“Good Copy, Bad Copy,” documents various perspectives
revolving around rhetorical velocity, which Ridolfo and DeVoss define as “the
strategic theorizing for how a text might be recomposed (and why it might be
recomposed) by the third parties, and how this recomposing may be useful or not
to the short or long-term rhetorical objectives of the rhetorician.” (Ridolfo
& Rife, 240)
For my generation, the
issues regarding copyright in pirating music/movies is shrugged off. The content we want is easily accessible,
easy to use, and free. All you need is a
BitTorrent, like uTorrent, and you can download just about anything you want
from websites that provide torrent files and magnet links, such as Kickass
Torrents and The Pirate Bay. Almost
everyone nowadays (at least in a college campus community) has access to both a
personal computer and the Internet. And
if downloading isn’t possible, streaming movies and TV shows is just as popular,
if not more so (especially in a college environment where a good portion of the
population lives in residence halls provided by the university). People can access free music through accounts
with Pandora and Spotify, but this is even taken further with YouTube. As a result, this generation has grown up
valuing as much open access as possible, and is even regarded as important
enough of a topic for the EWM major here to focus on.
Therefore, while watching “Good Copy, Bad Copy,” the
analysis of Dr. Dre’s “100 Miles and Runnin,’” I’d come to a personal
conclusion that it really wasn’t a big deal.
At 5:13, it is revealed that two seconds are taken from “Get off Your
Ass and Jam.” The documentary goes on to
define de minimis as something that “the law isn’t concerned with insignificant
offenses.” (Good Copy, Bad Copy, 6:40) A
major moment occurs at 6:55, however, where someone from the music industry
says, “Many would say it is de minimus.
But it is not.” During this
moment of the documentary, I was exposed to an entirely different line of
thinking- that this was a “riff,” and that, at least according to the people
involved with the big corporations and industry, something small like that was
considered stealing.
Another major moment occurs at 31:10 when the documentary
builds an understanding of the Nigerian film industry. Living in the United States, I’ve mostly been
exposed to Hollywood, and its big industry policies. It was a major cultural shift learning about
another film industry, best encompassed by the ideal put forth in that moment: “This
economy has required our own unique method of creating motion pictures.” The pirated versions of the movies produced
there cost about the same as the “genuine” copies, and they come out at around
the same time- therefore, the issue of open access isn’t quite the same as the
dilemma faced in the US. The more
localized industry puts the emphasis of the crime on the situation, rather than
on catching individuals. Another
poignant idea based on this philosophy occurs at 30:35: “Copyright is not about
stopping people from using your work, but getting them to use your work legally
and giving you money for what they’ve done with your work.” At least in the Hollywood industry, it feels
like this ideal has been lost, or perhaps never even existed in the first
place.
Towards the end of the film, the audience gets a taste of
the popular Brazilian musical stylings of Tecno Brega, where a third moment of
revelation occurs. Besides the
documentation and exposure of a different genre of music, the audience is also
given a quick overview of how the genre is created (something I’m certainly not
familiar with). The issues of copyright
are basically seen as a non-issue for the producers of this kind of music. Like Girl Talk, they utilize different blips
of music to fit different sections of a song according to beat and tempo. The self-proclaimed producers don’t take on
the title of musicians, and they don’t see any money made from their
music. They simply create, produce, and
make their music available for distribution.
The only money that’s made in this business is in the street vendors.
After viewing this documentary, I have a better
understanding of the dilemma of de minimus, creativity, and the money-making
industries that are looking for some sort of “retribution,” particularly in the
music and film context. As English
majors, we tend to focus on copyright in the sense of publication of literature
and other written materials, but we need to acknowledge technology’s role in
spreading and creating other “properties.”
Our culture is a reflection of the copyright culture we live in, whether
it’s the younger generation fighting for the right to creativity, regardless of
property ownership, or the (typically older) side of the argument pleading for
creativity of artists who maneuver around the industry legally through name
recognition, paperwork, and paying fees.
However, this dilemma is present primarily for the biggest players in
the context- determining that there is a problem, whether it’s in the current
laws regarding copyright, or changing the environment rather than going after
individuals, is probably the most important thing to recognize in this
fight. Consumers like me are just going
to continue to consume, but the way they consume, or if they consume, is always
going to be both a reflection and a result of the competition between these two
parallel ideas.
~Jasmine Spitler
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.