N.a.m.e! the rippers

Copyright is defined as a range of exclusive rights that should protect the author or creator of an original work. Ideas or intangible project are described as intellectual property for which property rights are recognized. New media comprehend different category of cultural work, from films, music, to game and software. These kind of new media are in general commodities produced by the capitalist economies for the market of the consumerism. Their exclusive rights are made to the aim of a profit reached by the benefit of the property by the owners of it. Therefore there is a real financial incentive for the investment in this intellectual property. The idea, is a product of the human mind, but it can be protected just if it is shaped in a material form. The problem is that copyrights or patents protect nor the idea itself neither the creator of it, but the owner who make a profit with it. As I have said new media involve a range of digital material with no material consistence that is shared over the global internet. Governments tried to apply a sort of "enclosure" to that material, modifying policies. Copyright laws were changed in order to exploit the public domain for their own inters. The result is the privatization of telecommunications and networks.
In RIP: A Remix Manifesto, the filmmaker and Web activist Brett Gaylor created a mash up the new media world arguing against the lack of coherence in the issue of copyright. In the documentary there is the presence of Girl Talk, the famous musician who remix sample-based songs, the founder of Creative Commons, Lawrence Lessig, the Brazil's Minister of Culture and many more. The film is available as a media participatory project, for everyone who want to remix it at opensourcecinema.org. We took the four points of the manifesto and developed into four sketch.
The first one is "Culture is always build on the past", and so we shown how the old Danish story of the Little Mermaid has been privatize and commodified by Disney. Culture should be public domain and not sold as a product and even more justified as protected.
The second is "The past always tries to control the future". Net should be neutral and not under control, it is a place of equal access where democracy can found its real affirmation.
The third one is "Our future is becoming less free". That because the issue of copyright should be regulated in face at the new technology and innovation of new media. With that I0m not said that copyright should be abolished but just updated. The creativity of the RW culture have to be free to develop, and free to be used.
The last is "To build free society you must limit the control over the past". Remixing is totally different from copying. This difference has to be recognized and accepted, therefore regulation should be clarified. Evermore, we (common powerless people) have the power to chose. As the point four with the example of the pills explains, we can inform ourself and with a little notion of knowledge we can understand how say no.
The title has an explanation too. "N.A.M.E!" is the acronym of the initial letter of our names, Nora-Mirella-Ascanio and Everybody, as everybody can do its own part in remix culture. "the rippers" is a remix itself of "RIP!" that implicates the use we have done of different technique for realize the film. As Dada manifesto affirmed, the remix is a sort of extrapolation of an object from its context to destroy its formalized meanings and to construct an alternative reality. That is what we have done within our film, showing the problem developed in 4 different points to reach at the end a conclusion more or less explicit.
I hope that with our project we would encourage a little more the audience to open the eyes and facing the controversial issue imposed over our society. The term democracy derived from greek as "rule of the people". And if we cannot do that even in the neutrality of the net, we should at least say no.

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