The Good, the Bad, and the Copyright.

The film, Good Copy Bad Copy, shows the problems that musicians, producers, lawyers and many other people involved in the music and film industries, deal with copyright infringement. How they prevent it, stop it, and evolve it to grow with the ever changing technological advances. The film follows different people takes on copyright throughout the world. They interview, executives in hollywood, small producers in Brazil, the infamous GirlTalk, Nigerian film producers, and many others, to hear their opinion on how copyright has effected and changed the music and film industries. 

    With the growing technological industry, it is harder and harder to prevent people from file sharing, or pirating music and films. With the vastness of the internet, sharing of files is just clicks away. While watching the section on Nollywood, the Nigerian Hollywood, I found it interesting that “Nigeria is the largest film makers in the world” (25:17) and that all of this is happening without copyright laws in Nigeria. When they are interviewing Charles Igwe, a film producer in Nigeria, he says that none of their movies are ever pirated because they immediately release them to the public. He says that of the movies that are sold in these large markets, the only ones that are pirated are the ones from foreign countries. The reason they do this is because the foreign producers aren't there to stop them, unlike the Nigerian producers, who are constantly in the markets. This made me think of how different it is in other countries where it is easier to get pirated movies, because more people have internet access. Piracy is often though of as buying a cd or movie off the street like in these Nigerian markets. 

    

   The growing market is in “Internet Piracy” (15:50) which is much harder to stop. Because of the growing file sharing, the companies that make and produce these films or songs, say they lose a collective average of six billion dollars a year. One of the larger file sharing companies PirateBay, which was run from Sweden, was investigated for the crimes of copyright. Although the cite was shut down, they were up and running in just a couple days due to Swedish law over U.S. Law. With vast file sharing like PirateBay, and the controversy of copyrighting, Lawrence Lessig talks about a “creative commons” (22:14). “creative commons is giving artist a simple tool. So they can mark their creativity with the freedoms they intended to carry.” (22:30) Creative Commons allows others to use artist property as they please, and if the person wants to use if from commercial sales, they can do work that out. This is a great way for people around the world to share creativity, but at the same time protect the original creator. I think that this is relevant with the recent case of artist Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke, who were sued for copyright infringement, for using an old Marvin Gaye song. 

    

  In the closing of the film, they are interviewing DJ, GirlTalk. He basically talks about “remixing a remix” (58:24) This made me think back to Ridolfo and Rife’s discussion of recomposition, and appropriation. Being able to change something however you want from its original copy, and changing the meaning or context behind it. Although this applies more to images and text, it can also apply to music and film. We can change a song to convey a different message. Or recompose film, like they show in the Good Copy, Bad Copy at (22:00), recomposing George Bush and Tony Blaire to music, to show different how much just a simple computer can do, to create a powerful message. 

   

  This film really shows the ever growing problem with our music, film, and textual industries copyright infringement laws. With technology changing and the regulations of songs, films and text getting more difficult, we need to strive to find a way to both share creativity, but protect the intellectual property of others.