Good Copy, Bad Copy is a rather splendid hour long documentary exploring Copyight law as it applies to remix culture. Unlike a lot of similar projects Good Copy, Bad Copy is truly internationalist and the most fascinating voices come from the developing world – a Nigerian ‘Nollywood‘ film company that has been producing ‘straight to DVD’ digital films for many years and building a business model that allows them to compete effectively with ‘pirated’ DVD copies in the local markets; and a Techno Brega producer in northern Brazil whose music is given away freely as marketing for enormous parties.
One of the most striking things about the Nollywood and Brazilian examples is that here are cultural producers who are using the internationalist and globalising mechanisms of the Internet to effectively spread their cultural products far and wide. To hear the Nigerian film producer talk about African Americans in the USA as his next ’emerging target market’ is a lovely flip of traditional ideas about one-way globalisation. In many ways this echoes many of the themes that I and others were talking about in the last few weeks in Havana – seizing the opportunities that are now available rather than being crippled by seeing them as a threat.
There are instructions on downloading the whole documentary (freely) on the promotional website. It is also on Google Video. The trailer (only) is playable above.
One reply on “Good Copy, Bad Copy – the developing world and Copyright”
Seeing this entry has just reminded me of what the GCBC.avi file is on my laptop. I downloaded it while researching for FBi’s Sunday Night at the Movies which had a special on copyright tonight. There were plenty of mash-ups played on the program tonight so it definitely won’t be available for podcast if you missed it!