Intellectual Property and Purple Chick

As we're discussing intellectual property in this week's reading, the story of Purple Chick comes to mind. First, a little background: there's a lot of Beatles-related stories in the news lately, a lot of buzz going around about a new video game titled "Beatles Rock Band" that includes authentic Beatles music that's being released in a few weeks and coincides with the release of a remastered Beatles CD catalog on September ninth (9/9/09).

It took over 20 years for a remastered Beatles CD catalog to come about, however, and while a lot of people were waiting, a group of enthusiasts got together and home-brewed remixes of the Beatles catalog as well as other pop music pet-projects of theirs, and made the recordings available in down-loadable mp3 format. As a community, they call themselves Purple Chick and they've taken pop music releases as well as out-takes, remixed them, and made them available on line for free. The informational files that accompany these sets state that these recordings are free and legal.

Besides making an enhanced complete Beatles catalog available for free, in 2005 they assembled a version of an uncompleted Beach Boys 1967 album, Smile, that has been long been considered the holy grail of rock and roll. They have also made an enhanced Buddy Holly music catalog available on-line for free.

In terms of intellectual property, it's pretty amazing that these enthusiasts can claim that their remixed material is original and offer it for free over the internet under the auspices of Purple Chick. A number of blogs have written about Purple Chick's accomplishments -- or exploits -- over the last few years. Here are two.


http://licorice-pizza.blogspot.com/2008/07/with-purple-chick-beatles.html

http://linear-zap-music.blogspot.com/2007/06/purple-chick-smile-mix.html