Posted on - February 23, 2004 [at] 7:06 pm by Brad
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As much as I like the rabble-rousing, I just don’t get the point that Grey Tuesday is trying to make about copyright. Is the argument that anyone should be able to chop up Beatles and Jay-Z recordings and be allowed to sell 3,000 copies of it without compensating either party? Is this being illegal a huge injustice against consumers and artists that I wasn’t aware of?
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13 Comments on this post
ken on Grey Tuesday
February 24, 2004 at 12:46 am
Jay-Z provided his part of the deal royalty-free, I think. It boils down to the continual extension of copyright terms in the US which keeps profitable recordings (and valuable cultural elements) perpetually out of the public domain. So, yes it is illegal and from that perspective, what’s the fuss? But those Beatles recordings are 30+ years old – should they still be the intellectual property of EMI? Or should they belong to the public which finances the Beatles copyright empire?
LKM on Grey Tuesday
February 24, 2004 at 7:42 am
Personally, I find the grey album to be one of the most interesting hip-hop albums in recent times. It’s damn good, and I listen to it all the time. There is no way that this album could have been legal, even if danger mouse had tried to compensate the beatles. Had he contacted them, the album would have never been made.
Now, does that mean that it’s okay to just take samples from anyone? NO! But I do believe that after a reasonable time – maybe 10 years or less – it should become legal. This album doesn’t cost anyone anything (nobody didn’t buy a Beatles album because they heard the grey album – maybe it even brougth some younger people to go and check the fab four out), and it gives great joy to those who listen to it.
So, generally, you’re right. Just taking samples you don’t own is illegal, and it should be. But not forever! This is not really about “stealing” samples, it’s about the Mickey Mouse copyright terms that never end.
Brad on Grey Tuesday
February 24, 2004 at 12:03 pm
Yeah I guess there’s the copyright length that I was overlooking. Though as far as I know the White Album is still within its standard copyright term and the owners of the Beatles catalog haven’t made any moves as of yet to try to extend it, like Disney has. If this had something directly to do with violating Disney’s copyright I guess I’d get the point more.
JB on Grey Tuesday
February 24, 2004 at 12:56 pm
Well, there’s also the issue of using somebody else’s stuff. If you buy a paintbrush, the guy who made the brush got paid at least once, by you. Danger Mouse didn’t pay the guys who made his brushes, so it seems. That’s aggravating to me. Somebody sold stuff that wouldn’t exist without my work, and I didn’t get a cut, I’d be aggravated. McCartney’s not dead yet, after all.
scottandrew on Grey Tuesday
February 24, 2004 at 3:06 pm
There’s a couple issues at stake. First, there’s no compulsory license that covers sampling. If I want to record and sell a cover of a Beatles song, I don’t need permission under US law, and EMI cannot refuse to grant me the license. All I have to to is pay a reasonable fee. That’s not the case with sampling, where I must obtain permission first. So there’s an unfair inequality there, IMO. There’s no guarantee that Danger Mouse would have been able to get permission in the first place, or afforded the fees EMI might have imposed.
The second problem is that, while it’s well within EMI’s legal rights to stomp on Danger Mouse for infringement, EMI has taken the additional step of threatening just about anyone who distributes the Grey Album, even noncommericially. It’s like they want to prevent it from existing. So the question there is whether or not copyright should be used to squelch “unauthorized” derivative works whether there is a profit motive or not.
And the thing that infuriates me the most is how they lovingly package and re-package the Beatles work over and over again, promoting it as part of “our” musical history and heritage — but anything not blessed and sanctified by EMI is somehow evil, contraband, a controlled substance.
I might feel differently if the Grey Album was crap. But it’s not. It’s pretty brilliant. So what possible purpose does it serve to make it disappear?
It’s a pretty typical scenario these days: legally right, morally wrong, yada yada.
Chris Burkhardt on Grey Tuesday
February 24, 2004 at 3:27 pm
Haha, I think it’s sort of funny. If it wasn’t for EMI’s lawyers, I don’t think nearly as many people would be interested in Jay-Z’s vocals over samples of The Beatles’ music. Come to think of it, I’m still not interested…
LKM on Grey Tuesday
February 24, 2004 at 4:28 pm
lessing has an article about this, too:
http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/001754.shtml
Brad on Grey Tuesday
February 24, 2004 at 5:17 pm
Scott, thanks for the reply, real interesting stuff:
> That’s not the case with sampling, where I
> must obtain permission first. So there’s an
> unfair inequality there, IMO.
Well, I do think they’re pretty different things. Seems like there’s a massive difference between me singing a cover of Imagine and me sampling John Lennon’s voice all over my next album and billing it as BRAD SUCKS FEATURING JOHN LENNON. I could press up 3,000, sell them by hand for $15 and make $30,000. Seems like John Lennon wouldn’t appreciate that much.
> EMI has taken the additional step of
> threatening just about anyone who
> distributes the Grey Album, even
> noncommericially. It’s like they want to
> prevent it from existing. So the question
> there is whether or not copyright should
> be used to squelch “unauthorized”
> derivative works whether there is a
> profit motive or not.
Yeah but it seems there definitely WAS a profit motive in the beginning, what with the “only” 3,000 copies pressed. It’s really hard for me to take all this other stuff seriously after that. I wish it had started as a profit free internet thing and stayed that way.
scottandrew on Grey Tuesday
February 24, 2004 at 7:33 pm
Well, if you believe what Danger Mouse says, the 3000 copies were “promotional” and not to be sold. (Riiiiight)
This whole thing reminds me of the Elian Gonzales thing from a few years back, where the Associated Press was going around threatening to sue people who hosted that crazy Flash movie that “defaced” their copyrighted photo.
T' on Grey Tuesday
February 25, 2004 at 12:54 am
What this all comes down to is theft. It doesn’t matter that some record company owns the rights to the recording. It wouldn’t matter if they were still owned by the Beatles themselves, or if the samples used were made by some unknown artist from the Phillipines. It’s a double standard to only want to protect the rights of the poor, but not anyone else.
There’s also this weird idea that music, movies and tv shows somehow belong to “the people,” and not those that created them, as if being mass media automatically removed any sort of implied control or ownership.
And then there’s the whole basic notion that perhaps the surviving Beatles wouldn’t want their music and their own voices matched with rap and or its message and vice versa. Sure, it may be well mixed and well put together, but it’s someone else’s material. Period. Ask first, then play.
And the whole us vs. them thing about this “grey tuesday?” Rather silly. I’m sure it seems like the little guy vs. the evil big corporation and to be sure, EMI has no need to go shutting folks down if there’s nothing wrong with free distribution, but it’s their property and they have a right to protect it. If this wasn’t the Beatles, if it was some small, no-name band, I can’t help but feel that most people wouldn’t bother to care.
But that’s just me.
-T’
Jany on Grey Tuesday
February 25, 2004 at 2:14 am
Ug, no more lawsuits over sampling, already. I wish I could remember which Beasty Boys tune it was where they were being sued for using a 2 second flute sample, downsampled so it played for 10 seconds…Anyhow,
blindmime on Grey Tuesday
February 25, 2004 at 10:30 am
If I owned EMI I would license this album and release it. I’d also sign dangermouse.
I’d also do what Jay-Z did and offer Beatle loops and release Beatle remix albums. It would introduce the concept of creative remixing to a whole lot of people and there would be a huge cross market as Beatle fans get into stuff like that.
I agree that what you do or own should be yours and you should be able to control its use and pass down your property to your heirs. But I also think EMI and others overlook the idea that recorded music is a living thing. I think derivitive work should be encouraged. A recorded song can evolve without sacrificing anything of its original. It’s like a seed. Not just for creative artistic reasons, but also it would be smart in a business sense as well.