Feel like belting out a joyous rendition of Happy Birthday at a celebration in a public place?   How about painting some Disney characters on the walls of your day care centre for the kids' amusement?  

You better call your lawyer first. 

Both of these seemingly innocent acts are actually illegal under strict copyright laws that Montreal-based filmmaker Brett Gaylor believes are stifling a curious and connected generation's collective creativity.

Gaylor explores the issues of intellectual property and the limitations and implications of copyright laws in his riveting documentary RiP: A Remix Manifesto , set for release in Toronto on Friday, March 13th.  

Much of the film focuses on mashup giant Girl Talk, who prolifically remixes unauthorized samples from hundreds of popular songs to create his own infectious dance music --- released though the aptly named "Illegal Art" label.  His latest album, Feed The Animals, would have tallied up over $4,000,000 in fees had he cleared each sample through legal payment. 

The pirate police haven't come looking for Girl Talk yet, but it's a daunting possibility that hangs over his head.

Gaylor's heat-radar is also on high alert.  RiP became a mashup piece in itself, using dozens of samples without gaining the legal green light. 

Despite the prospect of numerous lawsuits, the well-spoken defender of emerging culture in the digital era believes he'll escape the wrath of big media through what's called "Fair Dealing" in Canada, and "Fair Use" in the U.S., which allows snippets of copyrighted material to be used for critique or commentary. 

"You just have to do what you feel is right and we actually feel that the film is legally sound," he told CityNews.ca on Friday.   "A lot of different lawyers have looked at this film and we feel that our film falls under "Fair Dealing", it's fair the way we are using the media, we aren't just copying, we are actually using the media to critique itself.  Why should we ask for permission to do that when nobody asks us permission at Yonge and Dundas to be bombarded with all this media?  For us it's sort of like the way of pushing back a little bit."

Girl Talk In Action, Photo Credit:  Kat Baulu, National Film Board of Canada

Girl Talk Crowd Surfs, Photo Credit:  Bridget Maniaci, EyeSteelFilm

The focus of the documentary, a co-production between Gaylor's EyeSteelFilm and the National Film Board of Canada, changed markedly after the young director's initial research led to some eye-opening revelations.

"When I began making the film I was really just looking at this whole notion of peer-to-peer file sharing and how it really kind of revolutionized the music industry," he explains.  "But as I explored the issue further I realized there was really core issues here --- Who gets to participate in society?  There are free speech issues. So the more I got into (it) the more I realized which side I was on and decided that it was important enough for me to put myself on the line and create a real manifesto."

Brett Gaylor in the CityNews newsroom. Photos by Michael Talbot, CityNews.ca

The film presents a rather scathing review of major media corporations, which Gaylor believes are desperately trying to preserve outdated business models at the expense of cultural expanse.  Rather than build a new model that allows for growth and creativity while assuring artists are compensated, the handful of corporations that control the bulk of the entertainment industry are staging an ineffective war that can only harm both sides.

"One of the things I learned in the creation of the film is that the law is very important, the law is a reflection of our shared values and when the law is so out of step with what people are doing it becomes dangerous to society and people don't think they need to listen to the law, it's corrosive."

"What the film is saying is we want to create models that allow artists to get paid in the future...but in our rush to kind of crack down on that and outlaw this kind of behaviour we are actually threatening emerging creativity that people like Girl Talk are taking part in...just cracking down and punishing hasn't gotten us anywhere so far, so we need to change our tactics."

Gaylor doesn't just talk the talk --- he allowed the public to remix and mash parts of RiP online, and some of the scenes were included in the final movie, making it a true creative collaboration.

"Our philosophy was we wanted to make this open source documentary so people can actually take parts of the movie, remix it, and send it back to my website, and then I include them in the final film."

"Copyright is like a balancing act," he concludes.  "There's the public good and then there's the incentive for people to create, and that's important, we need to work out this mechanism.  It's not about scrapping all copyright laws altogether, it's about updating them and making sense of the fact that we can all participate and all share culturally."

"Maybe the law hasn't caught up yet, but we can encourage it to, and we can fight for it."

michaelt@citytv.com

R.i.P. A Remix Manifesto Screenings:

• March 13 (open run)
  AMC Yonge & Dundas, Toronto
• March 13 (open run)
  Royal Cinema, Toronto
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• March 18-20, 22, 25,26
  Cinematheque Winnipeg, Winnipeg
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• March 20 (open run)
  The Ridge Cinema, Vancouver
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• March 20 (open run)
  The Plaza Cinema, Calgary
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• March 27 - April 4
  The Mayfair Cinema, Ottawa
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• April 3 - April 9
  Metro Cinema, Edmonton
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• April 3 - April 9
  Broadway Cinema, Saskatoon
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• April 9
  Paramount Cinema, Kamloops BC
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Canadian Special Events

• April 22
  Viewfinders Festival, Halifax NS (French)
• April 24
  Viewfinders Festival, Halifax NS (English)
• May 9
  La Biennale de MTL @ 3:30pm