strange symphonies

Good Copy Bad Copy

A few weeks ago, The Creative Commons blog posted a link to the video Good Copy Bad Copy. I’ve just recently finished watching it and it provides a good angle on the Copyright debate. The video goes through the incidents of The Pirate Bay shutdown last year, Creative Commons, the Grey Album and travels to both Nigeria and Brazil and how Copyright is dealt with over there.

Though it doesn’t provide the solution to the copyright debate, it does provide an insight on what is happening to culture.

If you are familiar with this area, then there isn’t anything really new to learn.

I like how they ended the film with the participants mixing each others work. DJ Girl Talk (in Pittsburg I believe) remixing the work of Beta Mertralha’s (in Brazil) remix. Remixing the remix.

Here are some quotes that I like for various reasons:

“There is a growing movement among younger people in Europe and in the United States about collected is free, that free is right. That sharing of information should be unrestricted. If that comes into conflict with copyright, so be it!“

18:30 — Dan Glickman, chairman and CEO of The Motion Picture Association of America.

“An old revenue stream for the entertainment industry is up against fundamental rights, such as privacy of correspondence, protection of whistleblowers and freedom of press. This is a disturbing trend, because they do not understand what this is really about. They think it’s about one profession’s right to get paid for its work, but this is not the issue. If you look at the advantages of filesharing, every citizen gets all knowledge and culture of the world at his fingertips. Each citizen is enriched in a way not seen since the advent of public libraries 150 years ago.”

20:57 — Lawrence Lessig makes an apperance.

“If you go to Africa, Nigerian cinema is nowadays the largest movie makers of the world. United States cinema produces 611 films per year. India produces around 900. Nigeria produces 1,200. The interesting thing is that all that happened without Nigeria having a copyright law.”

25:20 — Ronald Lemos Professor of Law, FGV Brazil

Man and I thought Bollywood was crazy!

“The producers are inside the market, so you cannot go inside and pirate their work. The association will arrest you. So we don’t pirate Nigerian movies. But you can pirate foreign movies. Foreign is okay since the producers don’t come here. You can produce and sell it at your own price.”

29:20 — Anonymous

This is one argument I brought up to various friends on how to deal with piracy. Play fire with fire, fight them at their own game. If they started selling original DVDs pirated style here (with a slightly increased price) I bet you, you might get more sales. Work on the marketing people!

“Society is the biggest competitor for Hollywood, the music industry and the publishing industry. So you have this new competitor that is everyone else. So the law has been consistently changed in the past 12 years, in order to protect certain very specific interests. Especially for the north American cultural industry. In order to prevent society from becoming the producer of culture, in itself and for itself.“

32:21 — Charles Igwe, Film Producer Lagos Nigeria

“You need copyright as an incentive for people to create. First we go to the internet service provider and say: One of the most important things you have in your business model is music. When you look for new subscribers you say how important music is. If you believe music is important than respect music. Cooperate with those who produce music.”

33:53 — John Kennedy, Chairman, IFPI

“Clearly people will not do things for free. It defies human nature to paint a picture or do a statue and just give it away. There might be a few people like that, but they probably don’t eat very well.”

53:13 — Dan Glickman, chairman and CEO of The Motion Picture Association of America.

Not do things for free? Boy is he wrong. If it is a matter very important to them, chances are they will do it for free. Just look at Free and Open Source Software.

“Pretty fun to cut stuff up”

Ending line — Girl Talk

Good ending line, because it’s simply true. Its damn fun to cut stuff up and make your own collage of various works.