Casualties of Copyright

The Grey Album

The Grey Album is a mashup album by Danger Mouse, released in 2004. It uses an a cappella version of rapper Jay-Z's The Black Album and couples it with instrumentals created from a multitude of unauthorized samples from The Beatles' LP The Beatles (more commonly known as The White Album). The Grey Album gained notoriety due to the response by EMI in attempting to halt its distribution, despite the fact that both Jay-Z and Paul McCartney said they felt fine with the project.

The album quickly became popular and well-distributed over the Internet because of the surrounding publicity. It also came to the attention of the critical establishment; it received a very positive write-up in the February 9, 2004 issue of The New Yorker and was named the best album of 2004 by Entertainment Weekly. The Village Voice's annual Pazz and Jop critics poll ranked the album 10th for 2004.

Catcher in the Rye Sequel

A US Disctict court banned an unauthorized sequel to the classic book. The pseudonymous author used only the characters from the original book, without even naming them. Similarities between how the characters act was held to be copyright infringement, even though no actual expression from the original book was included.

Obama Hope Poster

The origins of Shepard Fairey's iconic portrait of President Obama weren't uncovered for months. When the Associated Press were informed a photograph they owned was the inspiration, they threatened to sue Fairey, despite how transofrmative the poster was, and how uncreative the original photograph was.

Sampling in Hip-Hop and Electronic Music