Creative Commons and The Gray Album

The reading 'The Gray Album: copyright law and digital sampling' by Matthew Rimmer (Rimmer, 2005) describes the difficulties in overzealous copyright laws and how they can stifle creativity. He use The Gray Album as an example of sampling other artists work to create a new piece of music. The 2003 album, produced by
DJ Danger Mouse
uses samples of The Beatles 'White Album' and Jay Z's 'Black Album' to create something new. This was released on the internet and immediately met with cease and desist letters form the music owners EMI. To counteract this and assert there rights as artists, the internet sellers and sharers of DJ Danger Mouse's work held a protest called 'Gray Tuesday' in-which they allowed all to freely download the album. This was a huge success and
'The Gray Album'
had well over 100 000 copies downloaded (Rimmer, 2005 p41). The EMI legal team subsequently sent DJ Danger Mouse a lawsuit. This is where the legal implications of copyright become blurred. In this situation the artist, DJ Danger Mouse, used substantial portions, rifts and vocals from
The Beatles White Album
and
The Black Album by Jay Z
. But this isn't always the case. There are many examples of artists using samples of other's work in their music. The difference is often the size of the sample, and the impact that sample has on the overall piece. (Rimmer; p42-43) Despite this, there are many more examples in-which copyright has stopped 'mash-ups' and music sampling.
In one such case the judge stated that "a balance must be struck between protecting artists interests, and depriving other artists of the building blocks of future works. Since the advent of Western music, musicians have freely borrowed themes and ideas from other musicians." (Rimmer; p43) Here enters the importance of creative commons.

This week’s lecture looked at web politics and the reproducing of digital information. I found this to be quite topical to the unit content and possibly a lead up to past lectures. In particular, this lecture gave me a better understanding of Sal Humphreys lecture on Massively Multi-user Online Games (MMOG’s). Christina discussed end user license agreements, as used in MMOG’s, the ‘walled garden’ concept and in particular the outdated use of copyright and the emergence of ‘Creative Commons’.

Creative Commons has filled the void between the Copyright Laws which confine information to the private sphere, and those with out Copyright, so free to use information. Creative Commons acts as an intermediary between the author or producer of intellectual property and the user of that information. The example used on their website is The White Stripes album being reproduced with a new artist playing bass guitar over the original work. Here, The White Stripes gave permission for this to be done, but if your unable to contact the producer, Creative Commons license can give you the ability to use the information within certain fields. In other words the information can be used as long as the producer retains certain rights, protected by the Creative Commons agreement, but no where near as stringent or harsh as that of the Copyright Laws. I agree with Christina and Sal that Copyright Laws and End User License Agreements are too one sided, they protect only the original producer of the content and not the consumer or viewser, but I would love to look at the producers rights in greater length. It seems we are only getting a one sided argument. Though Christina touched on this subject I would love to know more.

References

Rimmer, M. 2005. 'The Grey Album: copyright law and digital sampling', in, Media International Australia, No.114 February , pp.40-53.