p2pnet.net News:- “Copyright is supposed to protect expression and encourage creativity,” says Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing. “EMI is using copyright to suppress both. They are censors and thugs.”

He’s absolutely correct. But as we all know, Money Rulz and EMI, together with Warner Music, Sony BMG and Vivendi Universal, the other members of the Big Four Organized Music gang, will therefore continue with impunity to terrorize and victimize the people who have made them so very, very rich, and who keep them that way.

Doctorow is complaining about EMI’s, “indiscriminate censorship of people who do to the Beatles what the Beatles did to the artists who inspired them,” and he goes on:

“First EMI tried to crush DJ Danger Mouse’s incredible ‘Grey Album’ (the White Album plus Jay-Z’s Black Album), then they took down djBC’s Beastles (The Beatles plus the Beastie Boys)”.

And now they’re after Clayton Counts’ Sgt Petsound’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, “a noise-album that mashes up the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds with the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”.

Interesting. And there’s an equally interesting item in The Wall Street Journal which says:

As fashion models hit New York runways this week, they won’t just be showing off spring 2007 designs aimed at high-end retailers. They’ll also be providing a wealth of ideas for apparel manufacturers that copy runway looks – usually with less-expensive fabrics, in foreign assembly plants – for purchase by the masses.

Hoping to change that by following Europe’s lead, prominent fashion designers in the U.S. are pushing for federal legislation that would offer three years of copyright-like protection for designs ranging from dresses and shoes to belts and eyeglass frames.”

It goes on:

The central question is whether fashion design is an art worthy of protection or a craft whose practitioners can and should freely copy one another. In an industry where many designers come out with similar looks each season – and where inspiration is said to be “in the air” – designers and the thriving knockoff industry are hotly debating the issue.

Another key question: whether knockoffs, somewhat counterintuitively, actually benefit the industry as a whole. Copying, some argue, propels the fashion cycle forward by creating popular trends that spur designers to move on to the next big idea. In what they dub the “piracy paradox,” law professors Kal Raustiala of the University of California, Los Angeles, and Christopher Sprigman of the University of Virginia argue that copying makes trends saturate the market quickly, driving the fashion cognoscenti to search out newer looks. ‘If copying were illegal, the fashion cycle would occur very slowly, if at all,’ they write in an article to be published in the Virginia Law Review.

Back at Counts’ site, “Demand is accordingly made,” says a clip from the EMI C&D letter, “that you immediately and permanently:

(a) cease and desist from the manufacture, sale, offering for sale, offering for download/streaming, and/or other reproduction and distribution of the Beachles Mash-Up Recordings and the Other Mash-Up Recordings as well as any other unauthorized uses of the Capitol Recordings and/or other sound recordings owned and/or controlled by Capitol;

(b) cease and desist from the manufacture, sale, offering for sale, offering for download, and/or other reproduction and distribution of the Infringing Artwork as well as any other unauthorized uses of the Beatles Artwork, the Beach Boys Artwork, and/or other artwork owned and/or controlled by Capitol;

(c) provide Capitol with information regarding downloading and/or streaming of the Beachles Mash-Up Recordings and the Other Mash-Up Recordings to date, including but not limited to: (i) the dates on which those recordings were streamed and/or downloaded; (ii) the number of times those recordings were streamed and/or downloaded; and (iii) any and all available information regarding persons who streamed and/or downloaded those recordings …

In an update, “I have been informed by my friendly neighborhood sysadmin that records of IPs only stay on our server for three days,” say The Beachles, continuing:

Since much of this Internet stuff is lost on me, there was no way for me to comply with EMI’s preposterous request to turn over the information and preserve the data. However – and it is a big however – the data may still exist on the network, and if EMI are scummy enough to subpoena records from my ISP, they may well be able to hunt you people down like the undeserving animals they think you are. I would hope they have more sense.

EMI can take my little website away if they like, but six more will pop up in its place. I will see to it personally. They can tell me what and what not to make, but in so doing they are challenging me to outdo myself. They can sue me, but I will succeed in making a case for fair use. Copyright law in the United States is meant to protect extant material. The Beachles never existed before I created them. Inasmuch, they are in no way intended as an explicit infringement of EMI’s copyright. I created this record as a work of satire. It is a semi-sadistic commentary on the mash-up phenomenon, and a meager tribute to two of the greatest pop bands of the 20th century. And what’s wrong with that, really?

Also, I’m not going to spend too much longer on this, but there seem to be a few crybabies who still don’t understand why this record sounds the way it does. Let me clear this up. Being out of tune and sloppy is the last thing one would expect from a Beatles and Beach Boys mash-up. Any sane human would expect it to be melodic and perfectly in time. We would expect it to be crafted meticulously, over the course of years, by Brian Eno and Ray Kurzweil in a secret underground laboratory.

Contradistinctively, the last thing we would expect is for it to be carelessly hobbled together by some hillbilly schmuck with a laptop, just like every other mash-up in existence. It is, simply, a playful demonstration of how well these songs complement one another, in spite of their many differences. If you didn’t like the Beachles, I suggest that you listen to the Shaggs, who Frank Zappa once said were better than the Beatles. Get a bit of perspective. If you did enjoy yourself, however, I will gladly high-five you at my earliest convenience.

Power to the people!

Click here to send an email to EMI US Legal, adds the post. ” Or, you can simply write EMI / Capitol an appurtenant letter: mEMI Group plc, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5SW

Meanwhile, here’s the line-up of tracks.

• Wouldnt Sgt Petsound Be Nice.mp3
• You Still Believe in My Friends.mp3
• Thats Not Lucy.mp3
• Dont Talk (Get Better).mp3
• Im Fixing It, Dayhole.mp3
• Shes Going Away for Awhile.mp3
• Being for the Benefit of Sloop John B.mp3
• God Only Knows What Id Be Within You.mp3
• I Know Therere Sixty Four Answers.mp3
• Today, Rita.mp3
• I Just Wasnt Made for Good Mornings.mp3
• Sgt Petsounds Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprieve).mp3
• A Day in the Life of Caroline.mp3
• Runout Groove.mp3

And back at the World of Fashion, under the proposed changes to the US legislation, “designers for the first time could register clothing designs with the U.S. Copyright Office,” says the WSJ. “Registrations would cover the overall appearance of the item in question, barring even those made with inferior fabrics. But designers couldn’t protect commonplace designs already in the public domain, like jeans, T-shirts, wrap dresses or trench coats, or anything before the law was passed, such as styles from previous seasons.”

“It’s going to be crazy,” it has Steven Feinstein, president of Eci, saying, “there are going to be a lot of lawsuits flying around that have no merit.”

Look familiar, does it?

Stay tuned.

Also See:
Boing Boing – EMI wants millions and your IP address in revenge for Beachles, September 8, 2006

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