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" By the time you read this, Google will have probably nixed a member&amp;#039;s Gmail account, thereby ending a remarkably clever experiment in sharing music. On June 28th, someone anonymously created an account called songmashups@gmail.com, e-mailed 31 songs to the account, then sent the password (songs07) to some friends. A week later, this no-longer-well-kept-secret found its way into my inbox.  Since then, I&amp;#039;ve downloaded all 31 tracks, including a mashup of Kanye West&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;Gold Digger&amp;quot; with the disco version of Beethoven&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;Fifth Symphony.&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;ve got a rambunctious mix of White Stripes, Jay-Z, and Queen, and an epic pairing of Marvin Gaye and Oasis called &amp;quot;Sexual Wonderwall&amp;quot; that sounds so perfect together, it&amp;#039;s amazing no one&amp;#039;s thought of it before. Clearly, these songs deserve their own e-mail address. But is it illegal? Not necessarily, according to Georgia Harper, an intellectual property scholar with the University of Texas. Using Gmail to distribute music exists in that murky gray area between blatant copyright infringement and fair use, a chronic issue that courts are only now struggling to sort out. In Harper&amp;#039;s view, sharing a CD with her husband constitutes fair use but opening up a treasure trove of material to the general public? That&amp;#039;s less clear. The DJ&amp;#039;s whose mashups have found their way into the songmashups account don&amp;#039;t seem to have a problem -- and they don&amp;#039;t think their Frankensongs are copyright infringement either. DJ Bobby Martini, whose &amp;quot;Switch Up the Pieces&amp;quot; blends Average White Band and Will Smith, says he&amp;#039;s promoting others&amp;#039; work rather than stealing intellectual property. &amp;quot;I have had many e-mails from people saying thanks for introducing them to acts they hadn&amp;#039;t heard before,&amp;quot; he claims. Plus, he doesn&amp;#039;t get a dime from it -- bootlegs are entirely free.  But a quick check of Google&amp;#039;s user agreement shows why they&amp;#039;re still likely to shut down songmashups&amp;#039; account, if they haven&amp;#039;t already: You shall not, shall not agree to, and shall not authorize or encourage any third party to: (i) use the Service to upload, transmit or otherwise distribute any content that is unlawful, defamatory, harassing, abusive, fraudulent, obscene, contains viruses, or is otherwise objectionable as reasonably determined by Google; (ii) upload, transmit or otherwise distribute content that infringes upon another party&amp;#039;s intellectual property rights or other proprietary, contractual or fiduciary rights or obligations; (iii) prevent others from using the Service; (iv) use the Service for any fraudulent or inappropriate purpose; or (v) act in any way that violates the Program Policies, as may be revised from time to time. (The emphasis in bold is ours.) Neither the creator of songmashups@gmail.com nor Google was available for comment, but it&amp;#039;s clear that such guerilla file-sharing tactics could create other problems than mere copyright issues. Having thousands of files being downloaded through Gmail could slow down the servers and result in poor user experience. In 2005, Google shelved a file-sharing program called G2G because it violated their policies. Still, sharing MP3s through Gmail seems pretty genius. It&amp;#039;s protected by privacy laws, so the only way to get caught is if a reader snitches -- or a Website like this publicizes it. Whoops. My bad. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/a3135/songmashups070907/>