Wednesday, February 25, 2004
'Grey Album' Exposes Gray Areas of Copyright Law

As part of a mass protest last Tuesday against record company EMI, more than 150 Web sites offered free downloads of "The Grey Album," a compilation of tracks from the Beatles' "White Album" and rapper Jay-Z's "The Black Album."

Protestors say a work like the "Grey Album" should be permissible under the "fair use" doctrine. Recording industry lawyers saw the protest as nothing more than widespread copyright infringement.

Jonathan Zittrain, a director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, says, "As a matter of pure legal doctrine, the Grey Tuesday protest is breaking the law, end of story." However, Zittrain adds that the copyright laws weren't passed with today's technologies in mind.

"Defiant Downloads Rise From Underground," Infoshop News, Feb. 25.
Keywords: copyright, fair use, file-sharing, Internet, music


// posted by Debbi @ 11:42 PM