A coalition of Web sites on Tuesday is expected to protest U.S. copyright law by allowing the free downloading of DJ Danger Mouse’s “The Grey Album.”
The record meshes pieces of the Beatles’ wide-ranging “White Album” with Jay-Z’s streetwise “Black Album,” drawing raves from Internet file-traders and scorn from London record label EMI, which holds the rights to the Beatles’ sound recordings.
Earlier this month, EMI’s lawyers sent cease-and-desist letters to Danger Mouse (a.k.a Brian Burton) and to stores selling the record because the L.A.-based producer didn’t pay royalties to use the Beatles’ music.
This latest clash between copyright-holders and music remitters angered the co-founders of Downhillbattle.org, a critic of the world’s big record labels. The group’s co-founders last week asked like-minded Web sites to offer tracks from “The Grey Album” for downloading for 24 hours Tuesday.
Downhillbattle.org’s partner Web site GreyTuesday.org late last week listed 66 sites that have agreed to host the album for download, making themselves targets of the RIAA’s battle against file-sharing.
“The major record labels have turned copyright law into a weapon,” Downhillbattle.org co-founder Holmes Wilson said in a statement, “but participants in this action will be ignoring EMI’s threats and insisting on the public’s right to hear innovative new music.”
Group co-founder Nicholas Reville added in the statement, “Artists, writers and musicians have always borrowed and built upon each other’s work — now they have to answer to corporate legal teams.”
Jeanne Meyer of EMI North America said the label did what any company would do if its rights were being used violated.
“This DJ didn’t ask permission, and we asked him to stop. There’s a process the creative community can go through to get sampled works. We authorize samples all the time.”
According to www.DJDangerMouse.com, “Every kick, snare and chord is taken from the Beatles `White Album’ and is in their original recording somewhere.”
Burton recorded the sounds from the album and reconstructed them in ways that are familiar and new. Layered over the samples are the a cappella raps of Jay-Z from the record that he dubbed his retirement album.
Burton said he spent at least 10 hours a day working on the project for two weeks. Similar mash-ups circulate on the Net and wind up in deejay racks at nightclubs, escaping the notice of record companies because they don’t sell in huge numbers.
Burton says his work is introducing the Beatles’ 24-year-old record to a new audience. “After hip-hop fans hear it,” he told the New Yorker, “they’re like, `I gotta get this “White Album.”‘”
Michael Friedman, an intellectual property lawyer with Jenkens & Gilchrist Parker Chapin, said a record label should have a chance to make that decision before a remix is made.
“Everything is derivative of everything else; I don’t have a problem with that kind of creativity,” said Friedman, who is not connected to the case but has been following it. “But when you’re talking about something that utilizes existing artistic work and reproduces it, then the owner of the original work deserves to be paid.”
