RIP: A Remix Manifesto

Web activist and filmmaker Brett Gaylor's feature documentary RIP:A Remix Manifesto explores the concept of copyright in the era of Napster, Bit Torrent and peer-to-peer file sharing. Although pop culture giants such as Muddy Waters and the Rolling Stones were able to build on past music to produce their own, the door is now closing behind them.RIP's central protagonist is Gregg Gillis, the Pittsburgh biomedical engineer who moonlights as Girl Talk, a mash-up artist rearranging the pop charts' DNA with his incongruous, entirely samplebased songs. But is Girl Talk a paragon of people power or the Pied Piper of piracy? Digital technology opens up an unprecedented global economy of ideas. RIP explores the robber barons and revolutionaries squaring off across this new frontier as the film journeys from the control rooms of Washington to the favelas of Brazil.Along the way,Gaylor interviews key figures about the complexities of intellectual property in the digital era, among them Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig, culture critic Cory Doctorow, Brazilian musician and former Minister of Cultural Affairs Gilberto Gil, and Jammie Thomas, the single mom successfully sued by the Recording Industry Association of America for illegal downloading. Director Brett Gaylor completely disagrees with (these) copyright laws: ›That means my favorite artist is a criminal and you should not be watching, because I'm not allowed to use these songs in my film.‹ Gaylor's calculation of what one of Girl Talk's songs would end up costing in copyright fees is shocking. No one could come up with that kind of money. With this contemporary, cinematic manifesto, Gaylor wants to stand up for everyone who uses existing music to create something new. The fact that Gaylor is making a mash-up himself -- in the form of this documentary -- exposes him to comments like ›That's fantastic, and totally illegal!‹ Which side of the ideas war are you on?