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MP3.com's Content to Be Destroyed

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the bit-bucket-in-the-sky dept.

WCityMike writes "Vivendi Universal recently sold the MP3.com domain to CNet. However, they're not selling the approximately one million songs on the archive. (recorded by over 250,000 artists) Instead, they're simply destroying it as of December 3. MP3.com's founder and former CEO, Michael Robertson, is pleading with Vivendi to allow the Internet Archive to preserve the songs."

5 of 354 comments (clear)

  1. wow... by ambienceman · · Score: 5, Interesting
    That's pretty messed up. What if the person put a lot of effort in using mp3.com to market their stuff? They also depended on the company to create their physical media, and those will be destroyed as well. I have friends who use it. They should at least give them the option to buy their own CDs back at the minimum price.

    It seems as if mergers and acqusitions always have some negative effect on the customer.

    Unfortunately, this is a major one. Shouldn't the government be able to step in? hmmmmmm afterthinking about it, it's probably best that they don't...

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    MY SECRET DIARIES
  2. destroying what? by nurb432 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Are they destroying just the copies they 'own' rights too, or are these the actual orginal songs + the only distribution rights, and the music will be lost forever?

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    ---- Booth was a patriot ----
  3. Conspiracy theory begin here: by icemax · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So, Vivendi, a music industry heavyweight, now owns indie music promoting mp3.com, sells it to a third party and destroys access to hundreds of thousands of independant artists. How does this not seem like a typical power-grab by the music industry??

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    __________
    Love conquers all... except CANCER
  4. Re:their property, their decision by pegr · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Everybody say it with me...

    "antitrust"

    While it's true, they should be able to do whatever they want to do with their property, this would make an excellent anti-trust suit. Not sure if the EFF would be the appropriate "David" to their "Goliath", tho. Any ideas?

  5. Music industry showing their hand by carcosa30 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It seems to me that this incident is a window into the true goals of the RIAA and the music industry.

    What they're trying to do here is attack a competing distribution chain. This is the whole reason they hate MP3s in the first place.

    MP3s represent a method for unknown artists and styles to reach popular recognition. This is a threat to the music industry, because if that were to happen, they would have to find acts that were actually good on their own merits as opposed to mediocre copycats and sexbomb divas who only sound good because of their multi-million dollar production jobs.

    I can't express my hatred for the executives and committees who make decisions like these behind closed doors and for obscure reasons.

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    Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.