My reflection of RIP: A Remix Manifesto Part 1

The beginning of the film brings up a very interesting concept of copyright. He points out a group of people who believe that copyright laws are essential. They believe that whenever one person creates something “original” they have the right to control who uses it as well as the right to sue those who use it without permission. Stealing media is still stealing in any use of the word and is illegal. The film defines the group who holds these ideas the CopyRIGHT. In many ways, their ideas are pure and in the best interest of the creator. Except, there are many flaws in this idea. I recently used the word “original” with quotation marks because the idea of original is relative. Is there anything truly new under the sun? information, knowledge, and ideas all must stem from somewhere and who is to state that you have the right to use such information in the first place. Where do we draw the line? The CopyRIGHT draw the line once at the point when any work is published with claims to copyright.

On the other hand, there are people who exist that believe the line should never be draw so that people can expand on previous ideas and grow upon them. This group of people have been labeled the CopyLEFT. Although these references have a strong allusion to politics, the both groups are legitimate and separated in opinion. The battle between the CopyLEFT and the CopyRIGHT. People from the CopyLEFT see new artists being restrained and held back from creating truly valuable media due to copyright laws. Truly favored artists such as Girl Talk are at risk of being sued for everything he is worth. If someone’s creations are valued then they should not be illegal. The film comes up with a manifesto. The manifesto includes four central ideas that apply to the way the world is formed in the eyes of copyright.

The first, “Culture Always builds on the past”. This is one of the strongest arguments against copyright. If every creation in the world was kept to those who thought of it, not allowing it to be built upon, the world would be at a standstill. People who were the first to develop anything would see all the profit of what they made, as they should, but if that person themselves were not able to improve their own product without the resources of anything or anyone else, then nothing would change. Take Martin Cooper for example. He created the cell phone. If copyright laws were placed how they theoretically should be, then we all to this day would have bricks for telephones. This idea does not state that Martin Cooper could not create a cell phone better than the ones in the 1970s, he hasn’t. This means that the plans for the first cellphone could not be touched for 95 years. In today’s copyright law, it is 70 years after the author’s death. Martin Cooper is still alive today. Steve Jobs and others who have developed smart phones in the past could all be potentially sued and all development ceased.  To this day, we could all be using brick sized cell phones.