EMI Sues Beatles Usurper Off the Net

blackest_k sends along a Wired piece on EMI's successful suit to get Beatles music off the Net. Here is the judge's ruling (PDF). "A federal judge on Thursday ordered a Santa Cruz company to immediately quit selling Beatles and other music on its online site, setting aside a preposterous argument that it had copyrights on songs via a process called 'psycho-acoustic simulation.' A Los Angeles federal judge set aside arguments from Hank Risan, owner of BlueBeat and other companies named as defendants in the lawsuit EMI filed on Tuesday. His novel defense to allegations he was unlawfully selling the entire stereo Beatles catalog without permission was that he — and not EMI or the Beatles' Apple Corp — owns these sound recordings, because he re-recorded new versions of the songs using what he termed 'psycho-acoustic simulation.' Risan faces perhaps millions of dollars in damages under the Copyright Act. And copyright attorneys said his defense was laughable and carries no weight."

Comments

Re:Piracy

[tlhIngan]

THIS is the sort of piracy that the RIAA (and member companies) should fight against. THIS is the sort of piracy that I think any intelligent human being opposes. THIS is the sort of copyright violation that the laws were written to combat.

Ironically, those Bluebeat guys are the ones arguing for mandatory DRM and suing all the music stores for using "inadequate DRM". A judge finds a company trying to promote their "unbreakable" DRM for copyright infringement.

MRT's History

[eldavojohn]

The guy posting Beatles songs was clearly in the wrong.

I just wrote about this in my journal last night and would like to point out that Media Rights Technology (MRT, owners of BlueBeat.com) has a long history of neurosis when it comes to the legal system. Although not cross referenced above, you may recognize MRT as the very same people who sued everyone in 2007 for not implementing DRM. If you're Hank Risan, you've probably been asking yourself "How can I twist the law in a bizarre way to get rich quick?" And here we are.

Re:I wouldn't listen to the naysayers

[Omestes]

Aren't college students stereotypically poor already? Don't they have bad credit histories already? I don't see the point.

This might hold true for "poor" college students, but not college students in general. I went to college in my mid-to-late twenties, and had pretty good credit, a lot of my friends back then were also older than normal, and had decent pre-established credit (a lot of them being ex-military/GI Bill students). A lot of the younger college kids didn't qualify as poor either, the ones who were poor, were poor by bad spending and budgeting ("I need $x in loans because I can't eat, but I just went to see Radiohead on tour in London (from Arizona)")

Now, if they can't just erase the fines with a bankruptcy, that gives them less incentive than ever to stop file sharing. If they already have a life sentence, what more do they have to lose?

This isn't about the file sharers who get caught, this is about deterring the file sharers who didn't get caught. I doubt that the **AA really cares about the damages they receive from the people who are caught, they just want ALL file sharers to know "we will destroy you".

Think about it, if your a normal middle class American, and get stuck with a million dollar fine, how long would it take for you to realistically even pay off a fraction of it? I know people in their 40s (solidly middle class) who are still paying off student loans from the 70s, and these loans were vastly less than what the **AA is demanding.