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.

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.

http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/001754.shtml

> 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.

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.

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’