05/02/08 11:42

© Good Copy Bad Copy – a documentary about the current state of copyright and culture

by Josep M. Ganyet

Posted in Internet, Music | No Comments » Tweet This Post

I watched this documentary late last night. I just wanted to watch the beginning and let it for today but it turned out to be impossible to stop.

The film deals with copyrights, copylefts, intellectual property and how the net is changing well established business models while allowing for reach and creativity for the rest of us.

In the documentary you’ll find:

• Danger Mouse talking about his highly successful The Grey Album where he mashed Jay-Z Black Album with Beatles White Album (thus The Grey Album). It violated all kinds of copyrights but it’s a masterpiece. Obviously it was downloaded by millions, earning Danger Mouse just credibility and respect. Fancy a torrent?

Here’s the video with John Lennon breakdancing to Ringo Star’s DJing.

• Musician Girl Talk. He performs live with a laptop mixing and mashing every conceivable sample creating new real time songs. He would be willing to pay the billions he should, according to current copyright laws, for using the original songs, but even if he had the money it would take him no less than 50 years to get all the permissions from the owners.
• The Brazilian DJs from the Techno Brega scene in the north of Brazil (a kind of Techno Kitsch, don’t try at home). They mix and remix whatever they listen on the radio and download from the net, Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy this time. After that they distrubute their CDs for free expecting to attract fans to their live acts, a business model that is catching up in the traditional music industry.
• Larry Lessig, author of Free Culture and creator of the Creative Commons licensing model, talking about the need to protect intellectual property but also on how too restrictive copyright laws hinder creativity and access to culture by everybody.
• The guys from Pirate Bay in Sweden. Well you know them.

Funny at the end when Girl Talk remixes Gnarls Barkley’s (Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse) remix of Crazy done by the Brazilian Techno Brega DJ, and turns it into something completely new. You could see him rocking the house with this small sample and his laptop.

Check the trailer at the Creative Commons website
Watch the movie online
Download Good Copy Bad Copy from The Pirate Bay

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