Gray Tuesday Prompt Response

    The Gray Tuesday action for those of you who don’t know was a massive organized distribution of banned LP to protest EMI. Basically The Gray Album was a mash-up of Jay-z and The Beatles works that had been mashed, mixed, rebooted to create something new. The album was originally distributed by Danger Mouse but when EMI (owner of the Beatles catalog) ordered a cease-and-desist Downhill Battle took over saying that it needed to be heard. The real issue I think is that the artist to the original works were never asked or informed of the making of the Grey Album. When it comes down to the civil disobedience aspect I understand why they believed it should have been able to be downloaded. I understand it because I too have had an experience in relation to copyright. There are very strict guidelines in how much of someones music you can use inside of another piece of music or even inside of a book. I learned that the hard way when my book went under content evaluation it was sent back because of copyright infringement it wasn't until a month later that I found out I couldn't use more than three lines of the lyrics in my book from an artist, because of the issue I had to reach out to writer of the music and ask for permission. I waited another moth and was ultimately denied usage of the entire song. So I chose a new song by a new artist and asked before I wrote it in and received permission. The artist agreed it was good publicity for both me and her.
   
   This is a common issue when it comes to copyright and in relation to Grey Tuesday it is understandable to want music that had been created using bits of other artists works but in any situation permission is required and it should be. I would be upset if someone were trying to do it regarding excerpts from my book so I understand it from an artist’s perspective.