EMI wants millions and your IP address

Found on Boing Boing on Friday, 08 September 2006
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The producer of a mashup album that combined the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band has been threatened with a multi-million-dollar lawsuit by EMI, the Beatles' music publisher. EMI has also demanded that he turn over the IP addresses of the hundreds of thousands of people who downloaded the mash-ups, presumably so that EMI can sue all of us, too.

This follows a pattern set by EMI of indiscriminate censorship of people who do to the Beatles what the Beatles did to the artists who inspired them. First EMI tried to crush DJ Danger Mouse's incredible "Grey Album" (the White Album plus Jay-Z's Black Album), then they took down djBC's Beastles (The Beatles plus the Beastie Boys) and now they're coming after The Beachles.

Pretty much the only thing to do is boycott the labels; but they still will turn that around and blame P2P for decreasing sales. Even with a sledgehammer, you couldn't beat into their heads that people are just sick of their business model. To the stoneheads running a stoneage business: here comes evolution. You can fight it, but you can't stop your extinction. Darwin's right.