For Immediate Release 30 April 2003 Press Contact: Miriam Rainsford aka iriXx info@iriXx.org THE MADONNA REMIX PROJECT In a vain attempt to stop peer to peer file sharing of her album American Life, Madonna released her own dummy mp3s on to KaZaA. Only the first few seconds of the files contain sound, a recording of Madonna saying 'What the fuck do you think you're doing?'. This gave an unmissable opportunity to parody remixers to turn Madonna's words into their own statements in support of freedom of speech. John von Seggern's Digital Cutup Lounge produced the first remix, which is available from iriXx's website, http://www.iriXx.org/madonna/ where the 'Madonna Remix Project' is hosted. The news spread like wildfire, and within days iriXx was receiving bandwidth warnings from her ISP as articles appeared on Yahoo! and the front page of CNN.com. Digital rights activists www.anti-dmca.org rushed to her assistance, and have mirrored the files, while friend 'RMG' has made a mirror page available at http://www.madgelloland.org/irixx/madonna/, where users are encouraged to visit in preference to the original site. Yet some have cynically, or even realistically, suggested that all this activity will simply add to Madonna's own publicity. Together with John, iriXx released a statement entitled 'The Madonna Manifesto: or What the Fuck do we think we're doing?' (http://www.iriXx.org/madonnamanifesto.html) outlining their reasons for producing the remixes as a protest against the locking down of digital technology. John comments: "My concern is more with her implication that major copyright holders are in the right when they attempt to place onerous restrictions on the flow of culture and information, which I see as necessary for the maintenance of a healthy culture and society, and that fans downloading music ought to be ashamed of themselves. "By remixing her warning and putting it to a headache-inducing techno beat, I am both ridiculing its content as well as attempting to demonstrate that any creation or utterance put forward into the public sphere necessarily becomes grist for the mill of future creators, no matter what the original intention of the author [and that is as it should be]. Make it illegal if you want but these critiques will still circulate in the underground and on the Net. Using her own words to make this point is 'signifyin' in the [Henry Louis] Gatesian sense, and should be seen as a way to level the playing field and make oppositional voices heard. "We could write a reasoned verbal critique of the viewpoint Madonna is expressing instead -- and such critiques are posted frequently here on ... But how can we put forth an alternative viewpoint in a way that makes it as powerful as Madonna's original expression?" iriXx's reasoning was more political. Under her real name, Miriam Rainsford, she is currently working on a book focusing on digital rights issues, entitled 'Copyleft: Creativity, Technology and Freedom', to be published by GNU Press later this year (see http://www.copyleftmedia.org.uk). She does not believe the media hype that file sharing damages the music industry - in fact, she offers this incident as an example proving that it serves instead to promote CD sales. She is "a p2p user and proud of it", believing that "peer to peer networking is a massive leap forward in human communication, unprecedented since the development of the internet, and should be put to positive and creative use." As a digital rights activist, iriXx wished by her actions "to draw attention to the fact that any attempts to lock down music sharing by technological or other means are a) doomed to failure and b) impossible to achieve without placing unnecessary restrictions on the user." "I object to any form of Digital Rights Management (DRM), which often has grave implications on privacy, and I am active with the UK Campaign for Digital Rights in lobbying for the continuance of fair use rights and against oppressive legislation such as the DMCA and the EUCD which threatens our civil liberties. "I believe that p2p is an expression of fair use rights in the digital age. It has never stopped CD sales - that would be quite ridiculous in such a label-oriented consumer society, where people enjoy the feel-good experience of shopping and its nice off-the shelf packages. "My parody of Madonna's words is my only means as an ordinary citizen of giving the finger to the system which force feeds us the sugary pop of top 10 artists. I object to the dominance and personal exploitation practised by the major labels in the same way that I object to globalisation in its many forms. So many people - including myself - turn to p2p filesharing to escape the banal and repetetive tripe that an increasingly desperate music industry has resorted to promoting in an effort to sell records to teenagers. Through peer to peer systems I have found - and often purchased - the music which i enjoy, and which inspires me as an artist to create. "Oh, and I'm also just having a bit of fun...." ©2003 Miriam Rainsford / iriXx. 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