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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."
But doesn't this seem like the height of laziness?
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
Crumbs DM!
+1 Insightful to Danger mouse for finding a way to stick it to EMI.
It had to be said.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
One to burn, one to keep on a shelf to then sell to some eccentric collector in 50 years. Retirement, here I come!
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
I hate techno handbag disco music like this, but you've got to give credit where credit's due. This is an excellent idea to highlight these very topical issues. Well done young man.
I might even go out and buy the box of artwork and blank CD-R specifically to support this protest.
Stick Men
Frankly, I think that the idea is rather ingenious. I already sense a horde of lawyers sniffing the judicial currents, wondering if this could be prosecuted as encouraging copyright infringement. That should be an interesting case.
Offhand, I'd guess it hinges on whatever public statements have been made by Danger Mouse on this topic.
Another legal issue I'd be interested to come to court would be if the mashup as provided on the net didn't actually include any material under copyright, i.e., it was just a bunch of editing instructions which could be used by a computer program to which the user provides The White Album as input. It might be hard to prove that that is still clearly a derivative work of The White Album if the program would produce output (even gibberish output) given other music as inputs.
The big question is, will music stores be allowed to sell it. Will retailers who sell this be blacklisted by the distribution chain? EMI and the RIAA have a lot of influence in how their music is distributed. How long until retails get jacked up prices from their distributor for other music for selling this?
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
It's a 100+ page BOOK of David Lynch photography.
I think he maybe planning to "leak" that music he's talking about. Fans will be able to download and add the music to it. Make sense to me.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Here's a direct link to listen to the music:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104129585
Or to download it use this torrent:
http://www.demonoid.com/files/details/1922583/2325666/
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
how is a blank cd the same as a recording of silence?
Don't do it! It's a virus that will delete the ZONE ZERO (the center of your computer hard disk) and turn your home computer INTO A BOMB!!
deltree hasn't been in Windows since Win 98, grandpa.
I actually had been thinking for a while this would be a good idea. The torrents aren't going to just go away, and the lawyers are spending a great amount of money that could be saved as profits. I'd been thinking that if the artists simply created the boxsets, artwork, and maybe included videos, they would probably come out ahead.
Wow. You really missed the point. The victory is not superficial. Quite the opposite. He can actually make money off this tactic. Every sale of his blank CD and artwork is revenue. Cash in hand. If he is getting money, it's a little hard to classify that as superficial.
As for justice being bought, that is also where this victory is far from superficial. It will be very hard to demonstrate a link between this blank cd, original artwork, and an act copyright infringement against EMI's intellectual property. In order for justice to be bought, there *still* MUST be some sort of existing legal framework in which to prove damages occurred. I think you underestimate the resilience of his strategy and how will it could stand up to legal asshattery.
Now as for the legislature, what law could you possibly create to stop this? You can't sell blank CD's with original artwork? The law would have to be so vague and subjective that it would hardly stand up to legal standards.
I understand your cynicism and apparent bitterness, even share some of it, but this is still not that easy to stop, even assuming the whole weight of a corrupt and broken system behind it.
The strategy deserves a little more applause and credit than you are giving it.
Didn't Greenday already do this like five years ago?
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
If they used his work as a component in yet another derivative work? I'm sure he'd be just fine with it.
I wonder how Mr Mouse would react if a record company decided to publish his copyrighted material without his permission?
This is a derivative work based on someone else's copyrighted material. He's not just redistributing someone else's album. (-1, Disingenuous)
Mash-ups are a great new form of creativity, but creativity doesn't give you free reign to publish other people's material without permission from the copyright holder.
1) It's free rein. Like a horse. Don't use sayings and phrases you don't understand. Just don't. When you make assumptions it makes an ass out of you, and umption.
2) If you had one tenth of the creativity of Danger Mouse you might be qualified to speak. You can barely tell where the music on the Grey Album comes from; I haven't heard this new one (yet) but if it's anything the same, then not distributing it is ridiculous. How do you hold copyright on a chord? Mashups increase the value of the original, just as covers do — how many original songs have you been totally unaware of until someone made an inferior cover, and the original regained popularity?
Copyright was intended to benefit society. It's been twisted. We SHOULD take it back.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
He is trying to pull NIN and Radiohead Internet buzz. However, this isn't going to work.
You're dumb. The controversy over the Grey Album meant that thousands heard of it who had never heard of him (including me.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If there is no data, there is no recording. You can't infringe with just media alone. :)
zosxavius photography
Creativity gives you just that, aslong as your not hurting sales of the other material ( nobody is going to buy the Grey album instead of the white album), then it should be fair use (and AFAIK is)!
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
Regardless of whether the act of distribution occurs on a physical medium, or a digital download the legal "issue" is copyright infringement.
From what I understand, EMI is claiming that DJ Danger Mouse produces unauthorized derivative works (or flat out straight copies) of their intellectual property.
It did not *have* to go on the CD. In fact, the whole point, is that the CD is specifically blank. He is not actually putting the music on the CD or selling it online. His whole strategy relies on the fact that you are paying him for something that is only connected to the music in the loosest sense possible. Legally it would be like nailing jello to the wall.
If he really wanted to make a political statement, he would have licensed the music or sued to get it licensed, and then released the CD with a statement revealing how much of the cost was license fees to the Beatles and Jay-Z.
What we see instead is a protest statement, which smacks of impotence. Don't abandon your legal system to dickheads pretending to be lawyers; use the system and gain what you want legitimately, instead of trying to sidestep it like a teenager.
Futurist Traditionalism
When the Dead Kennedys released "In God We Trust, Inc." on cassette tape (remember those?), they left the B side blank, with the following note: "Home taping is killing big time entertainment industry profits. Therefore side two of this tape has been left blank for your convenience."
If there is brilliance here, it belongs to who Danger Mouse (true to form, I'll give you that) copied from, namely Green Day.
by John Cage's estate. They've already successfully sued a guy for releasing 1 minute of silence. (He settled for $100K)
In case anyone thinks this is a joke http://archives.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/Music/09/23/uk.silence/
He's better keep that blank CDR to himself.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)