Open Source Cinema - An Open Source Documentary Film about Copyright

In March of 2006, Lawrence Lessig visited China to launch the Chinese version of the Creative Commons licenses. At the same time, the US Trade Representative visited China to demand it enact stiffer enforcment of its copyright laws - laws China only created as a requirement for joining the World Trade Organization.

Lessig explained to me that the third world is the most important area for his mission to reform copyright. The US is putting enormous pressures on these countries to reform their IP laws - on behalf of Hollywood. Not an easy task given the popularity of the US at this moment in history. If citizens knew that they were helping to enforce a system that helped local Chinese artists and creators compete and survive in the digital reality, they might be more willing to change their pirating ways.

Visiting with artists in China, though, it became clear that this wasn't a pirate nation - but rather one whose ideas of copyright were simply different. At an art school, a painting instructor promoted his students to learn the works of the masters by copying them stroke for stroke. Musicians remixed ancient folk songs using modern instruments. It was a culture that respected the past as much as it celebrated the new, and understood that the later depended on the former to exist.