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Capitol Records Flooded Internet With MP3s, Says MP3Tunes CEO
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In court papers filed in New York in Capitol Records v. MP3Tunes, the CEO of MP3Tunes, Michael Robertson, has accused the plaintiffs EMI, Capitol Records, and other EMI record labels of flooding the internet with free MP3s of their songs for promotional purposes, 'free to everyone (except, apparently, MP3tunes).' His 10-page declaration (PDF) provides exact details of specific song files, including the URLs from which they are being distributed free of charge, both by paid content distributors, and by EMI itself from its own web sites."
I am thinking that 2009 is going to be a very interesting year for the RIAA's legal team. Who hasn't heard/read about the latest foibles from the record companies and I'm willing to bet that this one won't be the last.
Monopolistic practices? Unfair trade practices? Come on now! The RIAA and it's members would NEVER do anything like that. How many here wonder how many tune/files were seeded to P2P networks by the RIAA members themselves never mind paid third parties so that their 'investigative' group could actually find file sharers? Can you say Enron? Yeah, I know it's not even close to the same thing, but I am betting it breaks open as big in the news and it's after affects when the real truth of what big record labels have been up to for the last 5 years.
Take what Sony did. There is an example of how unscrupulous they really are. Imagine the money that they have and they don't have employees that know it was not just morally bad, but illegal? Ignorance of the law is not acceptable in court.... unless you have several hundred million dollars to buy things for legislators holidays and such.
Like my great grandfather used to say... "The shit you see when you don't have a gun... damn"
He was of course talking about deer on the side of the road, which is close to road kill, and I hope that is what 2009 will label the RIAA, so it kind of fits.
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I'm an ex-MP3tunes employee. Michael Robertson is a scumbag. He's repeatedly fucked partners (we had a deal with Warner Music to sell physical CDs and provide the customer with MP3s instantly -- he decided to sell just the MP3s, so they got pissed off and shut us down the next day; driving away partners and shutting off legitimate business channels is a great way to fail), abused employees, etc. MP3tunes is down to 4 people from its height of 14, due to his complete and utter incompetence. Linspire is dead due to him stealing money (read Kevin Carmony's blog for all the dirty details, and there's far more that isn't there). SIPPhone is dying due to him not spending money on his companies and pocketing it instead.
As much as I support many of his efforts, he's a snake in the grass and everyone knows it now. There's not a single respectable company that's willing to come within a mile of him due to his previous actions, and this is his dying breath.
I can only hope this bankrupts him so he'll stop hurting people
P.S. When this lawsuit began, he posted on his blog about them trying to "take his minivan". He doesn't mention his massive ranch in San Diego, his Lexus (which cost about two of his (extremely underpaid) programmers' yearly salaries), or his $20M beach house in Del Mar. Fuck MR.
MP3Tunes wasn't even distributing the music.
All they were doing was providing links to where other entities (including, as it turns out, EMI) were distributing them.
They're saying "EMI told us to remove these links and said that they hadn't authorized any of this music to be downloaded, and look, here's where EMI was authorizing it..."
I think what you're missing is spelled out fairly effectively in the linked declaration. EMI sued MP3Tunes not for redistributing their IP, but for linking to locations that did. More specifically, they required not only that they remove specific links to specific songs as they had done initially, but that they remove links to every EMI song in existence claiming that they had not authorized ANY of their songs to be distributed online. MP3Tunes declined to do this and was sued. This, however, gives examples of several places where EMI HAD authorized their songs to be distributed as MP3s and thus not every link to every song they own is an infringing link.