RiP!: A Remix Manifesto" is a 2008 open source documentary directed by Brett Gaylor. It was developed collaboratively online at Open Source Cinema, and Gaylor has left it on the Open Source Cinema site and encouraged others to remix it.

The film, running about 80 minutes, is framed primarily around the work of Girl Talk, a remix musician who has become one of several major symbols of the remix/copyright reform movement. Lawrence Lessig chips in as well, giving the framing some intellectual heft, and Cory Doctorow and a handful of others drop in from time to time.

There are two really interesting projects going on this week. I'll offer some commentary on each of them once they've concluded, but in the meantime you should keep an eye on the unfolding events.

Economist Debates: Copyright and wrongs

Today's exercise: A brief Lit Review of each of Lawrence Lessig's books.

In Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (1999), Lessig explores cyberspace "as it moves from a world of relative freedom to a world of relatively perfect control" (p. 23). He describes regulation (online or off) as the combination of constraints due to laws, markets, norms, and architecture (p. 87), but that law is able to regulate both directly and, by influencing the other three constraints, indirectly, and argues that the architecture (the code) is the critical factor in determining the level of regulation of the internet. He acknowledges the significance of open source software as "a check on state power" (p. 100) but warns that, contrary to popular belief, we are entering a period of increasingly restrictive copyright regulation (p. 127). In a curious aside (p. 225), he argues that modular code delivers some of the benefits of open source code, even if it is closed source.