CopySTRAIGHT
Copyright infringement is no pretty piece of music, and even if it was, odds are it's not something outsourced on the public domain without rights granted by the copyright holder. In Brett Gaylor's "Rip: A Remix Manifesto", he stands as a web activist in an effort to dilute this barrier put up between producers and music aficionado's like you and I. The main protagonist along with the narrator is Girl Talk. Girl Talk creates "mashups" which range from a series of digital samples of other peoples music with the twist of his own flair and remix on the original pieces. A reoccurring trend throughout the movie with the use and publication of sampled remixes is that the artists allow the public domain to not only recreate and share the music, but the ability to price them at their own discretion.
Gaylor's overall theme and structure of his documentary, trail along this "Remixer's Manifesto". This would be the scene that epitomized the film by detailing what has come of the music industry beyond the studio and how copyright has influenced our resources on the public domain. The first step presented in the movie, "Culture always builds on the past", took us to a media literate era where the creative process shaped users into creators which aloud the change of folk-art into future media through remix. However, our culture that was remixed, wasn't rightfully ours. The second step in the manifesto, "The past always tries to control the future", led us into the archives of intellectual property. A scene in the movie depicts the separation of corporations whom own this "intellectual property", otherwise known as the "copyRIGHT", and public domain users who believe in the freedom of sharing music, otherwise known as the "copyLEFT". It's obvious which side the filmmaker stands on but does that create a fully copyLEFT biased film? Gaylor took the stance on both