Grey Tuesday
Today is Grey Tuesday, a day of protest against the guerilla tactics employed by the big labels to suppress independent music. The RIAA is using copyright law to suppress artistic expression and I’m not happy about it.
DJ Danger Mouse released a CD entitled The Grey Album which is a remix project of Jay-Z’s The Black Album and The Beatles’ The White Album. EMI, The Beatles’ record label, is trying to suppress The Grey Album because it uses unauthorized samples. Danger Mouse had to resort to just putting the album out into the public because EMI wouldn’t let him legally license the samples. Jay-Z and his label, Roc-A-Fella, haven’t publicly denounced the album. Jay-Z intentionally released an A-capella version of The Black Album with the intent of allowing remixers such as Danger Mouse to have at it.
Right now EMI is totally within its right to go after people distributing the album and you can’t criticize the label for protecting the Beatles. However, I do think we need to rewrite the rules governing fair use of samples in music. That’s why I’m supporting Grey Tuesday today and I urge you to do the same. We need to allow DJs the ability to take a piece of music, rework it (significantly of course) and distribute it. I find it ridiculous that artists can do cover songs but not use samples.
Other supportive sites
- Downhill Battle
- Lawrence Lessig. The Black and White about Grey Tuesday
- Waxy.org: Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album MP3s
- A Whole Lotta Nothing. I got 99 problems but copyright ain’t one.
- Joe Gratz. Grey Tuesday Sites C&D�d