Jay-Z Gets It: The Grey Album's Copyright Infringement

The music industry is a dwindling business model that refuses to alter its position on file-sharing and the creative possibilities that new technology has to offer. The five major record labels, EMI, Sony, BMG, Warner, and Universal have lost sight of the true reason why people make music and have choose to abuse the complex copyright law against fans, potential artists, and their costumers. The music industry is interested in restraining technologies with the use of copyright to strictly control the production and distribution of new songs created by unlicensed artists. File-sharing and sampling has led to a new genre of music that has quickly become popular and has put the creative and distribution power back in the hands of the artists.

I think the corrupt music industry knows that they are in a losing battle between new technology and an old business model. I believe that the new mediums to produce music and the idea of of success has changed since file-sharing. The major labels have been nickel and diming the artist for years by controlling what the artists right and what music is listened to by the public. The copyright law was written to encourage creative works of art, but now its a weapon for the labels to use as a last stand to ban new works and keep their licensed music popular. Artists now a days have the technology at their finger tips to create music by sampling and remixing different genres from different time periods together with no intention of ever making a profit, shown perfectly by Danger Mouse.

Danger Mouse and Girl Talk are producing their own music with the artist vocabulary that they have gathered through a media enriched environment. They are creating music from other pieces of songs that the original artists had never imagined could be created, except Jay-Z. Jay-Z released his Black Album without any rights to all 14 tracks for a reason. The reason could be that he saw the creative potential during this period of time and he wanted to play influential role in the remix culture. Just like Andy Warhol used everyday objects to make his "original" art that revolutionized what art is today, artists all over the world are using "original" media to remix and transform what music is today. Girltalk and Danger Mouse's music should be protected as artistic expression and the copyright law should be clarified and used for the right reasons.