Continuing with my kick of discussing independent music activism, I explored one branch of Negativland's homepage dedicated to intellectual property issues. There, you can find all sorts of legal and informational links relating to copyright and trademark law.

If you haven't heard of Negativland's colossal debacle in the late 1980s, read on: [from Foetusized.org].

[The above Negativland disc] was released in August, 1991. Two weeks after the release, on 5 September 1991, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order on behalf of Island Records and Warner/Chappell Music (the label and publishers of the band U2) against SST Records and Negativland to stop sales of the disc. The recording has two versions of a cover of U2's song "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," including an unauthorized sample of the original recording by U2. It was also alleged that the artwork was confusing; that consumers would mistake it for a copy of a U2 recording. The members of the band U2 were not a party to the lawsuit and restraining order, and did not learn about it until after the fact.

The lawsuit resulted in an out-of-court settlement in November, in which the remaining unsold copies, master recordings and mechanical parts for creating more copies were to be destroyed by Island, and the copyrights for the recordings were transfered to Warner/Chappell. According to an accounting at the time, before the court order 6951 copies of U2 had been sold (it has been estimated that about 5300 of these were compact discs, the balance were cassette tapes and 12" vinyl) and 692 promotional copies had been distributed (probably all 12" vinyl). Other than some illegal (and not high-quality) counterfeit copies (CD and 7" vinyl), these remain the only copies of this recording available.

To try to cut a long story down to a manageable length (this is probably the best documented case of its type, due to the band's policy of making the whole process as public as possible), Negativland was later sued by their label SST (regarding who was going to pay the costs of the first case, as well as the band's publishing a book The Letter U and the Number 2 which included documents critical of their label). Negativland was eventually able to get permission from all the original parties involved to allow them to rerelease the recording. However, Casey Kasem (the disc jockey) has refused to let the court injunction be lifted, as the recording includes out-takes from his American Top 40 show in which he curses up a blue streak. The band was able to publish a second version of their book (with information about the second suit) now titled Fair Use: The Story of The Letter U and the Number 2, which includes many source documents, press clippings and legal opinions about this case as well as copyright law in general.

So, a few years following this barrage of legal action, Negativland engaged in a bit of surprise revenge: "In June of 1992 U2's publicist in L.A. contacted Mondo 2000 magazine on behalf of the group's guitarist, The Edge, with the idea of doing a rare interview concerning the group's Zoo TV tour and its use of technology. Mondo editor R. U. Serius then, without The Edge's knowledge, contacted Don Joyce and Mark Hosler of Negativland with an invitation to participate in the interview. On June 25th Negativland joined R. U. Serius to await the following call from The Edge in Dublin."