As a web developer with a commerical art education, I’ve said for a long time that knowing how to use multimedia (design, video, sound, music, programming, writing, speech, etc…) is becoming a simple matter of being an effective communicator.
The internet and the prevalence of cheap computing tools are making multimedia communication and comprehension a matter of basic literacy. Putting clips of media together with a computer may soon become as basic as putting words together with a pen.
Now that almost everyone has some kind of computer and can cut, copy and distribute material easily, intellectual property laws with nonflexible, +70 year constraints are becoming a serious speech limit.
Even if an entity has the legal right to the fair use of an idea, the litigation price and process may force them into submission.
This film uses the mashup musician Girl Talk as a fun narrative device, but applies his situation to medicine, science, the progression of various global societies with differing intellectual property views, and the entire state of human ideas, how they’re formed from previous intellectual fodder and who has the right to own and control them.
If you think the copyright battle is just about downloading music and film, please see this movie.
We were fortunate enough to have a discussion with the Director Brett Gaylor and intellectual property attorney and opinion leader Lawrence Lessig.
It's not distributed yet, but you can save it at Netflix:
http://www.netflix.com/Movie/RIP_A_Remix_Manifesto/70116713?trkid=191776
You can remix and possibly watch the movie here:
http://opensourcecinema.org/