Ministry of Sound Suing Spotify Over User Playlists

AmiMoJo writes "The Ministry of Sound, a UK dance music brand, is suing Spotify because it has not removed users' playlists that mirror their compilation albums. The case will hinge on whether compilation albums qualify for copyright protection due to the selection and arrangement involved in putting them together. Spotify has the rights to stream all the tracks on the playlists in question, but the issue here is whether the compilation structure — the order of the songs — can be copyrighted."

Comments

Don't they have something better to do?

[markkezner]

Why do these assholes care so much?

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a company that makes money by taking other people's songs and releasing "compilation albums" of things that someone thought went well together.

So, yes, they could actually go out and get real jobs.

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[dywolf]

yes. they need to be suiig google/youtube for not removing video playlists that match their albums.
assuming their dumb enough to poke the sleeping bear.

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[interkin3tic]

If they think they're going to sell CDs in this day and age, they're idiots who should not be allowed to handle money. No, this is one middleman trying to squeeze every last penny they can from the next middleman.

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Oh for the love of all that was good in British music, that is very sad if Electronic Dance Music is the most popular now. What happened to the country that gave us the Beatles, the Who, Led Zeppelin, and even Blur? Sad, sad, sad.

Re:Don't they have something better to do?

[milkmage]

agreed

but still, this is user generated content.

Note to MoS.. those users are your FANS, you should encourage them to create playlists.

Does the order matter?

[xaxa]

I went to the associated nightclub (Ministry of Sound in Elephant and Castle, London). I'm not sure the order of the tracks matters -- they all sound the same anyway!

(And I like some genres of electronic music...)

Re:Does the order matter?

[pegr]

Well, the recent Google/Oracle case pretty much decided that "Structure, sequence, and organization" is not a copyrightable element of Java. Why would it be copyrightable in this case?

Bläurg

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea shame on them for trying to defend their business model, which is their feudatory duty to their share holders. Don't get me wrong, their business model sucks, but if they don't defend it they aren't doing their jobs.

Such bullshit always comes up on these stories. "Sure, the company pumped toxic waste into the ground water, but they have a duty to their share holders to maximize profits!" Bull. Shat.

Typographical settings

[Half-pint HAL]

UK copyright law has a specific category for "typographical arrangements" that is a right to a particular anthologisation. The classic example would be the church hymn book. I am allowed to compile as many different hymn books with different selections of hymns, and different selections of verses for each hymn, but I couldn't just copy someone's selection hymn for hymn, verse for verse. This recognises the time and effort expended on making the selection, and guarantees that the person who takes that time and effort isn't going to get undercut by some low-rent publishing outfit who immediately clones his product. (The fact that many of these hymnal publishers also engage in the morally dubious practice of "copyright pollution" by making minor alterations to the hymns themselves is by-the-bye.)

One of the bestbits about this particular provision is that it implicitly recognises that a typographical arrangement is intrinsically less valuable than an original work -- they are protected for 25 years from the year of publication.