‘RiP: A Manifesto’ explores the copyright conundrum of mashups

Photo By Kat Baulu

Film director Brett Gaylor with DJ Girl Talk at a concert in Montreal last November. 

A cucumber is a fruit, and bananas and tomatoes are both berries. It sounds outrageous, but look it up. Most of us can tell whether something is a fruit or a vegetable in the blink of an eye. According to the official definitions, however, we may be dead wrong. People go on making their soups and salads without a deep regard for definitions, and there are certainly no lawsuits. A similar situation persists, with tragic effects, in the convoluted world of copyright. While the Internet has enabled the simplest and most morally zealous among us to instantly access and manipulate the history of art, film and music, a small group of frighteningly powerful people is buying up the rights to our culture. These people have decided among themselves that our widespread behaviour is illegal and should be taken into the grip of the law.

The documentary RiP: A Remix Manifesto explores the perverse hypocrisy inherent in our copyright laws. Filmmaker Brett Gaylor focuses on his favourite artist – the mash-up wizard Girl Talk – as a poster boy for what he calls the battle between “CopyRight” and “CopyLeft.” Until recently, Girl Talk – whose birth-given handle is Gregg Gillis – led a dual existence: biomedical engineer by day and mash-up artist extraordinaire by night. Essentially, his entire creative enterprise relies on using existing music and recombining samples in new and innovative ways. On paper it may sound novel, but in action these beats can send a club full of people flying up and down. They even worked to bring Paris Hilton onstage with him at the 2007 Coachella Festival.

Yet, as it stands today, Girl Talk is a criminal for having stolen a great deal of intellectual property. A criminal? That’s right. One of the most significant musical figures of today is a criminal. Copyright laws were originally established in the United States to attract creative individuals and offer them a limited guarantee on profits derived from their creations. Initially,
the copyright holder – or the person who held the right to copy a work – only held the licence for 14 years. As time passed, the licence was increased until it reached today’s  life-of-the-author-plus-70-years stipulation. There are strong efforts to further increase the length of this licence on the part of the six conglomerates that own more than 90 percent of media holdings in the United States. If we follow the math, we can say these six companies own 90 percent of Girl Talk’s source material and would be more than happy to hit him with an enormous lawsuit. They see his art as crime.

The saddest part of this copyright conflict is that it treats our culture’s creative past as nothing more than a commodity. The aforementioned corporations do not discriminate between
a barrel of oil and the Beatles or real estate and Radiohead. In RiP, Gaylor’s first point is that “Culture always builds on the past.” Whether it’s in science, sociology or downright  common sense, one of the most basic assumptions is that nothing occurs in a vacuum. A thing never exists independently. Sadly, corporate America has ignored this fundamental axiom in its blind lust for our creative heritage. The result, as Gaylor states in point three of his four-point manifesto, is that “Our future is becoming less free.” This calculation isn’t rocket science. In some way, shape or form, the popular music of the last half-century is the progeny of a long and rich folk tradition that relies on using the work of the people who came before them. If our current trifling and petty laws had been in place 200 years ago, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that our musical culture would not exist today.

The saddest part of this copyright conflict is that it treats our culture’s creative past as nothing more than a commodity 

Furthermore, the U.S. publishing industry was erected on what would now be considered copyright infringement. U.S. publishers printed unlicensed copies of popular European
authors like Charles Dickens and used the proceeds to subsidize the cost of printing U.S. authors. One of the most notable beneficiaries of this tactic is Mark Twain. It doesn’t end there. Early rock bands engaged in rampant theft of old blues and folk songs. Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones are just two of the many guilty parties. This wouldn’t be problematic or even noteworthy if not for the fact that anyone else using “their” riffs or melodies would now be slammed with a lawsuit. It seems fair to say that the vast majority of people would like
to see serious amendments made to our current copyright mess, changes that go beyond simple preference. Once upon a time, a musician only needed to worry about harsh critics
when releasing a new album. Throughout RiP, Gaylor demonstrates how the tides have shifted as musicians like Girl Talk now lose sleep over the fear that News Corp. might come after him with a pack of rabid wolves that double as lawyers.

We’ve all heard a mash-up or remix that got us thinking how cool it was to hear something so familiar reinterpreted. This new art form, this musical quilt making, represents nothing less than the battle between life and death: life in the creative, visionary realm of cavaliers like Girl Talk, and death in the moment a creation has a price tag put on it, is purchased and locked away in a company’s asset portfolio along with gold bullion and Bell Canada stock. We’re reaching a tipping point in the law. When enough of us say “Enough!” and take this madness into our own hands, the wonders we can work will be astounding. “Manifesto” is a loaded word, but in this case nothing less may be sufficient.

- RiP: A Remixer’s Manifesto opened March 13. Chapters are available for download and remixes are actively encouraged. Go to www.nfb.ca/rip for information, mash-up challenges and calls for collaboration.