This is fear in action, on the comment boards of Hulu after RiP! A Remix Manifesto broadcast, apparently exclusive U.S. broadcast of Canadian film…
Okay, this is where I have a problem. When you say …
“We could be culturally free yes, but when a new disease rears its ugly head you will be kicking yourself as you watch your culturally free family die before your eyes.”
Jeremy, does that mean that no one will be interested in saving lives unless he or she is monetarily motivated? I think that’s what you think it means. But don’t try to scare me with threats that money is the answer to all of our problems, and especially not with NEW diseases. Not NOW!
BS! You know anything about living in a culturally free anything? And, since when have any of us really had much of chance to ever do it realistically? Everyone wants credit for their own ideas, for goods and services (in return) that maintain lifestyles apart from everyone else. It’s cool, it works like the merit system, except when we are talking about rights of intellectual property, digital, organic and public vs private which in fact, if you had come up with a Nobel winning comment on Hulu’s website, who do you think would collect that award? Have you read Hulu’s policies regarding their use of your comments on their site?
Go on my Brazilian Brothers…
The points that this movie makes does outline in gritty detail the layout and the plan, and I think the matter appears open for negotiation if anyone knew how to really negotiate here. We’ve got the scared, reliant on money on one side, and the free, who know they can trust their society on the other. I think it’s important to note that what Brazil did to break through the barriers for their positive medical achievement by breaking away from U.S. copyright laws, should prove you dead wrong.
RIP
A Remix Manifesto
on Hulu…what is this movie really about?
Yeah, I went on a little bit of a TANGENT there, in the comments of Hulu. When I post on another site I might not have those same privileges and rights, unless I need to be held accountable for some sort of indecency or illegal activity there. Some sites may maintain the right to use the comments for anything they like and not give any credit to the original author, so I try to use my own domain for extended comments. How’s that for a double edge sword?
Now let’s talk about the Double Edged Sword, is this a cliche or a world renowned quote? Is it a tag line for a razor ad? Or is it a public domain metaphor? Because I’ve heard many people use this phrase and I’ve used it and we all know what it means, but did someone coin this phrase once? Will I receive a cease and desist order to deny me any right of any further utterance of this phrase due to copyright infringement? Don’t we all go around quoting books, authors that reflect our own feelings? We loan books to our friends? We loan movies to our neighbors. Let’s get real people. It’s not a problem until the volume reaches a significant point of loss in REVENUE.
Those who share ask, what is lost when you share? The original is still there, intact, and to share a sample might mean a gross of future sales that might not have come if not shared the sample. Does a baker not lay out samples of cookies on a tray for customers to try? One of the other comments mentioned that Radiohead’s share experiment actually turned them into a profitable money making, self distributing band who broke their own record in sales from all their previous albums. So the argument that sharing injures the industry is bunk. But sharing samples is not the same as pirating full length movies and redistributing them on another website or sharing full length songs from peer to peer. And I believe that as an artist who wants to maintain the original integrity of my work, I would prefer to be the deciding party as to who and how anyone mashes it up, whether they are making money off it or not.
Obviously, this film raises the awareness for smaller artists such as myself in what I am legally entitled to do in efforts to produce fully legitimate original content. It also displays the wave, or should I say RAVE, over the right to use another artists work to build upon and therefore make it their own by way of interpretation. It explains the current laws and introduces us to Lawrence Lessig, the attorney that declared the film illegal at the time he saw it. Of course, at the time, Lawrence assumed that the filmmaker would attempt to distribute it for profit. That, to any attorney would make the film a potential hotbed for lawsuits unless Girl Talk’s Greg Gillis, was willing to pay for the rights to publish all those samples. However, the film has been released as a share and share alike creative commons venture on OpenSourceCinema.org and no one appears to be directly receiving compensation for the work on this film.
Screech to a halt…
Is the movie about our obedience to money?
Sure it’s easy for a fourteen year old to steal money out of his own Dad’s pocket and feel comfortable inside that crime because we know our Dad loves us, he would give it to us anyway, or maybe he’s an asshole and we feel justified to take his money because he never buys us anything. Maybe the internet makes stealing music and movies feel just as easy and comfortable. It certainly made us feel closer to the artists that we love. Maybe for a moment we thought, these artists would want us to have their music, until all of sudden the artist complains and the record company realizes it’s on shaky ground. It took the justice department to go after simple folk USA who were using these peer sharing networks to share songs, to retrain the American people that they rely on the industry to make money, as they rely on all their industries to make money to live among the richest country in the world. The American people almost forgot that they support the monetary system.
Why would we now have the urge to bite the hands that feeds us?
But that’s not where the argument ends. Because money is involved in everything we do. It’s often the reason why we do things. We’ve made ourselves dependent on the stuff, unable to grow or rear anything without some self help book or aid campaign to guide us through what used to be a man’s sudden need for survival. Everything is trivial in matters of survival as long as you have money.
Why can’t this change? Why can’t we rely on each other to perform what is needed for the whole and wealth of the rest of us? We might have been born selfish, but we can learn to help each other find food and shelter and, supposedly, we might be able to protect ourselves . Currency has taken the place of the human spirit IMO, in some cases as the above comment, I wonder. Advertisements try to appeal to our desire to help, looking for financial backing and not real communication and interaction, it’s easier to give money then to go and actually help. And, in today’s circumstances, is it safe to give money to any outfit that you are not directly involved in?
The RIAA and the MPAA are not working to protect the rights of the artist, they are working to protect the right to their money as was the Metallica musician on the Larry King show protesting to his fans, that stealing his songs hurts his career and record sales, and devalues his artistry. While the other side argues that sharing helps promote sales.
Hahahaha. I’ve got over 100 videos out there that I have shared on various blogs and I’ve barely made ten bucks from all those efforts. My good buddy over at operationitch.com is asking for donations to help pay for a new computer to keep his blog alive. When I took on the task of becoming a video blogger, I did so out of passion, and I can bet that’s what others did it for as well, some have become somewhat successful, but I doubt many of the creative commons crowd really gets much financial stimulation unless they are also web developers and domain name owners. In order to make real money on the internet, you must deal in volume, so we should all realize by now that only the Googles and Youtubes and Hulu’s are the sites that make money.
They are mega-sites and they know this very well, and are making fists full of dollars off of artists just like me and I checked the box that allowed them to do that. I chose to share and I don’t know why, I guess I felt it was an opportunity to share my vision since it would have never have been seen anyway. Artist don’t typically create volume, that is not their usual aspiration, but I think we’ve adapted to that and over time our work begins to develop, and over time we make the right connections. It really isn’t much different then if I moved to Hollywood and try to get a major motion picture made which would be riskier by far. It takes time and dedication and giving away some spec work to gain any recognition, all the while some digital engine is racking in the dough, eventually, maybe I’ll be compensated. But, no matter what, I’ve left my very permanent mark.
The film also touches on the period of time when the US changed the patent law to include options to register living organisms at the patent office, and I could see that being very dangerous, because when the military starts making soldiers that you can’t kill and patenting them as living organisms that they created and they own all the rights to, making it illegal to dismantle them or reprogramming them…Then we have a real problem on our hands people.
But the film is right, we are experiencing less freedoms and we are also experiencing less of whatever the world has to offer without getting it through a middleman somewhere. It didn’t mention Monsanto specifically, but through research, you may find, that is the corporation that made sure that patent law was revised. The GMO argument is also part of this. If Monsanto can be allowed to take a perfectly free and natural organism and genetically modify it to include it’s weed killing mechanism and then patent it so that someday we would no longer be allowed to grow our own food eventually without paying them for the right to do so, because GMO plant infestation seems to be on the rise, why then is it so difficult to indicate a remixer’s work as original?
Something is not right here. It seems pretty apparent to me as well as to millions of others who chose to be so enlightened, Girl Talk clearly does not have the financial resources behind it to assure that the law bends to it’s benefit.
This article from Reuter’s, just released today, August 12, 2009 indicates that a WTO panel has found China’s international trade rules need to be revised in the area of books, and other audiovisual and media works. Seems the country has countered U.S. efforts to compete within China since it has had to compete with black market pirated media prices and since the financial crisis, China owns a hefty portion of U.S. debt, it might need to reconsider it’s trade practices and internal laws governing piracy to see any benefit to owning such debt. How can American industries survive, even profit, if the trade policies have been thwarted by such infringements?
So there. I guess the argument is closed now. RiP! A Remix Manifesto, is not really about little guy Girl Talk, it’s about international trade laws and cultural disputes regarding who should be allowed to make money and who needs it?
