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Musicians Protest Use Of Songs By US Jailers 210

The guy who wrote the Barney "I love you" song, and other musicians are banding together to protest the US military using their songs as weapons. The campaign has brought together groups including Massive Attack and musicians such as Tom Morello, who played with Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave. It will feature minutes of silence during concerts and festivals, said Chloe Davies of the British law group Reprieve, which represents dozens of Guantanamo Bay detainees and is organizing the campaign.

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Musicians Protest Use Of Songs By US Jailers

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  • by Moryath ( 553296 ) on Wednesday December 10, 2008 @07:03PM (#26067373)

    I've been tortured by morons blasting their music in my apartment complex and out of cars with overly shaky bass systems constantly. I hereby protest these so-called "artists" and their crappy music.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      It has been a while since I've heard anyone thumping to Barney
    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Playing music loudly out of your house eh? Where might I hear this public performance?

      -- RIAA

    • by cjb658 ( 1235986 )

      Maybe you could sue them for copyright infringement.

    • I've been tortured by morons blasting their music in my apartment complex and out of cars with overly shaky bass systems constantly. I hereby protest...

      Apparently, you and Tommy Hilfiger. Tommy Hilfiger protested that gangsters and hoodlums wore his gear. His protest created a real shit storm, now all the gangsters and gangsters-wanna-be buy his stuff and wear his gear just to try to piss him off even more.

  • by 77Punker ( 673758 ) <spencr04@highpoint . e du> on Wednesday December 10, 2008 @07:13PM (#26067455)

    Instead of spending effort tormenting the detainees so that they hate us even more, it seems the time could be better spent re-educating them into lovers of America. We've currently got no reason to keep them there, so at least we could find something remotely constructive to do while this is going on. Then again, our entire prison system is based on locking people away for arbitrary (and long!) amounts of time rather than actually doing anything with those people.

    • ...I'm sure the contractors supporting Gitmo are making bank.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by tuxgeek ( 872962 )

        ...I'm sure the contractors supporting Gitmo are making bank.

        Don't forget about Dick Cheney. He's also an investor in privately run federal prisons. He's probably making out like a bandit over gitmo.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Fluffeh ( 1273756 )
      I don't see any reason for the post above to be modded "Troll". You can't just call someone a troll because you disagree with them.

      Side note: Re-educating them into lovers of America? LOL! Why not just leave them be and send them home to their families. They would probably appreciate that more than any re-education program about how good America is. Not to be rude to American's, but it's just not all about you all the time :)
      • I wasn't being entirely serious there, but it's a better idea than blasting shitty music at them. The point of the post was that any idea is a better idea than what they're doing now.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        There is a subset of the prisoner population which either doesn't want to return to their coutry of orgin because they believe they will be tortured or that we do not want to send to their country of orgin because those governments will not guarantee they will not be tortured.

        If no other country will take these people, then what do you do with them?

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by N1AK ( 864906 )
          Perhaps you should of thought of that before you locked them up for 6+ years without trial...

          Bluntly, if you can't prove their guilt and can't deport them, then let them stay in your country.
          • Let alone free citizenship. Now POWs not only get trials, they get greencards!

            Funny how new rules apply to America that no country has ever extended to POWs.
      • by Quila ( 201335 )

        Why not just leave them be and send them home to their families.

        Or more likely, as has happened, send them home so they can start engaging in more terrorist activities.

        It has to be one or the other with people like this. Either convince them to stop hating non-Muslims and the freedoms of the West, or kill them/lock them away forever. I don't see any in between.

        • Wouldn't locking them up and blasting them with music that is familiar to us, but is used

          "to create fear, disorient ... and prolong capture shock." - Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, (then the) U.S. military commander in Iraq

          give them a reason to hate us?

    • "I love you. You love me and we're a happy family ..."

  • I LOVE YOU! (Score:3, Funny)

    by arizwebfoot ( 1228544 ) * on Wednesday December 10, 2008 @07:19PM (#26067505)
    I'd go insane if I had to list to the Barney song 15 times an hour 24/7 too!
    • I read the partial list of songs, my first reaction was, "what? these are some good tunes, kind of old, but good"; maybe someone like Sony BMG will cut a CD of the songs for the rest of us? But my concern is that the Constitution says no Cruel, or Unusual Punishments. I also think that Bush may have to come up with some coin for the Musicians because how the music was used was via Broadcasting, and if a Bar did this they'd have a great business, but they'd would have to pay some fines. And I didn't read

  • Torture (Score:5, Funny)

    by Jason Earl ( 1894 ) on Wednesday December 10, 2008 @07:20PM (#26067517) Homepage Journal

    I'm fine with waterboarding inmates as long as no one is actually drowned. I draw the line at Barney's "I Love You" song, though. Subjecting humans to that song is simply too uncivilized.

  • by antifoidulus ( 807088 ) on Wednesday December 10, 2008 @07:36PM (#26067691) Homepage Journal
    people, don't play rock music, some of it is quite good. If you really want people to admit to anything, just pipe in the music from any mall this time of year. That many Christmas Carols will drive even the most hardened of souls to tears.
  • I feel like an important part of art -- especially music -- is to have some control over its use at sanctioned events/places. Think of your favorite song/artist. If GW Bush wanted to use that song as his campaign song, wouldn't you feel as though the artist were somehow endorsing that campaign? Or if BMW decided to use the song in one of their car ads, isn't the song endorsing their product?

    In the same way the above are pay-for-play, the artist has to explicitly give up the right for his/her work to be u

    • "Think of your favorite song/artist. If GW Bush wanted to use that song as his campaign song, wouldn't you feel as though the artist were somehow endorsing that campaign?"

      I totally agree. When I first read about Charles Manson, my very first thought was: "How could the Beatles be endorsing that psycho?"

    • The thing is, you can by the rights for public perfomances of these songs from third parties, which is very frequently what happens.

      The Foo Fighters were just complaining about the use of Hero by some Republican, they've got no leg to stand on though, their recording label licensed the music to some party throwing services with rights to be played, and as long as the royalties are paid the song gets played.

      That said, I don't think using a song for background music means the artists supports what's goi
  • Like all those crappy Barney songs, they just added a few trivial lyrics to a PD song ("This Old Man" in this case).

    They also used "Yankee Doodle" and others. One of the reason I used to detest Barney; Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers Neighborhood used real original songs.

  • by HTH NE1 ( 675604 ) on Wednesday December 10, 2008 @07:55PM (#26067917)

    [blast of loud Van Halen music]

    Silence, Earthling! My name is Darth Vader. I am an extraterrestrial from the planet Vulcan!

  • So... musicians whose songs have been determined by the armed forces to be military-grade weapons are going to protest. And they're going to protest with silence.

    What's to complain about?

  • hmm.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by zxnos ( 813588 ) <zxnoss@gmail.com> on Wednesday December 10, 2008 @10:32PM (#26069579)

    ..maybe they should quit bitching and write better music. :)

  • Correction:

    ... Tom Morello, who plays [wikipedia.org] with Rage Against the Machine ...

    Hmm.. what's with the the idle section and the quote tags?

    • I'm voting for played.

      He just announced Monday that there's absolutely 0 chance that there will ever be new RATM material so that he can focus on his side project The Nightwatchmen.
  • If I am not mistaken, ordinary phonographic records can only legally be played in private settings, while records for public performance (like radio, malls, etc) need special versions & licences.

    The use at Gitmo doesn't sound like "private performances" and sounds much more like "public performances" in the sense they are being done to further the organizations' goals, and not for private appreciation.

    The artists involved may well have a copyright violation suit to press. Unlike patents, I do not bel

  • Given how Metalica is held in such high esteem in these parts I thought it should be pointed out that Metallica, number one on the Gitmo playlist with Enter Sandman, liked the idea. They thought it was cool their music was scary and were happy to help ... uh ... protect the ... can't remember but they were happy.

  • The "I Love You" song? Pffff...that's kids stuff! If they really wanted to torture, they'd play the song that never ends. It goes on and on, my friends....

  • Great lawsuit. Because shooting them or spending billions of dollars on some other non-lethal option (which will still probably turn out to be very painful or potentially lethal) is so much better than just playing some music.

    If they win, I can't wait to hear the press conference... "We had the building surrounded but had no non-lethal options available to effect the hostage rescue, so we just went in and shot everyone."

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