserved by an individual. This term is 20 years longer if the rights are held by a corporation.
“Because of this form of litigation, we are losing this cultural heritage that I believe belongs to us,” Ellam said.
The objective of RiP is to inspire discussion about the subject, not to convince the viewer to agree with either the artists or the companies that own their work. Be sure to educate yourself at the Mayfair Theatre on Thursday, April 2nd at 9:30 pm, and decide which side you’re on.