Redefining Creativity in the Digital Age

While Good Copy Bad Copy does provide differing perspectives on the issue of copyright laws, pulling interviews from both the enforcers and the “criminals”, there is clearly no question as to which side the creators are shining a positive light on. The negative repercussions of ‘copyrighted’ material have so intensively been ingrained in us that the portrayal of large public acceptance of remixed material may seem a bit out of the ordinary. Property rights, specifically intellectual property rights in this context, have acted as the poster-child for American culture and the ‘American Dream’. It is clear that such an idealistic concept, when put into practice, is subject to the same corruption and hypocrisy intrinsic to the bases of this dream.  

One specific scene that addressed this was the interview with the Brazilian in the brewery, in which he says that the continued restructuring of the copyright laws are intended “to protect certain very specific interests…in order to prevent society from becoming the producer of culture in itself and for itself” (32:20). This idea is often overlooked when attempting to argue for the virtues of the copyright laws. Here, the groups are not personified as the struggling artist competing with the fraudulent pirate, but rather as the monopolizing corporations of the United States with the power-deprived masses of society. Presented in this way, remix-culture can be seen as an attempt to take-back their power as a cultural society, similar to how graffiti artists attempt to gain control of what their streets look like.

Another example of this that specifically portrayed the dichotomy of the U.S. and the rest of the world was in the interview with the Pirate Bay creators, “they think that U.S. jurisdiction stretches around the world. It’s illegal according to U.S. law but not according to Swedish law…you don’t decide over the internet, we the users do” (17:50). The international perspectives presented in the film provided clear resentment and rejection of any claims of the universality of the U.S. copyright laws. In addition, the Pirate Bay creators argue for the legitimacy of the users’ power over internet content, claiming that the interests of the people will be represented by denying and fighting subjection to American copyright laws.

Finally, the final scene of the film in which Girl Talk, of whom the film started with, is remixing the Brazilian DJ’s remix of an American popular song represents the intangible range of creativity that the digital age has made possible. File-sharing “goes back to the whole folk culture thing”, stretching from the song’s U.S. origins, to Brazil’s culture of  creating remixes to be played and used in essentially organizing giant raves, and then back to Pittsburgh where Girl Talk reinterprets it (56:45).  He says that each remix is a reinterpretation of an original story, adding new elements of stories and culture. In this sense, the traditional American idea of copyright protecting the incentive for creativity is directly contradicted, and that our current digital climate of mass media provides its own incentive. “Everyone’s been bombarded with media now that I think we’ve almost been forced to use it as an art form” (2:30).