Unamed Author "Grey Tuesday" Tech Law Advisor February 14, 2004 - March 5, 2004

This piece highlights the battle between DJ Danger Mouse and EMI Records for the creation of The Grey Album, a musical work that samples both Jay-Z's The Black Album and The Beatles' The White Album. Capital Records, owners of The Beatles' works issued a statement before the album was released warning DJ Danger Mouse of his copyright infringement of their songs. Even though he had not officially released it, the album had time to circulate. Danger Mouse did not receive the proper permission from Capital Records and agreed to stop distribution of the album, but it had already leaked to too many sources. This caused an infamous day as the hip hop community rebelled against copyright law itself on "Grey Tuesday", where many sites would allow the album to be downloaded and distributed in order to "force reforms to copyright law that can make sampling legal."

This is a notable event because on top of it being a public outcry against copyright law and favoring hip hop sampling, it also provides a scenario where the one that created the infringing product agrees to stop his actions, but the public continues, thus making him liable for their actions. Danger Mouse was asked to identify everyone it had distributed the album to and account for all of units distributed, which is virtually impossible to do. The hip hop community clearly realizes that copyright law regarding sampling of music is hurting the art. Attacking a DJ that created an album which was clearly doing to be an underground project was the last straw. While most of the sources I have used make comments about how certain cases affect the rap industry itself, it is important to consider the fans responses to legislation. If the uproar is consistent and loud enough, then maybe a change will be made to the law.

Wu, Tim. "Jay-Z Versus the Sample Troll" Slate November 16, 2006

In order to show that sampling lawsuits in rap music still exist, this article condemns Bridgeport Music for suing Jay-Z over sampling some notes from a Madonna song. This article references many of the others I have because Bridgeport has become notorious for capitalizing on the fact that they go after anyone who samples from any of the songs they own no matter how minimal and insignificant the sampling is. In fact, "Bridgeport launched nearly 500 counts of copyright infringement against more than 800 artists and labels." Bridgeport is also going after dead artists like Notorious B.I.G. and was able to recently cash in on his album Ready to Die, which is over a decade old, due to the illegal sampling that was on it. This is a direct result of hip hop booming within the last decade, which is sad because they are able to capitalize off an industry norm. This article shows the depth to which Bridgeport Music has gone in order to obtain more money, and with this many cases, is instrumental in the possible demise of rap music.

This article also brings up an interesting point of view in that, up until now I have written about Bridgeport being a money-grubbing corporation, but it could also be construed that its doing older artists justice by giving them their due off from today's popular songs. Though they might get some recognition from the lawsuits, Bridgeport ultimately keeps all of the money, so older artists don't really receive what they should. It also brings up a good point in that, thanks to Bridgeport's case against Dimension, many popular albums of the past would not be able to be created today, such as Public Enemy's, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. This supports the theory that as copyright law regarding sample continues, more and more restrictions are placed on rap artists.