Blog 10

After watching RiP A Remix Manifesto by Brett Gaylor I was opened up to the true dangers of piracy of songs over the internet as well as how unfair and unjust label records are when dealing with intellectual property. The film is a documentary about the rights to intellectual property but not only for music but for images as well. It starts with the introduction of Girl Talk. Girl Talk is a remix artist. He samples all different kinds of music, taking parts of different songs, editing them and combining them with other songs. What Girl Talk does is called remixing. According to Federal laws, this is illegal and is stealing intellectual property. Intellectual property has two groups of people deciding what to do with it. Those who want to keep intellectual property locked up until it is purchased, and those who want intellectual property to be free for all people and can be used in any matter. The documentary also mentions something called A Remixer’s Manifesto. There are four rules to this. The first one is culture always builds on the past. This is shown in the documentary through the songs of the past being remixed and mashed up in the present. The second rule is the past always tries to control the future. This is shown when the companies that own the songs try to sue people who infringe on the copyrights of songs. The third rule is that our future is becoming less free. This is once again shown when the companies are suing people. They put fear into people and make them unable to mix music or other intellectual property. The fourth and final rule is that to build free societies you must limit the control of the past. This means to stop the suing of intellectual property. The only way for us to advance now is to improve on things of the past without the fear of the past forcing us to stop. I completely agree with the idea of freedom to use any intellectual property. I believe that intellectual property should be shared. Remixes and mash ups should be encouraged. However, I also believe that credit should be given where it is due. So if an artist remixes the Beatles and U2 together he should note somewhere that he uses the songs in his work. Before watching this documentary, I had heard about Girl Talk and had listened to some of his music. I really enjoyed listening to it and it never made a difference to me whether or not the samples he got were legal or not. To me imitation is the greatest flattery. wWhen artists use ideas and things from the past in their present day work, it is like the artist has a great appreciation for the original artist that they want to use some of their songs or drawings. I have no problem with that because I believe that in the present day, there should be no restrictions on creativity.