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."
I know its for a legit reason... (Score:5, Funny)
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??
He should have just gone in for the kill (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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
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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, Funny)
They haven't because they can't. They'd get sued by Simon and Garfunkel.
Re:I know its for a legit reason... (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, he might just get sued by whoever now hold John Cage's copyrights [gramophone.co.uk]
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!"
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easily? Name any instance of someone being sued for downloading.
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!
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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.
I'm not that familiar with the US legal system, but can't anyone sue for copyright infringement?
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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.
I'm not that familiar with the US legal system, but can't anyone sue for copyright infringement?
Only if they own the copyright. IANAL.
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Anyone can sue for anything, but if you don't want it to get thrown out immediately, you have to have standing -- so the copyright owner, or someone to whom they've delegated their rights.
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Dunno about you, but there are two kinds of offenses here: Official and personal.
If you know someone breaks a law punishable by official code (murder, rape, anything with a "public interest"), you not only can but have to report it. The attorney general will in this case take control of the case and press charges regardless of your interest, because it is in public interest that those things get prosecuted.
In a personal case (usually minor "crimes" like trespassing, slander, where it is maybe in your intere
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You are right, except for the fact, that it already is available for download.
Here you can listen to it: http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=104129585&m=104105184 [npr.org]
Re:I know its for a legit reason... (Score:4, Informative)
Well I did say, "maybe or maybe not" quite a few times. That was the point. The whole thing is "implied", and that implication is quite vague at best.
The strength of his tactic is that the sale of the blank CD and artwork is never directly linked with the allegedly unauthorized derivative work.
You can have all the implications that you want, a judge is still going to want to see an act of distribution associated with that sale. At best, EMI can claim he created the work and allowed it to be distributed, but that is actually quite different from selling it.
Since there is no act of distribution with monetary gain, it would have to be pursued by EMI differently. Of course judges and juries can be fickle, but it would by no means, be as a strong of a case had the CD not been blank and contained the actual music.
Re:I know its for a legit reason... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm listening to it now.
I'll buy this CD, and I hope others do as well. It sends a good message to the public that the **aa-types are wrong when they content people won't pay for music if you give it to them on their terms. Same with In Rainbows. I'm also really interested in the David Lynch artwork.
The irony is I rip CDs to my media server as soon as I buy them and put them away for safe keeping, so burning the album to a blank will be a purely symbolic - and ass-backwards - gesture on my part.
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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.
Not even this is original (Score:4, Informative)
If there is brilliance here, it belongs to who Danger Mouse (true to form, I'll give you that) copied from, namely Green Day [eil.com].
Comment by Penfold (Score:2, Funny)
+1 (Score:5, Insightful)
+1 Insightful to Danger mouse for finding a way to stick it to EMI.
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Screw EMI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auYqoSV3ZDo [youtube.com]
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Sure you did. It's the DJ / producer behind Gnarls Barkley,that made the song "Crazy" [wikipedia.org] some time ago.
He even collaborated with the band "Gorillaz", which you "may" have heard in some iPod ad.
Oh, he even took part to the documentary "Good Copy Bad Copy" [wikipedia.org]. He's not new to such statements.
Re:+1 (Score:5, Funny)
the ultimate "woosh!"
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Re:+1 (Score:5, Funny)
Crumbs, chief! (Score:5, Funny)
It had to be said.
Re:Crumbs, chief! (Score:5, Funny)
Penfold, shush.
Re:Crumbs, chief! (Score:4, Funny)
Ooh-eck!
I'm buying two. (Score:5, Funny)
One to burn, one to keep on a shelf to then sell to some eccentric collector in 50 years. Retirement, here I come!
Re:I'm buying two. (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm not on either side of the fence, but I'm fairly certain that a lot of people weren't killing a lot of other people just to be nice, before anyone ever wrote it in stone.
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"Retirement, here I come!"
Take me with you.
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.
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I agree... I've heard the name once before, and have no idea what the music sounds like, but I'm very tempted to buy this.
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He's in the duo Gnarls Barkley, who got insane amounts of airplay with "Crazy" a few years ago. You have probably heard their songs.
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techno handbag music?
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techno handbag music?
"handbag" - "put your hand on your bags ..." you get the idea. Music that some jerk-off made.
Though "techno handbag" seems kind of redundant ...
Re:Handbag Music (Score:4, Funny)
Many Slashdotters clearly know as much about music as they do about the opposite sex.
But I suppose that for you, everybody is the "opposite" sex.
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wtf? I must be really dense, for I still do not get the "handbag" reference.
-dZ.
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"Handbag music" is what Essex girls in white high-heels, with false fingernails and hair extensions dance around their handbags to in Club Zeus in Chelmsford on Friday and Saturday nights.
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That seems like an awfully small target audience. Purveyors of this handbag music must be really dedicated to their genre.
Cultural Reference (Score:2)
Here in the UK we call a purse a "handbag" and a wallet a "purse" if owned by a lady vs. a man when it is still called a "wallet."
So think of it as "purse music."
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I had no idea what the music sounded like, so I obtained the album for sampling purposes.
I'm not quite sure how that can sound like anything remotely close to "techno handbag disco". I hear no techno, no disco, and even worse, no handbag.
LTTFA?
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When you're as old, grumpy and intransigent as me, I assure you, if it ain't Voivod, Megadeth or Slayer, it's techno handbag disco music by definition.
FWIW, I'm still coding in C using vi. No new-fangled IDEs or emacs here!!! And don't get me started on debuggers...
Re:Handbag Music (Score:5, Funny)
And don't get me started on debuggers.
We can't - you shipped with symbols stripped.
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We can't - you shipped with symbols stripped.
I had to make it fit on that 360k floppy somehow.
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I rarely find /. funny-mods funny and have them scored down in prefs, but THAT'S (insightfully) funny! I wish I had modpoints!
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Listening to it right now. It took a whole 1 minute and 30 seconds to arrive on my hard drive. I don't know where I'd categorize this. Nu-Soul? Glitch Soul? Oh wow. I'm halfway through now and it starts getting all rocking with Iggy Pop doing a number with what sounds like Bauhaus or the Cure backing him. It is certainly interesting. I gotta give props to Danger Mouse. He took a crappy Jay Z album and made it into one of the most interesting mash ups that I've ever heard that really worked for the most part
Re:Handbag Music (Score:4, Funny)
Just as bad: no wife, no horse, no mustache.
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"techno handbag music"???
lmfao - it's a Sparklehorse album! it's psych-folk-rock or something...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparklehorse [wikipedia.org]
it's /produced/ by Danger Mouse - who's also produced the Gorrilaz and Beck - and Danger Mouse himself is a hip-hop artist when he's not producing other kinds of music.
geez - where' my cluestick when i need it!
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Wrong dope makes all the difference.
Can't stand the goofy dancing antiques, but the tunes still play our brains. Must be permanent brain damage. SO tells me "can't believe we get nostalgic with disco..."
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me again (still as AC and now replying to my own posts) - just to say Turgid, that i also like a lot of the artists you mention - and i'm going to try and check out the one i've not heard of (Bohlen-Pierce) - sounds worth at least a listen to find out.
i think i have stuff by all the other artists mentioned (as listened to both by yourself and your other half) somewhere in my collection - although i must admit i'm not such a fan of rock as i used to be.
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wow i actually managed to get logged in! miracles never cease to amaze me!
I hope this catches on, big time (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:I hope this catches on, big time (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, I would make a double-sided CD/DVD. The real pressed long-lasting DVD side is a LiveDVD that boots an OS, downloads the tracks via torrent, and mixes them with a script, in the DJ's style, with a bit of individuality for every buyer. Then it burns the tracks on the CD side. (After asking you to turn it around.)
Meanwhile, the minimalistic, but cool looking OS shows a video of the guy mixing the stuff in his studio, with completion percentage. And while burning, it plays the tracks, with a video of him DJing. The images would fit the sound. And the downloads would be fast and lossless. (So you do not have to run that thing forever, but have a nice show meanwhile.)
Now THAT would be an ingenious concept. :)
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And the downloads would be fast and lossless.
*calls reality police*
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Fast: Well, Danger Mouse obviously would host it somewhere. Obviously he would offer it lossless. And the listeners would have a higher rate of people who do not share anything else. With that OS thing even all of them would share as much bandwidth as they could.
For fast downloads (and I mean "saturating your pipe" fast): http://btjunkie.org/ [btjunkie.org] (look at the most popular ones)
And for the lossless thing: http://btjunkie.org/search?q=lossless [btjunkie.org]
Noob. ^^
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"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."
Hmmmm, make it a contest, release an edl for a Free software program. Don't say what source the edl is for. Let people find the source that best applies.
all the best,
drew
Will stores be allowed to sell it? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Would retailers want to carry it anyway? It sounds like a returns nightmare when people realise after the fact that all they have is an expensive CDR and some artwork.
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He trusts is his clients not being total retards. And maybe he does not want to have retard fans too. So of course it will not be available at Walmart. ^^
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What about stores that do not care for retards. Like, you know, DJ stores. :P
Seriously: You can go too far on expecting your clients to be stupid. (And one of Murphy's laws is, that if you dumb your expectations down, nature will just invent better idiots.)
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Yeah..... not so much. The lead left that pencil some time ago.
The labels are having a hard time even convincing the big retail chains to keep floor space for them. It won't be too long before sales of iTunes, Amazon, Zune, etc. gift cards are greater than the CD sales themselves.
Search the financial news articles. Plenty of articles about how retailers are either shrinking or outright eliminating floorspace for music CDs. How m
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Not really (Score:2)
Works the other way around, actually. They very much want shelf space at big retailers. See none of the big retailers make a significant percentage of their profits on music. For the most part, they don't make a significant percentage of their profits on any one specific category of item. People shop for all kinds of things there, so they make their money spread out over a lot of different items. So losing any single item isn't going to hit them that hard.
Wal-mart in particular is notorious for dictating te
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The big question is, will music stores be allowed to sell it. Will retailers who sell this be blacklisted by the distribution chain?
The distribution chain could try to blacklist stores, but this would probably run foul of certain laws if they were caught out doing it. Anti-competition laws is one that could come into play.
IANAL, so this is just my 5c.
not just "lots of artwork" (Score:5, Informative)
It's a 100+ page BOOK of David Lynch photography.
here's the plan (Score:3, Interesting)
Links (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a direct link to listen to the music:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104129585 [npr.org]
Or to download it use this torrent:
http://www.demonoid.com/files/details/1922583/2325666/ [demonoid.com]
Re:Links (Score:4, Informative)
Or from rapid share:
http://rapidshare.com/files/230207661/Dark.Night.of.the.Soul.2009.rar [rapidshare.com]
Re:Links (Score:5, Insightful)
eww, a .rar!
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Or http://www.filedropper.com/darknightofthesoul2009 [filedropper.com]
Name one time government did any good.
Let's see now . . . the aqueducts?
I'd been wondering when this would happen (Score:3, Interesting)
Southpark did it! OH sorry i mean Greenday (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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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.
You're making it sound like a scam, but the way I see it he's selling a 100 page book of David Lynch photography, which for fans of Mr. Lynch like myself is pretty damn cool. The fact that it comes with a blank CD-R is just a neat little afterthought.
Not being a big Danger Mouse fan, I downloaded the tracks nonetheless and I have to say they're pretty decent. They would have stood by themselves without marketing ploys or legal entanglements.
Watch out for John Cage (Score:2)
The mouse is gonna get nailed for violating John Cage's copyright on 4'33" [bbc.co.uk]
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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:If roles were reversed? (Score:5, Insightful)
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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 anyt
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it's not even a mashup album - it's a Sparklehorse album and afaik he's just the producer! (fwiw, he's also produced Gorillaz and Beck)
to be fair it would be good if the summary mentioned this - but hey, it is slashdot after all
i'm not really sure where the legal dispute lies, maybe there's some sneaky samples in it which he hasn't cleared? - but i've not heard any samples in it yet, and i am listening to it right now as i type this - it just sounds like Sparklehorse through and through.
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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)!
The Dead Kennedys did something similar. (Score:5, Informative)
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."
He's gonna get sued... (Score:3)
In case anyone thinks this is a joke http://archives.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/Music/09/23/uk.silence/ [cnn.com]
He's better keep that blank CDR to himself.
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A blank CD-R still is writable. With the music off of bittorrent.
A recording of silence obviously not. You can play it in your player.
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If there is no data, there is no recording. You can't infringe with just media alone. :)
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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!!
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Re:I just may be a pessimist (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:I just may be a pessimist (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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Actually, they will. At least in the U.S.
From the poster you were replying to, it seems we are talking about encryption on communications, not local storage.
There is a *tremendous* amount of resistance to any controls on encrypted communications in the U.S. From pretty strong sources too, and not just political action groups. Businesses, of all kinds, would vehemently oppose the loss of encrypted communications.
Ecommerc
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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.)