GCBC

(0:00) What effect does the passage of time and a film’s eventual web archival have on its genre?

Watching the archaeologically preserved filesharing documentary Good Copy, Bad Copy (2006) in my browser I was struck not just by the way the aesthetics, but also the attitude of such a recent and critically relevant film could appear so dated and remote. While many early open-source web archives and digital D.I.Y. creations from the recent past do share endearing formal qualities, GCBC can be framed more pragmatically in a rhetorical genre, based on its insights into the birth of a global information movement and the way it responds to the introduction of networking tools by featuring voices from around the newly-connected world. Chronicling the initial fight over the uncharted waters of the web with what the burgeoning industry has quickly made ’obsolete’ technology, the low budget documentary functions as an artifact of its genre and testament to the conditions of its creation, dissemination, and storage.

(43:52) In understanding where the file-sharing world began its ongoing struggle for the democratization of information, the film provides a fascinating account of the legal battles between powerful North American entertainment industry rule-makers against file-sharers and musicians worldwide. Microcosm that the internet frontier is, the industry’s ham-fisted stranglehold on copyright law and opposition to file sharing echoes the West’s history of imposing outsized influence on of developing nations, and appropriation of their ideas (as well as internal copyright battles dating back to the printing press.) techno brega, a genre of Brazilian music consisting of around 80% original material to 20% sampled content,  is subject to foreign copyright laws and uses a instant concert recording distribution model that had recently been co-opted or "invented" by reunited American rock band The Pixies when the film was made.  “Emerging cultural forms of production taking place in poor areas of the world are ahead on their business models," said one man in the techno brega scene. 

(4:27) “Thats when it made me understand that we might have to listen to some records and CDs,” says a copyright lawyer at the beginning of the film, in regard to a lawsuit brought against Public Enemy by the label of future sampling proponent and Tallahassee resident George Clinton. An interesting point of division between creators, remixers, and their legal representatives is brought up here. When the industry bigwig says “It defies human nature to paint a picture or do a statue and just give it away," this separation also takes place. Assuming that most artists would stop making art if they didn't make money, not just those whose artistic ideals are influenced by the material culture of the music industry or the capitalist economic conditions that created it in the first place, is completely tone-deaf, no pun intended. The quote about actually having "to listen to some records and CDs" doesn't even come close to this comment. Creativity is a commodity in their eyes, and of course it is. By creating the idea of "intellectual property" in the first place they're able to tilt the tables in their favor.