Good or Bad its Being Copied

Copyright is an issue that takes major precedence in the over-saturated media age. It is no longer a question of  “who can distribute what and how” to “who can stop people from distributing everything and how”. With everything in the media trending toward instant access and unlimited consumption it is becoming more difficult for the music industry to regulate the “piracy” of music. The documentary Good Copy, Bad Copy, created by Andreas Johnsen, Ralf Christensen and Henrik Moltke, brings the reality of outdated copyright laws and remix culture to a head. At 2:38 the remix musician known as “Girl Talk” touches on this cultural phenomenon of media saturation and its effect on music culture. He says “Everyone is bombarded with media now that I think we’ve almost been forced to use it as an art form, its like anything you know? If people were passing out paint on the street for free I’m sure there would be a lot more painters out there right now” (Girl Talk). He goes on to talk about the way the current laws regarding music are set up is inhibiting to the creative flow of the individual.

This statement has become the battle cry of the digital remix culture, the more access there is to media the more individuals are compelled to take it and make new art out of what already exists. This idea of reconfiguring something that already exists has become a common trope in a number of rhetorical theories. Rodolfo and Rife touch on many of these same copyright and appropriation issues in their   Rhetorical Velocity And Copyright. Their conclusion statements pointed to the same powerlessness that Good Copy, Bad Copy does. The impossibilities of controlling the spread of text is an undeniable truth that is present in both texts.  

The problem of textuality that is more apparent in the film is the antiquated notions of tangibility. In the analog era a text existed in a tangible, physical form that could be handled and monitored on a much more closed basis. Music, in its early stages could only be consumed by going to a public performance, then eventually records allowed individuals to own the music they wanted to consume but not share it. In this modern age file sharing has changed the way music is shared and consumed in a way that cannot be appropriately contained.

            Trying to control this mass spread of online sharing and remixing with outdated laws is a loosing battle because of the global nature of this issue. This issue is being viewed in the wrong light; there is no way to stop the progress of media toward unlimited sharing and innovative creativity. At 35:23 on of the individuals says, “If you cut off all of the peer-to-peer networks in Europe there will be one in China, or in Russia, or in Kazakhstan and if you close all those down they’ll be on the Pacific Islands, and if you close all those down they will be on a boat”. There is no way to go back, the industry has to accept what has already happened and adapt their business model to be accommodating.

            Where innovation and creativity are concerned there is no backtracking, the moment things begin to accelerate in a societal direction they are out of anyone’s control. This film conceders these textual issues on a global scale to put the issue into perspective and truly illuminate the impact it has had on media culture. At 55:50 the films concluding scene shows the artist known as Girl Talk listening remix of a Gnarles Barkely song with the Brazilian music that was featured earlier in the film. Ending the film this way brings the global message full circle and emphasizes the spreadability of music in the file sharing culture.

            This film says something impactful about the nature of technological progression, namely how unstoppable and all encompassing it is. Even though the producers never actually take a firm stance on either side of the copyright issue, it is made apparent by the end that no matter which side of the issue you are on, it is undeniable that this phenomenon is inevitable. The last scene of the film does a sort of meta commentary on remix culture. The way the camera pans out and shows Girl Talk sitting at his computer in his living room it looks like you are looking in at him through a window, almost as if he represented all of society, as if we are all sitting in our homes consuming and remixing music. Right as the camera cuts to black he says “Its fun cutting stuff up”. As the film is verbally commenting on the nature of remixing it is engaging in it, this works to intensify the message and restate the inevitability of the continuation of remix culture.

~Mikaela McShane