Phat Tuesday: This year, it's Grey Tuesday, a day of protest for copyright reform in the music industry organized online by the music activism project, Downhill Battle. The impetus for this day of protest is set out on the Grey Tuesday website. Here's what they want you to know:

DJ Danger Mouse created a remix of Jay-Z's the Black Album and the Beatles White Album, and called it the Grey Album. Jay-Z's record label, Roc-A-Fella, released an a capella version of his Black Album specifically to encourage remixes like this one. But despite praise from music fans and major media outlets like Rolling Stone ("an ingenious hip-hop record that sounds oddly ahead of its time") and the Boston Globe (which called it the "most creatively captivating" album of the year), EMI has sent cease and desist letters demanding that stores destroy their copies of the album and websites remove them from their site. EMI claims copyright control of the Beatles 1968 White Album.

Danger Mouse’s album is one of the most "respectful" and undeniably positive examples of sampling; it honors both the Beatles and Jay-Z. Yet the lawyers and bureaucrats at EMI have shown zero flexibility and not a glimmer of interest in the artistic significance of this work. And without a clearly defined right to sample (e.g. compulsory licensing), the five major record labels will continue to use copyright in a reactionary and narrowly self-interested manner that limits and erodes creativity. Their actions are also self-defeating: good new music is being created that people want to buy, but the major labels are so obsessed with hoarding their copyrights that they are literally turning customers away.

If you want to listen to this music, go to any of the websites that are hosting the DJ Danger Mouse Grey Album in protest on February 24, 2004. If you want to follow the legal battle, you can check out Tech Law Advisor, which is following the controversy and commenting from a legal perspective.

Evan Schaeffer is an attorney whose blawg, Notes from the (Legal) Underground, asks the question, "Can lawyers be entertaining?" Evan gives us pretty good evidence that the answer to that question is "fo' shizzle" with a creative post that offers "More Remix Ideas for DJ Danger Mouse" using a formula: a rock album, plus a rap album, suggesting a remix concept alluding to the copyright brouhaha.

Rush’s All the World’s a Stage +
Black Moon’s Enta Da Stage =
Danger Mouse’s I'm at Center Stage

Talking Heads' More Songs About Buildings and Food +
Snoop Dogg’s Dogg Food =
Danger Mouse's The Building Feud

America's Human Nature +
Naughty by Nature's Naughty by Nature =
Danger Mouse's My Naughty Human Nature

Kid Rock’s Devil Without a Cause +
Paris’s The Devil Made Me Do It =
Danger Mouse’s I Did it Just Because

Rolling Stones' Steel Wheels +
Grandmaster Flash’s Adventures on the Wheels of Steel =
Danger Mouse’s We All Steal

Supertramp’s Breakfast in America +
Schoolly D’s Welcome to America =
Danger Mouse’s Welcome to a Lawsuit in America

This wordplay is such a good example of the kind of creative thinking we all enjoy at Wordlab that we asked for Evan's permission to sample his blawg for our Wordlab post on Grey Tuesday. Perhaps we didn't have to ask for permission, but we thought it was the right thing to do.