Gillis is well aware of the legal ramifications surrounding his work and seems, though a little taken aback, excited about the possibilities that Night Ripper’s popularity may be opening up for artists like him. “Manipulating pre-existing ideas to make something new is a very old idea,” he says. “It's the basis of folk culture and music. Classical musicians have done it, the Beatles have done it, everyone does it.” He suggests that the tools used impact the perception of legality: “It's easier for people to accept the manipulation of previous ideas on a guitar than a computer or sampler in 2007. I think it'll just take time for people to realize how similar it is. With that, I think the laws are going to have to open up to this form of artistic expression.”
The record industry seems to be welcoming Gillis with open arms and a seemingly endless list of requests for remixes and other collaborations. It’s possible that the popularity and clout Gillis has cultivated with Night Ripper is actually his saving grace; suing him at this stage in the game would likely be a PR disaster and, well, Gillis is making money. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Is Gillis afraid of being tracked down by lawyers? “Copyright law has successfully stopped artists in the past from releasing sample-based works, “ he says, “but I don't think anything could stop me from making it. Like I said previously, even if I couldn't release albums, I'd be making this for personal enjoyment and for my friends.”
It’s people on such a localized scale, making allegedly illegal music for their friends and neighbors, that seem to have the most to worry about. The RIAA and MPAA lawsuits have been filed against people who deny ever engaging in any file sharing and against people who have never used a computer. These cases almost always end up being settled out of court for all the money the defendant has in the bank. The owners of the copyrights (i.e., the musicians themselves) are rarely, if ever, involved.
Because of these types of lawsuits, Lessig and his cohorts believe that the battle for free culture must be fought from the ground up. The best way for a young person to participate, Lessig argues, is to “start a chapter of Students for Free Culture at their school.”
Following the release of Free Culture, an organization was founded by students at Swarthmore College that evolved into Students for Free Culture, an international organization dedicated to the promotion and awareness of these ideas. Local chapters can currently be found at Emerson, Northeastern, MIT, and Harvard, the latter having hosted the National Free Culture Conference earlier this year and generally serving as a lynchpin of the national free culture community. The Harvard chapter also has plans to open a “free culture space” in the not-too-distant future. In the space, panels and educational talks will be held and tools to create and distribute free culture-oriented art, such as music recorded under Creative Commons, will be centralized.
Such plans are still in their early stages, though, and for now SFC hosts collegiate events such as the one I mentioned earlier, geared towards informing the younger crowd of the cultural war they wage every time they sit down at their computer desks. A well-informed student populace, they hope, will help get word out on how strange and restrictive copyright law has become.
The goal of the free culture movement, as best as I can tell, is to show the United States government and court system that the fight for copyright reform is, in fact, a big deal, and that tradition isn’t the best ground for sweeping legal decisions. With the rise of projects such as Wikimedia and the seemingly imminent fall of old guards like the music industry, it seems like free culture’s vindication may be just around the corner. The battle remains one of enormous corporations with nigh-unlimited resources versus students and intellectuals, however, and thus the jury remains, literally and figuratively, out.
The argument in favor of free culture can be summed up thusly: “let’s reconsider some of our assumptions as a result of progress,” which seems so self-evident as to appear unworthy of discussion. Given that free culture’s ostensible opponents are tradition and some of the world’s largest financial interests, however, it’s no surprise that things have gotten so drawn out. Lawrence Lessig closes Free Culture with a simple demand: "Show me why your regulation of culture is needed. Show me how it does good. And until you can show me both, keep your lawyers away."
On the Web
Students for Free Culture: http://freeculture.org
Creative Commons: http://creativecommons.org/
The Free Software Foundation: http://fsf.org
Harvard Free Culture: http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~freeculture/blog/
Lawrence Lessig: http://lessig.org/blog
