It's Grey Tuesday. The day to protest against the attempts by EMI to censor Danger Mouse's Grey Album. This remixes Jay-Z's The Black Album and the Beatles White Album to create innovative hip-hop music.
EMI has sent cease and desist letters demanding that stores destroy their copies of the album and websites remove them from their site. EMI claims copyright control of the Beatles 1968 White Album. That creates resistance.
You can download the Grey Album on a filesharing network from illegal-art.org
Copyright laws need changing to allow more fair use.
The Free Trade Agreement with the US will change Australia's intellectual property (IP) laws. The FTA means that copy right protection will be available for 70 years after the author's death. It also means harmonisation of patent law with the US, which favour the interests of producers. Since Australia is a net importer of IP the overall effect of stronger IP protection is that Australians will end up paying more in licence fees to the US producers.
Update
It looks as if the GreyDay Tuesday resistance was a success
The legal issues are discussed by Lawrence over at Lessig Blog and at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
This piece shows Australia going soft on the intellectual property regime under the Free Trade Agreement with the US. It's a victory for corporate America.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at February 24, 2004 07:49 AM | TrackBackCopy Adorno, Go To Jail ??
The Hamburg Foundation for the Advancement of Science and Culture, presided by Jan Philipp Reemtsma, has just advanced science and culture to a whole newlevel: Sebastian Luetgert, the founder of textz.com, is facing a warrant of arrest and may go to jail if he fails to pay more than 2,300 euros in damages for the alleged copying of two essays by Theodor W. Adorno that the foundation claims as their "intellectual property". Reemtsma was kindly asked to settle,but refused.
The case dates back to August 2002, when the foundation filed for a preliminary injunction against Luetgert at the Hamburg State Court, referring to the alleged distibution of two works by Theodor W. Adorno, "Jargon der Eigentlichkeit" and "Fascism and Anti-Semitic Propaganda". Since not a single e-mail was sent tonotify textz.com of the matter, and since written notification failed to reach the defendant, textz.com only learned about the issue after a few days. The works in question were immediately removed from the site to avoid any further legal hassles.
In December 2003, Luetgert found himself confronted with a warrant of arrest,obtained against him by the Hamburg Foundation, citing unpaid claims related to the unauthorized copying of said works. In January 2004, Luetgert addressed the issue in a letter to Reemtsma and asked for a scholarship so he could pay this debt and avoid jail time. Reemtsma did not reply, but handed the letter over to his foundation's lawyers - Senfft, Kersten, Voss-Andreae & Schwenn - who insiston the payment of 2,331.32 Euros for alleged damages and legal fees.
Textz.com believes that an "intellectual proprietor" of Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin who claims to advance science and culture by sending people to jail for taking Adorno and Benjamin serious is seriously wrong on a whole numberof points. The Hamburg Foundation undererstimates the resistance of their possessions against their legal protection just as much as their lawyers underestimate the ability of the Internet to route around damage. In the end,they may even be wrong in thinking that they will ever get their property back.
Today, in an open letter ([http://textz.com/adorno/open_letter.txt]), Reemtsma has been notified that his foundation's "intellectual property" has been returned to the public domain. This first-of-its-kind protest signals a refusal to let copyright holders and lawyers censor the very works they pretend to protect and control what the public can archive or read. There is a universal right to copy that will never cease to apply, and there is copyright legislation that will. The spectre haunting the scientific and cultural industries is a new commons materializing before their very own eyes.
We're just at the beginning.
Textz.com
February 24, 2004
I would have thought that Adorno would have been in favour of, and defended, the public domain and an intellectual commons.
He would have resisted the enclosure of the commons by the instrumental reason of the culture industry.
Posted by: Gary Sauer-Thompson on February 25, 2004 11:00 PMyeah, but you know what happens once a commercial or money-oriented publisher gets hold of your works.
Posted by: dj on February 26, 2004 03:59 PM