The White Album is arguably the best Beatles album ever. Jay-Z’s supposed final venture is The Black Album, which contains the heavily played “Change clothes”, and anyone who’s seen the video is sure to have entertained thoughts about using his mystical pimp hand on da supermodel ho’s.

Enter DJ Dangermouse: A renowned remix artist, came up with the brilliant idea of remixing the Beatles with Jay-Z to release the The Grey Album. I’ve listened to a couple of them and they are pretty interesting. EMI, which owns the rights to the White Album, sent a cease-and-desist to DJ Dangermouse since it infringed on their copyrights. Websites started offering pirate downloads and copies began to be found on-where else- Kazaa. The incident snowballed, with several sites protesting EMI’s tactics by greying their front pages.

Hence, Grey Tuesday was today.

I don’t use Kazaa, primarily because I don’t own a computer that I can use to burn my own CDs. Most CDs that I have are original. I purchased an original Radiohead on my trip to India. Not surprisingly, the CD provided “Anti piracy measures” which means I have to install a special player on every computer I want to play the CD on. As a result, I can’t play the CD on any of my college PCs. Nice going there, morons!

I believe that musicians should get their due for the music they create. (Of course, I’ve burnt a few CDs along the way but they were peer-to-peer in the true sense of the word. “Hey pal, could you burn me a copy of the CD you lent me??”). EMI and the RIAA have managed to turn IP protection into a farce. Hopefully, Itunes and Napster which offer per-song downloads for a fee, will help to prevent a total piracy drive by frustrated and penniless Kazaa users.