music_news 91 posts

AllofMP3.com welcomes the decision of record labels to voluntarily dismiss their $1,65 trln lawsuit against the site.

On May 23 Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group Corp., Vivendi SA and EMI Group Plc. decided to drop their copyright case filed in federal court in Manhattan (Bloomberg.com).

Some time ago the AllofMP3.com services had to be suspended due to litigation.

There’ll be more updates on the development of the situation.

On 24 October a district court in Moscow has confirmed the "no copyright infringement" verdict.

Earlier this year, on 15 August 2007 AllofMP3.com was acquitted of all charges brought up by IFPI. Consequently the Federation filed a protest on behalf of the labels. This protest was declined last week. This time IFPI promised to go as far as the Supreme Court.

This was yet another victory for AllofMP3.com in court.


Read more:
Music almost for free (in Russian), Vedomosti
Court rules that AllofMP3.com operated within the law, AllofMP3 Blog

On Wednesday, August 15 a district court in Moscow ruled that AllofMP3.com operated within the bounds of Russian law.

The court found no infringement of copyright law. According to the statement from the judge the site had paid a certain amount of the revenue to the right holders in full compliance with the law.

The court found that the investigation initiated by the IFPI had produced insufficient evidence and the conclusion that AllofMP3.com had broken any laws was a premature one.

Read more:
Court acquits AllofMP3.com site owner, Reuters
AllofMP3 founder cleared of copyright violation, The Independent
Russian court acquits former owner of music download site allofmp3.com, The Forbes

Music publishing companies representing Eminem filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Apple on grounds of copyright infringement. Allegedly the iTunes store have been offering Eminem’s songs for download without his permission, only having the consent of the EMI record label. According to the singer’s lawyers, the record label doesn’t hold the right to allow downloads exclusively (as it is with selling the artist’s CDs). Also the singer wants a fairer division of the revenue from downloads. At the moment iTunes charges around 99 cents a song, 70 cents go to the record label. It, in turn, typically, pays 9,1 cents to the music publisher.

According to the artist’s lawyer the issue “is how the 60.9 cents the recording label has left after it pays the music publisher should be divided between the recording label and the artist. If downloads are treated as licensing agreements, the 60.9 cents would be split equally, he said. But if a download is treated as a sale, which is typical, the artist only gets a royalty, or a much smaller share... read more

The RIAA’s new agenda is about the future of the nation – the students. According to Associated Press, US universities have recently received thousands of notices regarding student who share and\or download copyrighted content.

The group claims there are as many as 15 000 students in 25 universities who are engaged in such illegal activity. This figure represents a threefold increase compared to the previous year.
The RIAA is concerned with the current widespread illegal downloading on campuses, "We have to let people know that if they engage in this activity, they are not anonymous," RIAA President Cary Sherman said.

The universities’ approach to this varies. For example, at Michigan State University students who are caught twice are forced “to watch an eight-minute anti-piracy DVD produced by the RIAA. A third-time offender can be suspended for a semester.” (Associated Press) Purdue University (1068 copyright complaints from the RIAA) on the other hand rarely goes into trouble of tracking down the offenders. "In... read more

The RIAA tries to optimize its litigation practice. After a recent setback when a district court ruled that the RIAA is to pay the legal fees for the defendant in a dismissed case, the organization came up with a new idea.

According to Digital Music News the RIAA has recently offered ISPs an option for their subscribers. People can avoid costly litigation and even receive a pre-lawsuit discount. "An early notification will give your customer the opportunity to settle any claims before a suit is filed against them at a reduced rate (discounts of $1000 or more)," the letter states.

The ISPs willing to cooperate will have to keep user logs for 180 days. "This timeframe is necessary to allow sufficient time to pursue the Doe lawsuit and subpoena if settlement... read more

The Santangelo kid sued by the RIAA for file-sharing is countersuing the recording industry for “violating antitrust laws, conspiring to defraud the courts and making extortionate threats” (Associated Press).

This story has been going on for a few years now. Robert Santangelo, now 16 years old was 11 when the alleged piracy took place. He denies any wrongdoing and claims it’s impossible to prove anything anyway.

Robert is the son of Patti Santangelo, a mom of 5 sued by the RIAA in 2005. She refused to pay the settlement. The case drew a lot of public attention and the industry finally dropped the case against her. Instead 2 of the Santangelo children are being sued now – 16 year old Robert and his sister Michelle, now 20.

Robert defends himself by claiming that “he never sent copyrighted music to others, that the recording companies promoted file sharing before turning against it, that average computer users were never warned that it was illegal, that the statute of limitations has passed, and that all the music... read more

DJ Drama was arrested last week on charges of felony. Police worked in cooperation with RIAA which accuses the artist of violation of various copyright laws and selling unlicensed mixtapes of copyrighted music.

This action was met with some surprise by the public as the DJ “… is mostly regarded as a central and important figure in the promotion of new rap artists, particularly those in the South. Rappers like Young Jeezy, T.I., and Lil' Wayne have all been propelled by Drama, and the mixtape celebrity often works closely with artists to craft street releases”. (Digital Music News) Or as The New Your Times puts it - “In the world of hip-hop few music executives have more influence than DJ Drama”.

However, RIAA has no qualms about the issue. "Whether it's a mixtape or a compilation or whatever it's called, it doesn't really matter," said RIAA anti-piracy executive Brad Buckles in comments to MTV News. "If it's a product that's violating the law, it becomes a target."

Read... read more

Baidu.com the largest Chinese search engine was cleared of the IFPI’s accusations in a Beijing court. The Intermediate court has overturned the previous decision of a lower court which did find Baidu.com guilty of copyright infringement few months ago. This time the court decided that there’s no infringement as Baidu.com simply provides web links to the music, but all the music is downloaded from servers of third parties.

The IFPI Chairman John Kennedy said he was amazed “amazed by this inexplicable judgment that is totally out of step with Chinese law”. None of the IFPI demands were satisfied: no public apology, no suspension of Baidu’s service and no compensation. Music companies are going to appeal this court ruling.

Baidu’s spokesman warned everyone that if the music companies had won that would have destroyed the whole search engine sector.

Universal finally found 60 pieces of its content which infringe copyright on MySpace and went to court demanding from the News Corp. a $150 000 compensation for each piece (that’s $9 mln. in total). Universal accuses MySpace of encouraging users to upload “stolen” content.

MySpace defends itself by claiming that it operates in full compliance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and that it does "not induce, encourage or condone" copyright violations. Also the company is about to introduce a technology that will block unauthorized content.

Why MySpace may settle with Universal Music Group, MarketWatch
Universal Music Sues MySpace,... read more

According to The Guardian Google has set aside $200m. for possible copyright lawsuits that might follow after it acquired YouTube last week. Although it might not be that bad as major labels (Vivendi, Sony BMG and Warner) received a small stake it the company.

Search giant sets aside $200m for YouTube court cases, The Guardian

A court in Spain ruled this week that downloading music for free from the Internet is legal as long as it is done for private use. This happens for the first time in Europe.

The IFPI commented on the decision that "This is extremely unusual”. Later after a somewhat excited media coverage of the case the IFPI hastened to anoounce that “Swapping copyright-infringing music through peer-to-peer networks remains illegal in Spain as it is throughout Europe and virtually everywhere else”. Even the Spanish Justice Minister got involved with a clear statement “that file-sharing copyrighted music without permission is illegal.'

However, the judge made a point that if downloading music for private use was a criminal offence: "That would imply criminalising socially admitted and widely practised behaviour where the aim is not to gain wealth illegally but to obtain private copies".

This decision will be appealed by the IFPI.

read more

IFPI the body representing major labels like EMI, Warner Music, Sony BMG and Virgin has filed some 8000 lawsuits against users in 17 countries. The organization claims that around 20 billion songs were downloaded illegally last year. (or roughly 3 songs per each person living on the planet).

IFPI sees suing users as the most efficient way to fight illegal peering. Eliminating the networks themselves has proved difficult despite recent settlements, such as the Kazaa case. The latter is now a legal peering service having paid the industry a settlement of $100 mln. However, there’s still plenty of peering networks. “The industry is targeting uploaders using all the major unauthorised P2P services, including BitTorrent, eDonkey, DirectConnect, Gnutella, Limewire, SoulSeek and WinMX.” (IFPI.org) The IFPI campaign is more about people using the illegal p2p networks, than such networks being illegal as some of them turn legal from time to time.

The organization tries to operate without scandals like RIAA’s when it tries to sue... read more

Universal has recently attacked YouTube and MySpace sites, as Reuters reports, accusing them of infringing copyright as well as owing the industry “tens of millions of dollars” already.
Whether Universal will sue or try to negotiate with the sites is not yet clear. So far the labels want to be paid for the copyrighted material whereas the sites would rather offer content for free but with some amount of advertising.
Possible development of this story is that either the label will change its business model substantially or launch yet another lawsuit against sites offering content.