In recent weeks I have noticed Girl Talk's Feed the Animals at a number of download stores. His albums may or may not violate copyright law, depending on who you ask, and availability has been an issue. I don't recall seeing such good sales from an album with such dubious legal standing. Normally albums in dispute are either low-grade recordings or too far out of the public eye to merit attention. Are retailers loosening up?

It was an issue of distribution, the label told me today, and not an issue with retail. iTunes has been the one online retailer that has refused to carry Girl Talk releases. Now, Illegal Art is working with different distributors and has better availability on online retail. (According to the album pages at eMusic, Illegal Art is using TuneCore for Girl Talk's last two releases.) Physical distribution is a different matter. His CD lost distribution in July, the same time, according to the NY Times, iTunes stopped carrying his album Night Rippers.

Feed the Animals, an album of questionable legality due to its uncleared samples, is being sold at Amazon.com MP3 (currently ranked #58 ), eMusic (the #15 album this week), Napster and Lala.com (currently ranked #89, though that is a measure of total plays, not just purchases). Rhapsody carried three Girl Talk releases but not Feed the Animals.

The album debuted at the Illegal Art website as a pay-what-you-want download. It is still available -- for free if you desire to pay nothing -- at the label's site while it sells well elsewhere.

Why the gray area? Sampling another song without clearance is normally grounds for a lawsuit (if the song makes it through a label's safety net). In the case of Feed the Animals, the number of potential plaintiffs is huge. But each sample is brief. Few run over 30 seconds, and many last just a second or two. (To see which samples are used in the songs, follow along at the album's Wikipedia page.) Label and artist insist the album is protected by the fair use doctrine. Many experts have said it would fail in court. While it may be technically illegal, any label or publisher that takes the label to court risks an unfavorable outcome and, thus, a game-changing precedent. In addition, Illegal Art and Girl Talk are not exactly asset-rich legal targets.

The label admits to keeping a low profile in spite of the considerable press attention. "We're not even pushing it as hard as we might," Illegal Art founder Philo T. Farnsworth told the Pittsburgh City Paper.

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