MP3.com Sued for 'viral' Copyright Infringement?

Are We Afraid writes "Apparently the RIAA isn't the only one looking to make money off of MP3.com. They have just been sued by a group of independent artists for, get this, "viral copyright infringement". What does that even mean???" They claim that people who downloaded MP3s from mp3.com contributed them to napster, so MP3.com owes them. It's really bizarre.

Comments

independent artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody listens to them any way.

Easy to prove

[Spazmania]

Should be easy enough to prove. No two encoders produce exactly the same output, even before you look at things like bit rate. Even with the same encoder, the internal tags and the filename would not be chosen the same. If an infringing copy downloaded via Napster matches bit-for-bit with the copy in mp3.com's vast library then it most likely originated from mp3.com.

Conversely, if the copy from napster isn't a perfect match then it almost certainly didn't originate from mp3.com.

'Course, if they file in California, they might win even without proving genunine matches. Those California judges are weird that way.

Don't forget God

[racerx509]

Don't forget God. Without him, none of this would be possible. He created man, who created the Internet, who created MP3.com and Napster which facilitated all this piracy.