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Protecting music by destroying records? Online protesters vs. the music industry

by amino
It was supposed to be a musical experiment when last december Brian Burton, aka 'DJ Danger Mouse' from White Plains, NY began remixing a contemporary rap album, Jay-Z's 'Black Album' with the 1968 'White Album' by the Beatles.
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On one hand, this turned into an interesting musical piece of work and a big media affair on the other: 'EMI Group', who are controlling rights to all Beatles Music owned by Capitol Records Incorporated, started sending 'cease and desist' letters to Danger Mouse himself, record stores and online shops like FatBeats, hiphopsite.com and ebay asking them to destroy all remaining copies of the remix album and to stop all distribution and sale.
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Today, Tuesday 24th of February, there is an online protest mobilizing websites to host the album and radio stations to play it on the air. Have a look at greytuesday.org to see who's participating.
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The 'Rolling Stone' wrote it was 'an ingenious hip-hop record that sounds oddly ahead of its time' and the 'Boston Globe' called it the 'most creatively captivating' album of the year. It is questionable wether the 'Rolling Stone' or the 'Boston Globe' really know anything about Hiphop at all, but the remix album, which is taking its name 'Grey Album' from the two originals it used samples from, created a huge hype largely because of the fact that the music industry is trying to ban it.

In total, approximatly 3000 copies of the album were pressed by Burton himself and sent to a number of record shops, which is common for underground dj's and usually not connected to the prospect of big revenues. But the tracks were popular and beginning to be played in clubs. The media hype regarding its illegal status further spured a demand and the album was being shared all over the net.

Musically, the remixes are certainly interesting and some of them sound pretty good. However, a masterpiece it is not. How original could sampling the Beatles be? Especially in combination with a mediocre MC such as Jay-Z. Were it not an underground endeavor, certainly many would be hating it. But nonetheless, this scandal is exposing the questionable moral ground of the record industry and its profit-oriented copyright-fanaticism. And it helps initiate an evaluation of the decade-long supression of musical creativity by the corporate world, which until now everyone took for granted.

1. What rational basis do corporations have in protecting copyrights on sonic airwaves?

Because this is what music ends up being, even though it might temporarily be abstracted on an analog or digital data carrier. Musical notes, too, could be reduced to a very basic pattern which, once copyrighted, could stifle any further musical work with the help of legal enforcement. This doesn't happen as long as corporations do have an economic neccessity for expanding the definition of copyright, however, they will try to restrict anything that goes any further than their very own understanding of creative freedom and which is therefore likely to weaken their guarantee on profit.

If the concept of copyright were put into an extreme, one could have protected the bit strings '10', '11', '01' and '00' and thereby claim rights on any successive digital data in the world. No state would allow this and noone in their right mind would think this justifiable. However, commonly practiced copyright is no less than a moderate form of this questionable claim on 'intellectual property'. It will only be enforced as long as current beneficiaries are able to interpret and enforce it for their own good. Or as long as social consensus allows for a restrictive form of exploitation of music and art (or intellectual product in general) to exist and dominate our culture.

The non-existance or the non-enforcability of copyright would essentially put the very legitimacy of the socalled 'copyright controllers' in question. These are the main beneficiaries of the current state of an artificially created scarcity in goods, upheld per law (namely: the prevention of free copying of artistic or intellectual content), who would otherwise no longer be neccessary for actual distribution of content due to technological progress. The record companies' role as a distributor of music has long been replaced by their role as an uncompromising 'royalty collector', often against the will of the artists themselves.

2. What moral basis do musicians have to expect a guarantee on financial revenues through the duplication of their music?

Nowadays, copies -especially in digital form- are created and distributed by the fan's extra effort at almost no additional cost at all. This helps ensure a bigger public exposure for the artist's work and a higher level of popularity, which in turn increases his/her prospect for paid for performances. And this, without the musician having to waste a lot of time thinking about distribution him/herself.

What we have here is a distribution system that could hardly be any better in regard to artistic content: because it is the fans themselves who are becoming the distributors, those contents which are considered valuable by them will also be shared more; bad art (such as bad music) will be shared less. This would be a natural distribution system regulating the quantity of content by the people's judgement, not by the profit-driven motivation of big corporations and their concept of a centralized distribution scheme.

'Publishing' music means to make it publicly available. For example on a website or a filesharing network. The rest will be subject to demand.

3. Why should the music industry have a permanent right to continuous revenues?

Over the past decades, the record industry has been cartellizing and exploiting their legally protected de-facto-monopoly in distribution of musical content, excercizing usury in media sales. I suggest, they have had revenues, which in a free media market they would otherwise never have been able to make.

4. Who ever asks the artists -especially once they're dead- if they'd really appreciate a rigid prosecution of copyright 'violators' as is common. Do they really have a big problem with their content being used for successive art?

It is extremely doubtful wether Frank Zappa, Bob Marley or John Lennon would really be outraged by young artists reinterpreting their work by using parts of their music, especially for non-commercial, or less-commercial purposes.

And even if so: these artists' piano melodies and guitar riffs are no more than bizarre sound fragments that had their inspirational origin who-knows-where, only to be captured on a volatile carrier at some point in time. Just like the noise of a river, they are to be put into public domain, because in the end, everything has a common physical and creative origin. Copyright protection is a temporary capital exploitation of artistic creativity by the profiteers of the present.

5. Shouldn't musicians and artists in general be happy about other people enjoying their art?

Is it a personal quality to sue radio dj's and online fans for playing or sharing your music? As a musician, shouldn't you be making music so other people can listen to it?

Commonly, after a live show, artists bow before the audience to thank them for accepting their art. It would be appropriate for musicians to thank people for listening to their music instead of suing them or prohibiting them from listening to it. The audience's gratitude, often in the form of money, is a reward the artist has to put effort into. But he or she, just like a street musician, has no preemptive right on payment.

Many freelance musicians on the net are now offering paypal accounts to upload money to. I'm not sure if this works, however, it is still self-explanatory for people to pay entrance fees at live performances because there, musicians are almost playing for you personally and there is a visible live effort.

Another good way for musicians to make money is to press their own records and offer them in exchange for money, believe it or not. Or to organize in labels or art collectives to make production and sale of their records possible. This makes a lot of sense especially for artists whose music is so underground you cannot even find it on filesharing systems; and of course for dj's working with vinyl. This way, there is still money to be made without the need to be restrictive; neither to sign with a major label.

Simple copying and sharing of music, digitally or analogically, usually is no extra effort on the artist's part, quite to the contrary: it is usually an extra effort on part of the fan who even spends money on bandwidth and computer resources to enable others to be exposed to the artist's music, while at the same time helping different industries grow and prosper - that of the internet service provider and related ones.

If big record companies think they have to sue even the last teenager for sharing their music online, it will have a predictable effect on the global music scene in that people will stick to sharing only alternative and independent music instead of corporate music. The majority of all music worldwide has no corporate affiliation, and usually, it is of better quality than whatever the majors can offer, too.

6. Finally, do we really need rules for art?

Is it really neccessary to subject every sample, cover version, public performance, copy, dissemination, listening and playing to fees and conditions? Is it desirable for society having to deal with license enforcement, 'cease and desist' letters and a parasitic secondary industry feeding on legal disputes when it comes to art?

All this, so corporate executives and bigheaded pop stars can have a financial guarantee for their disproportionate lifestyles. Is it too much to ask wether so called 'professional' musicians could earn their money like everybody else and pursue music as a hobby and be happy when making a little bit off of it on the side, like so many people do?

How much longer will it take for the public to realize that enforcing copyright does not protect the poor, independent artist, but the ones who are not in the need of being on the receiving end of legally backed subsidies.

Once more, the much hated music industry, this time represented by EMI, will not make themselves popular in pretending to be protecting art and creativity by vigurously enforcing their concept of copyright, while at the same time demanding the ban and destruction of something as harmless as a cut-up 60's rock record remixed with contemporary rap acapellas.

For Tuesday 24th of February 2004, the online initiative greytuesday.org organized a worldwide protest against banning the record and encouraged websites and radio stations to host and/or play it throughout the day. But why would you stick to playing it only for a day?..

You can download the album at illegal-art.org or from any good filesharing network.

Press release by downhillbattle.org
Wired-News article
Another one on Reuters
'Cease and desist letter' to the waxy.org weblog
'Cease and desist' letter to participants in the online protest
EFF.org: More info on the 'Digital Millenium Copyright Act' used to supress this piece of art
'Changing Copyright' by Negativland
An industry insider's text on how the major labels really work
downhillbattle.org: Everything you always wanted to know about music activism
DJ Danger Mouse's website
EMI Group's website
creativecommons.org: Online-Project for developing and offering free artist licenses
creativecommons.org: Try their 'license generator'

Some selected free music links:
http://psychofreud.com/ - offers all his music as a livestream, wicked stuff!
http://evolutionradio.org/ - 24h nonstop radio stream featuring music by users
http://www.detritus.net/illegalart/mp3s/index.html - experimental sound montages and alike..
http://www.themechanicsofdestruction.org/ - politically-motivated experimental music, free album
http://www.osmonline.com/ - indie label, offering their music as an interactive live stream
http://negativland.com/ - 20 year old band whose 'U2' single was banned from the public (available as a download)
http://slsk.org/ - Soulseek! an underground filesharing network also used by many amateur musicians sharing their own works with other users
http://www.magnatune.com/ - a revolutionary online label featuring over 100 artists from various genres; explicitly offers their music for free for non-commercial use and redistribution, as well as all albums for download (via 'license/non-commercial') and live streaming; all artists have a 50% share in all commercial revenues
http://www.google.com/search?q=free+music - go look yourself

This text is free of copyright restrictions and may be reused freely.

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