In praise of illegal art

Montreal director Brett Gaylor’s RiP: A
Remix Manifesto is a playful call to
arms for the copyfighting age

MASH-UP MAVEN: Gaylor

by MARK SLUTSKY

When Napster, the first popular peer-to-peer file-sharing software, launched nearly a decade ago, few people could have foreseen the consequences. The ability to effortlessly share music with little perceptible loss of quality would be a massive blow to the music industry, yes, but it also raised questions about copyright, the law and creativity that are still being grappled with by corporations, activists, artists and scholars.

But the easy availability of editing software and broadband Internet has had a huge impact not only on consumers, but artists as well. Sometime in 2001, I heard an MP3 called “A Stroke of Genie-us,” by an artist named the Freelance Hellraiser, which put Christina Aguilera’s “Genie in a Bottle” vocals over the instrumental track of the Strokes’ “Hard to Explain,” creating a strangely plausible alternate reality pop hit. The problem was, of course, that it was completely illegal, and RCA’s lawyers moved to stop it.

Illegal art: an unlikely, seemingly meaningless term, but as Montreal filmmaker Brett Gaylor’s new film RiP: A Remix Manifesto carefully explains, the concept of copyright law, while conceived of as a protection to creators, has become a business-favouring impediment to the advancement of art in the age of digital reproduction.

Gaylor lays out the issue through interviews with “copyfighting” luminaries like Boing Boing blogger/author Cory Doctorow and lawyer Lawrence Lessig. He follows mash-up artist Girl Talk, whose work consists of thousands of samples, and whose career is, in the words of one expert, practically a case study for testing the extent of copyright law. It’s not all talking heads, though—clever animated sequences outline the often murky legal issues with an easy-to-follow clarity.

RiP makes no pretense to disinterested objectivity (there’s a reason it’s called a manifesto). Gaylor believes that creativity needs to be freed from the shackles of the past and outdated copyright law, and he argues it forcefully and effectively.

He also practises what he preaches, invoking fair use to actually show the mash-ups and remixes theoretically prohibited by copyright law (and presumably tempting some lawyers’ trigger fingers). Through the making of the film, he also invited people to participate in its creation by posting his footage at opensourcecinema.org, and some creative re-imaginings make it into the film as well.

And despite the complicated and abstract issues that are its focus, RiP always feels playful, not didactic. It’s hard to believe a meditation on copyright law and artists’ rights could be so much fun. Gaylor’s done a great job of communicating the urgency he feels about the issue, and his enthusiasm is infectious.

RIP: A REMIX MANIFESTO OPENS
THIS FRIDAY, MARCH 6