Music Industry Outlaws Best Album of the Year

DJ Danger Mouse’s recent Grey Album, which remixes Jay-Z’s The Black Album and the Beatles White Album, has been hailed as a innovative hip-hop triumph. Despite that and the fact that only 3,000 copies of the album are in circulation, EMI sent cease and desist letters yesterday to Danger Mouse and the handful of stores that were selling the album, demanding that the album be destroyed.

“EMI isn’t looking for compensation, they’re trying to ban a work of art,” said Downhill Battle’s Rebecca Laurie. “The record industry has become a huge drag on creativity and it’s only getting worse.”

“Special interests, including the major labels, have turned copyright law into a weapon,” said Downhill Battle co-founder Holmes Wilson. “If Danger Mouse had requested permission and offered to pay royalties, EMI still would have said no and the public would never have been able to enjoy this critically acclaimed work. Artists are being forced to break the law to innovate.”

“It’s clear that this work devalues neither of the originals. There is no legitimate artistic or economic reason to ban this record—this is just arbitrary exertion of control,” said Nicholas Reville, Downhill Battle co-founder. “The framers of the constitution created copyright to promote innovation and creativity. A handful of corporations have radically perverted that purpose for their own narrow self interest.”
The Grey Album has been widely shared on filesharing networks such as Kazaa and Soulseek, and has garnered critical acclaim in Rolling Stone (which called it “the ultimate remix record” and “an ingenious hip-hop record that sounds oddly ahead of its time”), the New Yorker, the Boston Globe (which called it the “most creatively captivating” album of the year), and other major news outlets.

The reporters and news outlets that reviewed the Grey Album have obtained illegally it from filesharing networks. “If music reviewers have to break the law to hear new, innovative music, then something has gone wrong with the law,” said Laurie.

In 1790 when Congress passed the first Copyright Act, the copyright term was 14 years, renewable for another 14 if the copyright holder was still living. In 2002, under the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, the copyright term was increased 20 years, raising copyright protection for corporations from to 95 years.

“If the copyright law stayed the way the founders of our constitution intended it, the White Album would already be in the public domain, and EMI wouldn’t have a leg to stand on,” said Wilson.

“Remixes and pastiche are a defining aesthetic of our era. How will artists continue to work if corporations can outlaw what they do?” said Reville. “Artists and musicians have always borrowed and built upon each others work– now they have to answer to corporate interests.”

Read the review of the Grey Album in Rolling Stone.
Fix the major label problem at Downhill Battle.