Thanks to Jason Scott’s write up on his blog ASCII, last night I downloaded a torrent of the documentary Good Copy Bad Copy and watched the video. You can get the torrent for Good Copy Bad Copy from Pirate Bay. (If you are new to BitTorrent, you might want to try this FAQ (er, this FAQ. Thanks, Josh!). You’ll also need a client; I use Transmission, but there are plenty of others.) It’s free to download; I can’t seem to find any copyright or Creative Commons information, which is kind of funny, considering the topic. So it’s free as in beer, and may be free as in freedom as well.

“Good Copy Bad Copy” looks at the current copyright environment and what it means to artists, media companies, and consumers. That might sound a little dry, but they build up the story they want to tell with long, interesting segments with a fascinating variety of people. Yes, they get people you have probably heard of like Lawrence Lessig, Siva Vaidhyanathan, Dan Glickman (CEO of the MPAA), and DJ Danger Mouse, but the most interesting interviews come from people you have almost certainly never heard of like Charles Igwe, a Nigerian film producer; Rick Falkvinge, of the Pirate Party, Sweden; and DJ Dinho, a “Techno Brega” DJ in Brazil. I agree with Jason Scott that this global reach, with interviews and street footage from all over the world, is what makes this documentary special.

By structuring the film this way, with all these interesting people in all areas of music and motion picture production, performance, and sales, “Good Copy Bad Copy” stays away from the kind of black and white view the title might imply. Instead, it looks at different approaches toward making art and making money, destabilizing what we think of as the “natural” system of artists, labels/studios, and consumers.

One of my favorite segments was on the massive Nigerian film industry. Near the end of the documentary, Charles Igwe, the Nigerian film producer, sums things up this way: “You need to take a look at your environment–the limitations of your environment, the advantages of your environment–and then do things which are peculiar to you. And be proud of them.” Which sounds like great advice to me.

Here is the preview, which doesn’t give enough of a taste of the scope I’m talking about, but might give you enough of the flavor:


Click To Play

I have a hard time sitting through any movies these days, and I found this fascinating. It clocks in at just under an hour, so it won’t be a huge investment of your time, but I think it will be a rewarding investment.