Coincidence?  Perhaps

I started working on a posting had me bogged down in what to say about copyright issues.  I was reflecting on what would happen if the controls that the music industry has were used on other intellectual property.  For music I must pay royalties if I want to publish (read as post on the web) the lyrics I figured out from a song, publish the chords or musical melody, preform the song on my guitar or even sing the song in a public place.  (That’s why they have those stupid birthday songs in resaurants – Happy Birthday is copyrighted.)  I can’t write a song based on another song (create a derivitive work), even if I never heard the other song or don’t realize that I’m copying it (ask George Harrison).  I can’t use part of it by sampling a tiny bit of it.

What if these restrictions were placed on other intellectual property?  There are lot’s of recent cases, such as the Chamberlain Group suing its competitor for making a garage door opener that was compatible with its own.  But what if it went further:  to equations.  How much progress would have been delayed if it had been illegal to create derivitive works from the Pythagorian Theorem?  Or to teach it (liking singing a song) or write it down (like in a textbook).

So you can see how I was getting stuck, when all I really wanted to do was talk about Illegal-Art.org.  It has a collection of art based on others’ art, some of which has inspired copyright lawsuits.  There’s a copy of the classic “Disneyland Memorial Orgy” poster, for example. 

While exploring the site Sunday or Monday, I ran across DJ Danger Mouse’s Grey Album, which is a remix of Jay-Z’s the Black Album and the Beatles’ White Album.  It sounded interesting, and since these things tend to get taken quickly off the net, I downloaded it to listen to later.  Of course, I’ll destroy it as soon as I hear it:  please don’t sue me RIAA! 

Today I learn that yesterday was Grey Tuesday, “a day of coordinated civil disobedience: websites will post Danger Mouse’s Grey Album on their site for 24 hours in protest of EMI’s attempts to censor this work.” Over 170 sites posted the entire album, and Illegal Art appears to have been one of the first.  Coincidence?  Yeah, but at least it made me finally do the Illegal Art blog entry.