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Victory For Music Locker Services?

Posted by Unknown on from the save-those-redundant-bits dept.

Joining the ranks of accepted submitters, Gaygirlie writes "Michael Robertson, the owner and founder of the MP3Tunes music locker service, has been locked in a copyright infringement case with EMI Records for a while now, especially because of the Sideloading search engine that is tacked along with the locker service. Now the case has been resolved though: EMI Records won. But lost on all the accounts that actually really matter." The important parts here are that MP3Tunes was granted safe harbor protection under the DMCA, and that merging multiple copies of the same file doesn't make distributing that master copy a public performance.

3 of 51 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Victory? No by Gaygirlie · · Score: 3, Informative

    Inconclusive at best.. The lawyers can milk this for a while longer

    If you'd actually read the whole thing you'd see that this is a clear victory: the Judge clearly ruled that these locker services do not need to buy licensing from record companies, they don't need to police the files of the users unless someone files a DMCA takedown request against a specific file.. How is this NOT a huge victory?

  2. Re:Victory? No by Gaygirlie · · Score: 3, Informative

    Conclusion

    It's not clear where the ruling leaves MP3tunes.

    That's relating to the fact that MP3Tunes had not removed the files for which DMCA takedown notices were filed and the files that Robertson himself had uploaded there. Ie. a completely DIFFERENT ISSUE.

  3. Re:Wait, what? by gdshaw · · Score: 5, Informative

    It wasn't a jurist; it was the Judge. However, your skepticism still seems relevant...

    A judge is a jurist (but not a juror, which is probably the word you were thinking of).