Good Copy Bad Copy (subtitled Good Copy Bad Copy: A documentary about the current state of copyright and culture) is a 2007 documentary film about copyright and culture in the context of Internet, peer-to-peer file sharing and other technological advances, directed by Andreas Johnsen, Ralf Christensen, and Henrik Moltke. It features interviews with many people with various perspectives on copyright, including copyright lawyers, producers, artists and filesharing service providers.
Contents
Synopsis
A central point of the documentary is the thesis that "creativity itself is on the line" and that a balance needs to be struck, or that there is a conflict between protecting the right of those who own intellectual property and the rights of future generations to create.
Content
Artists interviewed include Girl Talk and Danger Mouse, popular musicians of the mashup scene who cut and remix sounds from other songs into their own (notably the latter artist's The Grey Album featuring music of The Beatles and Jay Z). The interviews with these artists reveal an emerging understanding of digital works and the obstacle to their authoring copyright presents.
Good Copy Bad Copy also includes interview segments with notable copyright activist and academic Lawrence Lessig.
Credits
Girl Talk, Producer
Dr Lawrence Ferrara, Director of Music Department NYU
Paul V. Licalsi, Attorney Sonnenschein
Jane Peterer, Bridgeport Music
Dr. Siva Vaidhyanathan, NYU
Danger Mouse, Producer
Dan Glickman, CEO MPAA
Gottfrid Svartholm, The Pirate Bay
Fredrik Neij, The Pirate Bay
Rick Falkvinge, Pirate Party
Lawrence Lessig, Creative Commons
Ronaldo Lemos, Professor of Law Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) Brazil
Charles Igwe, Film Producer Lagos Nigeria
Mayo Ayilaran, Musical Copyright Society Nigeria (MCSN)
Olivier Chastan, VP Records
John Kennedy, Chairman International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI)
Shira Perlmutter, Head of Global Legal Policy International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI)
Peter Jenner, Sincere Management
John Buckman, Magnatune Records
Beto Metralha, Producer Belém do Pará Brazil
Distribution
Originally created for the Danish National Broadcasting Television network, the film was eventually released for free on the internet as a BitTorrent download. The filmmakers hope that releasing Good Copy Bad Copy for free will raise awareness and lead to other local broadcasting networks to show the documentary.
The documentary first appeared on The Pirate Bay and then it was officially released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license on the Blip.tv video sharing site.
On 8 May 2008, Good Copy Bad Copy was shown on Swedish television station SVT2.
The documentary and an unofficial trailer are available on YouTube.