droptlifting - the concept

To put in a nutshell - droplifting means a No copyright, Not For Sale way of re-distributing freely available information(or not so free - and this means it needs to be eliberated) trough camouflaged sharing using the current distribution channels that usually suffer under sever malnutrition, diversity and flexibility. A good way to fight the ones who reserve for themselves the exclusive right to choose what they want to offer and what they want to charge for it.

You could do it this way:

1) Just copy a CD or a DVD(there is so much good, new stuff out there on the net for free!). Usually try and find rare stuff(rare recordings, rare genre's, styles of music that the current very limited capacity of local musical markets or taste doesn't allow. You can find many netlabels and artists sharing their latest mp3 field recordings, electro-acoustic, experimental, glitch music with you and everybody else under the CC licence. The Radio networks in Romania are still very much conservative and restrictive in their selections and genre's so it is time to try and change the available options.
You can also try and burn a rare compilation of historical recordings or your own private musical cosmogony - including favourite records, bands or projects. Include rare Dada, Futurist, Avant Garde, Krautrock, Punk etc. classics, as well as new stuff - such as interesting podcasts about a variety of subjects. Just make a compilation of your best current/best off recommendations.

2) Try and print out (if the budget is really low-low) black and white catchy cover mimicking the current top 10 hits, and write on it in big bold letters: NEW! BEST COMPILATION EVER! TONS OF FREE MP3 MUSIC FOR YOU!
The alternate version would be to do a cover sayin take this illegal music with and don't worry about it! Just Steal Me! Take this magick rip-off collection of perfect love moments!

3) Go with your new CDs and DVDs to the local music store, mall, DVD library, Bookshop and insert, place one(without anybody seeing you - and it's really easy cose usually they think you want to steal something not give it for free simply because they think they own the 'valuable shit') of them under the current new releases, in the most popular shelf, under the last commercial hit and leave it hidden in there.

This is just a audio droplifting project, but you may as well do a video compilation with rare stuff, activist videos, hacker manuals, survival .pdf, anime, scanned comix and manga, and free software. Just shuffle it arround the shop and leave it hidden in there.


I came to this idea with the help of Droplift audio project involving a bunch of incredible masters of collage and media reapropriation. Without collage, clippings, cut & paste, reference, quotation whole sectors of the current culture or history of art would simply have to dissappear. Media appropriation and hacking is a necessary tool of social action and change, while commenting on the history, events and icons of our time.
//Great thanks to Negativeland, John Oswald, Radical Internet Audio Alternatives, Escape Mechanism(check out the cyle video!), KLF(Kopyright Liberation Front), Evolution Control Committee and not least to Cory Doctorow from EFF and Johannes Grentzfurthner from Monochrom(the cultural hacking combo)\\