From carrie at stayfreemagazine.org Sun Feb 8 17:31:20 2004 From: carrie at stayfreemagazine.org (Carrie McLaren) Date: Sun, 8 Feb 2004 17:31:20 -0500 Subject: Stay Free! wants yr "entrepreneurial" stories Message-ID: PLEASE FORWARD TO FRIENDS, C0-WORKERS, LOVED ONES, UNLOVED ONES, DRUMMERS Every American, at one point or another, comes up with a Big Idea, be it a get-rich quick scheme, a scientific discovery, or some other entrepreneurial mission. We at Stay Free! would like to hear about yours -- your lemonade stands, your unusual consumer goods, your quirky business plans -- especially projects that you seriously pursued (if only for a few hours). If you don't have any revealing stories of your own then tell us about a friend's. We want it all: the inspiration, the buildup, the followthru, the result. Of course, in some cases you won't need to get into the details. It's up to you. Responses can be anywhere from 2 sentences to 3-4 paragraphs, and should have some basis in reality. Send to ----> stay.free at verizon.net Here are the results of two similar queries to give you an idea of the format: "Ever Been Fired?" http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/17/fired.html "After breaking up, what do you do with your ex's stuff?" http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/16/breakups.html much thanks, carrie -- Carrie McLaren Editor, Stay Free! 718.398.9324 www.stayfreemagazine.org www.illegal-art.org From carrie at stayfreemagazine.org Thu Feb 12 11:58:23 2004 From: carrie at stayfreemagazine.org (Carrie McLaren) Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 11:58:23 -0500 Subject: Stay Free! | The Man Can't Bust Our Music Message-ID: EMI OUTLAWS 'GREY ALBUM' - DOWNLOAD IT NOW AT STAY FREE!'s ILLEGAL-ART.ORG! DOWNHILL BATTLE (www.downhillbattle.org) -- DJ Danger Mouse's recent Grey Album, which remixes Jay-Z's The Black Album and the Beatles White Album, has been hailed as a innovative hip-hop triumph. Despite that and the fact that only 3,000 copies of the album are in circulation, EMI sent cease and desist letters yesterday to Danger Mouse and the handful of stores that were selling the album, demanding that the album be destroyed. "EMI isn't looking for compensation, they're trying to ban a work of art," said Downhill Battle's Rebecca Laurie. "Special interests, including the major labels, have turned copyright law into a weapon," said Downhill Battle co-founder Holmes Wilson. "If Danger Mouse had requested permission and offered to pay royalties, EMI still would have said no and the public would never have been able to enjoy this critically acclaimed work. Artists are being forced to break the law to innovate." The Grey Album has been widely shared on file sharing networks such as Kazaa and Soulseek, and has garnered critical acclaim in Rolling Stone (which called it "the ultimate remix record" and "an ingenious hip-hop record that sounds oddly ahead of its time"), the Boston Globe (which called it the "most creatively captivating" album of the year), and other major news outlets. DOWNLOAD THE ALBUM http://www.illegal-art.org/audio/grey.html MORE BACKGROUND INFO http://www.downhillbattle.org http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?040209ta_talk_greenman http://www.rollingstone.com/news/newsarticle.asp?nid=19292 http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2004/02/10/jay_z_the_beatles_meet_in_grey_area -- Carrie McLaren Editor, Stay Free! 718.398.9324 www.stayfreemagazine.org www.illegal-art.org From carrie at stayfreemagazine.org Mon Feb 23 15:34:35 2004 From: carrie at stayfreemagazine.org (Carrie McLaren) Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2004 15:34:35 -0500 Subject: Stay Free! | 23 February 2004 Message-ID: Alas, I have updated the Stay Free! site with these items from the psychology issue, #21: BETTER LIVING THROUGH LOBOTOMY: What can the history of psychosurgery tell us about medicine today? Allison Miller interviews Elliot Valenstein http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/21/lobotomy.html MORE THAN ONE WAY TO SKIN A CAT: How did doctors perform lobotomies? Where did they cut, and with what? Here are some of the most significant procedures. http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/21/lobotomy_sidebar.html I AM NEVER LONELY: A brief history of employee personality testing by Ana Marie Cox http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/21/personality_testing.html TESTMANIA! Carrie McLaren surveys some of the more unusual personality tests http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/21/personality_sidebar.html * * * UPCOMING SF! EVENTS IN NEW YORK * * * NYC GRASSROOTS MEDIA CONFERENCE THIS WEEKEND February 27-29 at the New School http://www.nycgrassrootsmedia.org The NYC Grassroots Media Conference will feature over 40 workshops and panels conducted by more than 40 local organizations on topics ranging from video production to puppet-making; from how to start your own record label to practical ways that community media can help fight environmental racism. The goals of the weekend-long event are to promote awareness of the independent media in the city, to strengthen and unify the city?s independent media community, and to create strong bonds among community groups and local media makers. The Stay Free! panel is on Sunday, Feb. 29, at 2:30 pm, and will focus on using pranks and parody for social change. It'll feature: Carrie Moyer and Sue Schaffner from Dyke Action Machine (http://www.dykeactionmachine.com), who you may remember from the Illegal Art Exhibit; Jonah Peretti (Nike sweatshop prankster and co-creator of BlackPeopleLoveUs.com); The Yes Men (http://www.theyesmen.org), whose projects include masquerading as members of the WTO and promoting the benfits of slavery at world trade conferences; and Andrew Boyd from Billionaires for Bush (http://www.billionairesforbush.com). Stay Free! will also be tabling throughout the conference so be sure to drop by and say hi. :::::::::: LITTLE GREY BOOK LECTURE SERIES Wednesday, March 3, 8 pm As some of you know, in my other life I run Monkeywire (the #1 source for news about primates) with my pal The Legendary Joe Garden. Joe and I are among the speakers who will be addressing the topic of ANIMALS on Wednesday night. As is our habit, we will be talking about chimps. Galapagos Art Space 70 North Sixth Street, bet. Kent and Wythe L Train to Bedford Avenue 718-782-5188 www.galapagosartspace.com www.littlegraybooks.com From carrie at stayfreemagazine.org Wed Feb 25 10:45:29 2004 From: carrie at stayfreemagazine.org (Carrie McLaren) Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2004 10:45:29 -0500 Subject: Stay Free!/Illegal Art told to "cease and desist" Message-ID: Ah, the saga of DJ Dangermouse continues. EMI sent out a cease and desist notice to Stay Free!/Illegal Art and about 150 other websites this week, claiming "willful violation of [copyright] laws." EMI wanted to prevent Grey Tuesday, an online protest of Capitol's attempt to squash Dangermouse's "Grey Album," from taking place. The New York Times article below has the crucial background info. What this means for Stay Free! is as of yet unclear. I'd much rather report on other people's lawsuits than get dragged into one myself, but, having spent over a year praising artists who have stood up to this sort of corporate bullying, we can't very well duck out ourselves.... so we haven't removed the contested mp3s (online at http://www.illegal-art.org ), and don't plan to. With luck, Capitol will back down and realize that suing a bunch of marginal publishers is only going to bring more publicity to an album they'd like to suppress. But if they do come after us, we'll have a rock solid fair use argument. Prof. Zittrain's comment (below) notwithstanding, there are exactly zero laws that state that what we're doing is illegal. Nor, for that matter, are there laws forbidding Dangermouse from appropriating the Beatles's recordings -- these legal threats are all based on the precedent set by a single court case from the 1980s (See O'Sullivan v. Biz Markie, http://www.illegal-art.org/audio/historic.html ). A habit, in other words. You can find the cease and desist letter on the Downhill Battle site (I would post it myself but I'm lazy... and, besides, the letters are all the same): http://www.downhillbattle.org/grey/emi_cd_letter.html And here's the man who signed it: http://www.cll.com/images/attorneys/jensenc.jpg all for now, carrie ::::: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/25/arts/music/25REMI.html Defiant Downloads Rise From Underground By BILL WERDE Published: February 25, 2004 More than 300 Web sites and blogs staged a 24-hour online protest yesterday over a record company's efforts to stop them from offering downloadable copies of "The Grey Album." A popular underground collection of music, "The Grey Album" mixes tracks from the Beatles' classic White Album with raps from Jay-Z's latest release, "The Black Album." The protesters billed the event as "Grey Tuesday," calling it "a day of coordinated civil disobedience," during which more than 150 sites offered the album for download. Recording industry lawyers saw it as 24 hours of mass copyright infringement and sent letters to the Web sites demanding that they not follow through on the protest. "The Grey Album" is a critically praised collection of tracks created by Brian Burton, a Los Angeles D.J. who records as Danger Mouse. Mr. Burton created the album by layering Jay-Z's a cappella raps from "The Black Album," released on Jay-Z's Roc-A-Fella label, over music he arranged using melodies and rhythms from "The Beatles," commonly known as the White Album. Mr. Burton did not seek permission from EMI, which owns the publishing rights to the White Album. When EMI learned that Mr. Burton was distributing "The Grey Album" early this month, its lawyers sent him a cease-and-desist letter, and Mr. Burton complied. EMI views any distribution, reproduction or public performance of "The Grey Album" to be a copyright violation. "They may say EMI is trying to stop an artwork," said Jeanne Meyer, an EMI spokeswoman, referring to the Web sites, "but they neglect to understand that there is a well-established market for licensing samples, and Mr. Burton didn't participate in it." Some protesters say "The Grey Album" illustrates a need for revisions in copyright law. They say that sampling should be allowed under fair use of copyrighted material, or that a system of fair compensation should be created to allow for sampling. "To a lot of artists and bedroom D.J.'s, who are now able to easily edit and remix digital files of their favorite songs using inexpensive computers and software, pop music has become source material for sonic collages," said Nicholas Reville, a co-founder of Downhill Battle, an organization of music industry activists who promoted Grey Tuesday. Jonathan Zittrain, a director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, said the issue is indeed a gray one. "As a matter of pure legal doctrine, the Grey Tuesday protest is breaking the law, end of story," Mr. Zittrain said. "But copyright law was written with a particular form of industry in mind. The flourishing of information technology gives amateurs and home-recording artists powerful tools to build and share interesting, transformative, and socially valuable art drawn from pieces of popular culture. There's no place to plug such an important cultural sea change into the current legal regime." He said that under copyright law a judge can impose damages as high as $150,000 for each infringement. To create a collection like "The Grey Album" legally, an artist would first have to get permission to use copyrighted material. Then he would have to negotiate compensation with the copyright holder. Many artists, however, like the Beatles, will not allow their music to be sampled. But even if permission is granted, it is common for a copyright holder to request more than 50 percent of publishing rights for a new song created from the copyrighted work. So if Mr. Burton had been able to get permission to make "The Grey Album" from both the Beatles and Jay-Z, he would probably have had to give away more than 100 percent of his publishing rights. Around the same time Mr. Burton received his cease-and-desist letter, his album was receiving critical acclaim in Rolling Stone magazine. The album took on a distribution life of its own online, circulated via file-trading sites and on e-Bay, where bootleg CD's were selling for as much as $80 yesterday. Two weeks ago EMI issued cease-and-desist letters to an undisclosed number of record stores and e-Bbay sellers. Downhill Battle went live last Wednesday with a site devoted to the protest, Greytuesday.org. In 12 hours it had more than 40 sites signed on to participate. Within two days, Greytuesday.org reached the top ranking on Blogdex and Popdex, Web sites that track which sites are being linked to from blogs. Monday night lawyers for EMI issued cease-and-desist letters to more than 150 Web sites participating in the protest. The letter said distribution of "The Grey Album" "will subject you to serious legal remedies for willful violation of the laws." By yesterday afternoon some of the Web masters of the protesting sites said they had served 85 to 100 copies of the album, while other reported as many as 1,000 downloads. -- Carrie McLaren Editor, Stay Free! www.stayfreemagazine.org www.illegal-art.org 718.398.9324 From carrie at stayfreemagazine.org Wed Feb 25 11:24:56 2004 From: carrie at stayfreemagazine.org (Carrie McLaren) Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2004 11:24:56 -0500 Subject: Stay Free! | correction Message-ID: whoops, wrong decade... The Biz Markie case is from the early 1990s, not the 1980s