Danger Mouse Releases Blank CD-R To Spite EMI 296
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
+1 Insightful to Danger mouse for finding a way to stick it to EMI.
Re:I know its for a legit reason... (Score:5, Insightful)
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??
Handbag Music (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:I know its for a legit reason... (Score:1, Insightful)
How is this "sticking it to the man"?
You did RTFA and read that there are no authorized sources, right?
Meaning that anyone who buys this cd-r and then downloads the music can easily be sued.
Re:I know its for a legit reason... (Score:3, Insightful)
Hopefully EMI has not licensed the silence of a blank CD.
--
Do you have slow friends? [pair.com]
Re:I know its for a legit reason... (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
Re:Who has the recording rights to John Cage's 4'3 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I know its for a legit reason... (Score:5, Insightful)
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!"
Hype. Awesome. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
If roles were reversed? (Score:2, Insightful)
I wonder how Mr Mouse would react if a record company decided to publish his copyrighted material without his permission?
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.
Re:Links (Score:5, Insightful)
eww, a .rar!
Re:If roles were reversed? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If roles were reversed? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Who has the recording rights to John Cage's 4'3 (Score:3, Insightful)
If there is no data, there is no recording. You can't infringe with just media alone. :)
Re:If roles were reversed? (Score:3, Insightful)
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)!
Re:I know its for a legit reason... (Score:3, Insightful)
In addition, there is a cost associated with putting the music on the CD, which Mr. Mouse is refusing to incur because he knows that pirates aren't going to help him recoup that cost anyway. So his solution is to not put that money out at what is bound to be an unacceptable rate of return. That makes sense to me.
Re:He should have just gone in for the kill (Score:5, Insightful)
...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