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Danger Mouse Releases Blank CD-R To Spite EMI
An anonymous reader writes "DJ Danger Mouse famously fought with EMI over his Beatles/Jay-Z mashup, 'The Grey Album,' and now seems to be battling with the label again. Rather than release his latest album and face legal issues with EMI, Techdirt is reporting that Danger Mouse will be selling a blank CD-R along with lots of artwork, and buyers will be responsible for finding the music themselves (yes, it's findable on the internet) and burning the CD."
+1 Insightful to Danger mouse for finding a way to stick it to EMI.
Looks more like an extremely clever political statement to me. Surely the hight of laziness would be to do nothing at all, rather than sticking it to the man??
Hopefully EMI has not licensed the silence of a blank CD.
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Do you have slow friends?
Actually, it's the height of fucking brilliance. Super Genius even.
Think about it.
1) He gets the money. He is only selling a blank CD-R which is 100% legal. Fry's electronics does the same thing. There is artwork provided, which are original works (AFAIK). :)
2) He is *actually* delivering a license to the customer, in a very indirect fashion
What he is basically saying, is that you paid me for this. So IF I did have a copyright to the work, that you may or may not find on the Internet someplace, you would be granted (by Danger Mouse) the right to use it. Or, in other words, I would not pursue you for copyright infringement in the event I ever actually get a copyright for the works you find, that may or may not be created by me.
Nobody really knows.
It's not laziness at all :)
He is selling you an item that may exist in the future, with no guarantees that it will even exist at all.
It's totally cool, well thought out (we will have to see what legal attacks are brought against this), and I entirely support it.
If you thought it was lazy because he was not getting into a legal battle with EMI over this, look at it another way: He just thought outside of the box and accomplished everything he wanted in way that he can't be immediately stopped from doing.
It will be one impressive fucking scum bag lawyer that can argue that sale constitutes copyright infringement. David Copperfield lawyerin' in the courtroom.
This was the most entertaining Slashdot article in months!
how is a blank cd the same as a recording of silence?
Hopefully EMI has not licensed the silence of a blank CD.
No, but they have retained several hundred lawyers that will be more than happy to use the "Napster Offense" on this.
"He's encouraging piracy and thus he should have to pay us $iEnoughToRuinHim!"
Damn, I wish I thought of that.
I'm quite surprised that nobody here can see through this 'protest' to it's true nature, that it's an excellent marketing gimmic. Danger Mouse has shown already that he's very good at marketing. Want great press? Fight a record label. (Even early in his career, he would wear a mouse costume - because he was to shy/stagefrightened to show his face - and then took the name dangermouse. Great hook right there. ) He's most definitely talented - having collaborated and produced some very cool artists (Gnarles Barkley, Gorilliaz) as well, each well marketed in it's own right - but this marketing ploy... I'm beside myself at it's simplicity and beauty.
Give out blank CDs. ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT. He's already getting amazing free press over this, and there's more coming for certain. I was reading through the replys to just this article here on slashdot, and found more than a couple of readers vowing to by multiple copies of the release just to show support. Multiple copies. Of A Blank Disk.
I envy him.
http://www.bistolas.net
eww, a .rar!
$ make available
If they used his work as a component in yet another derivative work? I'm sure he'd be just fine with it.
...use the system and gain what you want legitimately, instead of trying to sidestep it like a teenager.
The problem being that it can be fairly argued that the system is corrupt, owned by those interests with much much larger reserves of wealth. In a system in which you get as much justice as you can afford when it's working relatively normally & well, then adding in the additional corruption, the chances of the average non-wealthy, non-lawyer individual coming out ahead against said wealthy interests in court are slim.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.