The Good, the Bad, the Copyrighted

The ideas laid out in Good Copy Bad Copy are some of the most interesting concepts we learn in the EWM program. Remediation and remixing are crucial to creating media and their definitions are ambiguous in the eyes of artists and even the court. I give this film a lot of credit for coming from both sides of the issues and figuring out how to find a balance with this topic. Good Copy Bad Copy has artists of all kinds wondering how far they have to go to create something "original." If art is inspired by other art, is it a copy or still original?


The movie takes a look at the music industry, as it is on of the most common places for remixing and remediating. The movie provides a lot of great music examples where there is an argument of whether or not a work is original or it is copied. DJ Girl Talk takes current songs and remixes them together creating a brand new song. Some believe this creates new original work, however, others believe that this practice is simply copying another artist's work. The songs created by DJ Girl Talk question which copyright laws apply, and if they all applied, it also questions what kinds of art wouldn't exist if they were prohibited by law.

This idea of "sampling" is something that has been discussed within the music industry recently especially because of all of the different platforms there are for consumers to access music. When music was first available on the internet, it was primarily through purchasing servers like iTunes or the Walmart Music store. As time went on, dowload and pirating programs such as LimeWire were created and the internet culture realized they didn't have to purchase music if they didn't want to. Now there are hundreds if not thousands of websites and programs to listen to music without paying a dime. Pandora, I Heart Radio, and Spotify to name a few. And they are changing how money goes from the consumer to the artist, causing artists to pull their music completely off these platforms.

Pirating isn't only an issue in the music industry. It is also very relevant for movies and TV. The movie shows how it is common practice in Europe and Russia to pirate recordings of films for a profit and then make copies of that recording to sell to the masses. This is something seen regularly in the US as well. It makes me wonder how much a film would make today if the technology we had for piracy didn't exist. Would blockbusters still be hits? Would flops become blockbusters? There are some who believe that due to the ease of pirating music, it is more lenient than pirating a film, however what makes the music artist less valuable than the movie artist? Are they not effected the same way due to losing funds from their art?

The film also shows that there is good that comes with the bad of the internet culture. The internet is the main thing that connects all corners of the world at all hours of the day. Within seconds someone in London is chatting and sharing music with someone in Tokyo and that is something that is truly remarkable. While there is something to be said and done about how the law needs to control the sharing of media, there is also something to be said about the age we are in that sharing media is even a remote possibility.