Daniel Tiger is grey today because I believe that it is fair-use for an artist to build on work from the past. We used to have a culture in this country of using the past to build the future, a culture that has scared big business since the beginning and is increasingly being legally attacked. We must fight against this.

Late last year an artist named DJ Danger Mouse created an album, using the A Capella version of Jay-Z’s The Black Album, and samples taken from The Beatles’ White Album, and made a new piece of work called The Grey Album. The project has been fairly widely praised, and, from personal experience, it’s fucking great. EMI, who own the copyright to the Beatles original recordings (Michael Jackson owns the actual publishing rights), sent a cease-and-desist letter to Danger Mouse claiming that he was infringing on their intellectual property and demanding that he stop all distribution of the album. A few sites posted MP3’s of the album and were sent letters from EMI as well.

In response, music activist group Downhill Battle, have organized Grey Tuesday, a day where various sites will either host the album in its entirety or turn grey in support, or both. Daniel Tiger can’t afford to host the files directly, but you can find any number of sites that are.

For more on my take on fair-use and copyright laws check out this presentation given by Lawrence Lessig, who was one of the lawyers as part of the Eldred v. Ashcroft case against the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act.