Film Writing

The film I watched was RIP a Remix.  Right from the beginning the speaker talks about the problem of copyrights and ideas, and how even the smallest sampling of a copyrighted song can cause a lawsuit.  He lays out 4 points of a manifesto on how to share ideas based on the past, present, and future.  A large part of the examples centered around Girl Talk, a guy who uses his computer to make mash ups of old songs.  Although his songs are made up of songs that aren't his, the speaker argues that it sort of becomes his because of the creativity put into it.  He talks about how in the past, all ideas were in the public domain and could be spread around easily and freely.  Copyright laws were originally meant to balance the authors and public.  Napster changed the distribution of songs and property by allowing users to share amongst users and prompted more laws.  One of his main points for the film is that copyright laws are out of control and manipulated for profit.  He uses Walt Disney's film as proof that culture is built upon the past, and as evidence that Disney was essentially a mashup artist like Girl Talk.  After he died, Disney Corporation changed the laws to allow for quadruple the time previously allowed for rights to be owned.  A big criticism of this was that art was being made off limits.  This is made clear when the girl talk guy said he's not as quick to release n album of mashups as he used to be.  I think the main idea that the film tries to portray is that copying ideas has become easier and more dangerous, while at the same time more profitable for labels/corporations etc who sue relentlessly.  He says that there should be limited control of the past to allow for more creativity and more ideas to be expressed.