Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Lawsuit
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Schneiderman, D. (2006). Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Lawsuit: William S. Burroughs, DJ Danger Mouse, and the Politics of “Grey Tuesday”. Plagiary: Cross‐Disciplinary Studies in Plagiarism, Fabrica‐ tion, and Falsification, 191‐206. Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Lawsuit: William S. Burroughs, DJ Danger Mouse, and the Politics of “Grey Tuesday” Davis Schneiderman E‐mail: [email protected] Abstract persona is replaced by a collaborative ethic that On February 24, 2004, approximately 170 Web makes the audience complicit in the success of the sites hosted a controversial download of DJ Danger “illegal” endeavor. Mouse’s The Grey Album, a “mash” record com- posed of The Beatles’s The White Album and Jay-Z’s The Black Album. Many of the participating Web sites received “cease and desist” letters from EMI Mash-Ups: A Project for Disastrous Success (The Beatles’s record company), yet the so-called “Grey Tuesday” protest resulted in over 100,000 If the 2005 Grammy Awards broadcast was the downloads of the record. While mash tunes are a moment that cacophonous pop‐music “mash‐ relatively recent phenomenon, the issues of owner- ups” were first introduced to grandma in Peoria, ship and aesthetic production raised by “Grey Tues- day” are as old as the notion of the literary “author” the strategy’s commercial(ized) pinnacle may as an autonomous entity, and are complicated by have been the November 2004 CD/DVD release deliberate literary plagiarisms and copyright in- by rapper Jay‐Z and rockers Linkin Park, titled, fringements. This paper examines the idea of delib- appropriately, Collision Course. This record capi‐ erate pastiche as it appears in William S. talized on the latest iteration of a long‐standing Burroughs’s work, particularly in the collaborative tradition of mixing, sampling, and collage prac‐ manifesto The Third Mind (1964/5)—a work that ticed by DJs, producers, and musicians for the merges discussion of plagiarist production with pla- last decades, called, in a current form: “mash‐ giarist manifestations. Burroughs’s infamous “cut- up” method, writes Gérard-Georges Lemaire in the ups.” There are numerous sampling antecedents same text, “disconnects the concept of reality that for the mash‐up practice, which often combines a has been imposed upon us and then … eventually cappella vocals from one song with the instru‐ escapes from the control of its manipulator” (17). mentals track from a second—in everything from Burroughs theorized copyright infringement as more the “break‐in” practices of “The Flying Saucer” than mere entertainment or artistic one-upsmanship; single (1956, Bill Buchanan and Dickie Goodman) he considered cut-ups as creative production that to the micro‐sampling (“pluderphonics”) of John would force the dominant system to address funda- Oswald’s Plexure (1993) to the social commentary mental issues of inequity by breaking the intention of the work from its popular effect. It is no surprise that of audio‐collectives such as Negativland and The Burroughs’s similarly produced audio experiments Tape‐Beatles. The current barrage of mash‐up have been cited as precedents to the current cut- tracks (inaugurated in this a capella/instrument and-mix sound culture. The are many cogent con- track form, supposedly, by the Evolution Control nections between Burroughs’s work and the DJ Dan- Committee’s mid‐1990s Public Enemy/Herb Al‐ ger Mouse-inspired “Grey Tuesday”: 1) In the delib- bert mash: “Rebel without a Pause [Whipped erate infringement of previously copyrighted works, Cream mix”]), began its current ascent to popu‐ each artist actualizes an assault on ownership stan- larity around 2000 as “bootleg” and/or “Bastard/ dards, 2) these works accordingly assume new po- litical meanings beyond the control of their bastard‐pop” in London’s West End (Howard‐ 1 “originators,” and 3) this elision of the “authorial” Spink). Four years later, signaling the inevitable 191 Plagiary 2006 commodification of an underground practice, the and we can add, the major record companies— Collision Course EP debuted at #1, selling more “there simply is no such thing as fair use….It’s… than 368,000 copies in its first week; the music suicide to ask those type of multinationals for press offered such banal insights as, “[i]n true permission” (qtd. in Orlans 143). As Fair Use al‐ mash‐up spirit, the union of the artists’ styles is lows for the limited use of protected works via a greater than the sum of their musical set four factors that, when applied favorably, parts” (“Review: Jay‐Z/Linkin Park’s…’). provide exceptions to copyright law, it is no sur‐ prise that its interpretation remains subject to One wonders if Collision Course would have significant debate. Corporate interests repeatedly been possible without Jay‐Z’s earlier passive press ownership claims in order to restrict Fair foray into a sub‐genre of mash‐ups—the merger Use by sampling artists, claiming with increasing of vocal tracks from his chart‐topping The Black frequency that intellectual property violations Album with non‐contiguous musical samples occur whenever a cultural property is used in an from The Beatles’s 1968 record, The Beatles, better artwork, regardless of the often non‐derivative, known as eTh White Album. The resulting mix‐ or transformative context (which can in part favor ture, the DJ Danger Mouse‐assembled The Grey a claim of Fair Use).2 Unfortunately, corporate Album, gained its fame during the appropriately interests have been so successful in defending titled “Grey Tuesday” protest organized by the “cultural property,” that most people remain non‐profit music activist website Downhillbat‐ unaware of the exact laws regarding copyright— tle.org on February 24, 2004. Over 170 other web‐ assuming too often that all cultural products are sites offered the twelve tracks for download, and “naturally” owned by private interests. The ram‐ many others turned grey in solidarity. A widely pant expansion of “Authorship” to cover new circulated “cease and desist” letter from Capital/ categories of intellectual property has no doubt EMI sought to elevate the purported “copyright contributed to this assumption (see Coombe 52‐ infringement” of The Beatles music catalog to a 55), and an investigation of the case of The Grey matter of universal concern: “Distribution of The Album followed by a discussion of William Grey Album constitutes a serious violation of Burroughs and Brion Gysin’s cut‐up text The Capitol’s rights in the Capitol Recordings—as Third Mind will dramatize this point toward a well as the valuable intellectual property rights potentially contrarian praxis based upon user of other artists, music publishers, and/or record interaction with protected works. companies—and will subject you to serious legal remedies for willful violation of the In the case of the “Grey Tuesday” protest, laws” (Rantings and Ravings 3.0). This rhetoric Downhill Battle’s defense is to claim that Fair suggests that even Danger Mouse appreciates the Use must be exercised, even under legal threat, in gravity of his copyright violation (“I just sent out order to maintain and hopefully expand the stat‐ a few tracks [and] now online stores are selling it ute’s unsettled interpretations. Despite the im‐ and people are downloading it all over the portance of this strategy, a telling problem with place” [qtd. in Ranting and Ravings 3.0]). EMI’s claims seems toe hav become obscured in the rhetorical uproar of the cease and desist let‐ Neither the tone nor demands of the letter ter. The Electronic Freedom Foundation, a nexus should surprise in a climate where the “Fair Use” for intellectual property revision, notes that there doctrine, codified in the Copyright Act of 1976, is is “no federal copyright protection for sound re‐ regularly underutilized, where copyright protec‐ cordings made before 1972,” making the claim tion functions too often as a defense of corporate that EMI “owns” the 1968 Beatles’s recordings property, and where, as one critic notes, “[t]o the (“Capitol’s rights in the Capitol Recordings”) — Disney Corporation and major film studios”— at worst—a lie in the form of a threat, and—at 192 Something to Hide—Schneiderman best—a reference to the possibility that pre‐1972 of history, [quotations] could be brought back state laws might offer protection to the 1968 re‐ from the past and rearranged, without aexplan‐ cordings. Given the fact that EMI did not pursue tion, …so that their hidden correspondences legal action, we might conclude that the cease‐ would be revealed.” It is easy to imagine a simi‐ and‐desist letter was, in fact, a threat meant to larly‐produced “history” of copyright: None of curtail resistance to the perception of universal those words will be mine; they will be lifted from corporate ownership.3 a series of previously‐published articles, and at‐ tributed only at the end of the resulting text—in Even with Jay‐Z’s tacit approval, the apparent ille‐ imitation of a nineteenth‐century “cento” or gality of the event coupled with its publicity as or‐ “patchwork” poem (Saint‐Amour 40), which bor‐ ganized political action produced enough rows lines and even couplets from diverse but downloads for the record to achieve “gold” status “metrically identical source poems” (41).6 The (100,000 copies, although none were actually pur‐ Victorian version of these works, according to chased). The peer‐to‐peer distributed Grey Album Paul K. Saint‐Amour in his book The Copywrights: offered a potent combination: using the Internet to Intellectual Property and the Literary Imagination illegally download an apparently illegally produced (2003), are meant to serve as “the sum of its product, implicating the listener into an increasingly maker’s readerly acts or consumption, just as the common practice that conflates notions of aesthetic maker’s identity is at once constituted and pastiche with the ability to capture information.4 eclipsed by thoses act of reading” (42).