The Victoria Film Festival gets a chance to premiere Brett Gaylor's doc RiP: A REMIX MANIFESTO. The Times Colonist got a chance to interview Brett this weekend - here's their article.
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Screening: Monday, 7 p.m. @ Odeon Theatre
Tickets: $9 in advance at the VFF Box Office (1215 Blanshard St.)
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'who owns our culture'
Saturday, January 31, 2009
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RiP: A Remix Manifesto is a documentary concerned primarily with the issue of copyright, intellectual property and the effects of piracy in the Internet age. But it's really about war.
The culture battle rages, but it isn't being fought by two sides. According to the film's Montreal-based director, Brett Gaylor, every member of society has not only a role to play but a stake in the outcome, whether they know or care about the issue.
"One of our goals for the film was to make people realize this was an issue that affected them, not simply because they could be sued for downloading their favourite TV show. There are greater issues at play. In the same way we care about the environment, we need to care about who owns our culture and who dictates how we enjoy it and experience it."
During the six years he spent making the film, Gaylor, 32, who born and raised on Galiano Island, saw himself become part of the battle. Images he used, songs he included, were not given clearance for use in RiP, making him and those involved with it guilty of copyright infringement.
"The amount of material we used in this film, by documentary standards, is grand larceny. But we feel this is a fair deal. We actually have the right to do this."
Technically, he doesn't. The art of others is legally off-limits unless you are willing to pay.
Forget about fair use, an aspect of copyright legislation that allows for a certain degree of free speech by those who do not hold the copyright to a book, image or song. The gloves are now off on the issue, thanks to the companies which control the majority of media we, as a society, are exposed to.
When people think downloading and copyright violations, they often think Napster, the pioneering peer-to-peer service which forever altered the consumption of music. That's only the tip of the argument, according to Gaylor.
"My goal [with RiP] is for you to see that as ground zero. This issue is really huge -- it affects our economy, education, health and the future that we want to leave for our kids. It affects all that."
The warring factions in Gaylor's film are those who support the copyright-holders and those who want to share ideas by expanding upon the work of others.
The most provocative example of the latter is Gregg Gillis, a.k.a. Girl Talk, a revolutionary recording artist whose "mash-up" music is composed solely of music created by others -- not a note of which he is legally licensed to use. If Girl Talk played ball and cleared all the samples on his record, Feed the Animals, which he released on the Internet for free, it would cost roughly $4.2 million.
During an interview with the Times Colonist in July, Gillis said he felt "morally sound" about his decision to remix chart-topping classic rock, pop and rap tracks together. "You can make transformative music out of samples, and if it is not negatively impacting the artist's potential sales then it should be legal," he said.
Gaylor's film traces the trickle-down issue of copyright infringement through the ages. Here's where RiP really gets interesting.
Led Zeppelin widely interpolated the music of Muddy Waters, but we should assume that Waters never got paid for his art, nor did he sue. And although the Rolling Stones borrowed liberally from the Staple Singers, we're sure Pops Staples never took the rockers to court.
But when the Verve borrowed from a song written by the Stones, the young British band was sued successfully by lawyers representing Mick and Keith -- and lost all songwriting credits on the tune. The Verve, facing bankruptcy, disbanded soon after. Ironically, the Stones then allowed Nike to use it in a television commercial, although for what was likely a handsome fee.
This course of action is nothing new, according to Gaylor. When the player piano came out, songwriters issued lawsuits. When the VCR came out, same deal. Gaylor is hopeful nonetheless. He expects the tide will change, as it always does -- and did during the creation of his film.
"When I started making the movie, YouTube didn't exist, Facebook
wasn't there, so none of these people had any idea about any of these issues. It just so happened that Girl Talk got quite a lot of notoriety as we were making the movie. That helped. You could tell that there was a zeitgeist that was forming around remix culture and a rethinking of intellectual property that he personified."
Gaylor is walking the walk. He has posted raw footage of RiP to the website www.opensourcecinema.org, with hopes that users will make their own version of the film. By doing so, he hopes a new strain of the concept behind Girl Talk will emerge.
"People we are calling pirates now are going to be called admirals in 15 years. Let's stop suing these kids who are using this technology to express themselves, stop calling them criminals and look at it for what it is -- an explosion of creativity. Let's look at business models emerging from what we are now calling piracy."
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