Music biz sues Robertson again [printer-friendly] | The Register
MP3.com founder Michael Robertson is on the receiving end of another lawsuit - from EMI - this time against his MP3tunes.com and Sideload.com services.
Robertson told Reuters it was retaliation for a suit his Sideload.com service had filed against EMI in September.
The legality of Sideload.com is more dubious. This additional service the music stored in MP3Tunes' "lockers" and allows subscribers to grab a copy and drop them into their own locker. Sideload ducks the copyright issue.
"It's possible some of the tracks may be unauthorised," Robertson told a local paper when the service launched. "But the difference between Sideload and [the original] Napster is that we're simply a search engine; we're no different than Google."
As with any technology, what's "illegal" today could simply be viewed as "not licensed... yet".
It's seven years since Robertson's MP3.com paid over $200m in damages for operating a similar service. A judge ruled that MyMP3.com breached mechanical copyright by allowing users to upload legitimately-acquired CDs and stream them over the internet. Robertson later sold MP3.com to Universal Music for over $370m.
But with almost half of all BitTorrent transfers now encrypted, and impossible to track - you might think the music business would see services such as Sideload.com as a revenue opportunity.
After all, you can't count something you can't see (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/09/demonoid_cria/). ®
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