We've been following downhillbattle.org for a while now, and their sponsoring of the Grey Tuesday effort since last week sometime. (go read some stuff at both of those links if you have no idea what any of this is about)

Today, in response to a preemptive cease and desist letter from EMI's lawyers, the founders of Downhill Battle had this to say:

Despite your letter, Downhill Battle will be posting the Grey Album on our website tomorrow. Your efforts to suppress this music stifle creativity and harm the public interest; we will not be intimidated into backing down. Downhill Battle has a fair-use right to post this music under current copyright law and the public has a fair-use right to hear it. Opposing EMI's censorship campaign is precisely the purpose of Tuesday's protest and we won't waiver from that goal.

...

Our posting of the Grey Album on Downhill Battle is a political act with no commercial interest and fits well within fair use rights. Lawyers have advised us that we can ignore your demands number 2, 3, and 4 that are listed at the bottom of your letter. EMI has no legal right to make these demands and we will not comply with them. Furthermore, if EMI attempts to disrupt our protest by sending takedown letters to participating websites, ISPs of participating websites, or any upstream ISPs, we will file a counter-suit against you. We consider any attempts to stifle this protest to be an abuse under section 512F of the DMCA.

Incase you're missing the point here... it's not so much about filesharing, or copyright, or stifled creativity because some DJ can't legally sample a beat. It's about living in an America where corporations, in effect, and in a very real way, make the laws and set the policy that was once supposed to regulate them.

Copyright debate, filesharing issues, and DMCA protests are simply high-profile indicators of this growing larger problem of a government existing in a symbiotic relationship with corporations, instead of its citizens.