Publishers Hit MP3.com With Another Lawsuit

Piggybacking on a similar lawsuit filed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in January 2000, two music publishers are taking Internet audio upstart MP3.com to court for alleged copyright infringement on the Web site's online music storage service. In their lawsuit filed last week in a New York federal court, New York City-based publishers MPL Communications, Inc. and Peer International Corp. accuse MP3.com of ""pervasive and willful theft"" of the publishers' music with MyMP3.com, a service that lets consumers access a copy of their music collection online. To use MyMP3.com, a consumer places an audio CD in his/her ROM drive; the service recognizes the CD and transfers a streaming MP3 copy of the disc's content to the user's account. The MPL/Peer lawsuit notes that MP3.com ""has publicly boasted that it has deliberately copied over 80,000 compact discs containing copyrighted musical compositions onto its computer servers without seeking or obtaining the copyright owners' permission. ""Despite written notice that its actions constitute copyright infringement, defendant has continued to make unauthorized copies of copyrighted musical works at the astonishing rate of 1,500 additional CDs per day,"" the claim continues. The lawsuit goes on to allege that My.MP3.com is ""a cynical attempt to exploit the value of famous songs without the copyright owners' consent in order to attract greater 'traffic' to its Web site so as to boost its advertising revenues and flagging share value."" (MP3.com is publicly traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange.) MPL Communications is owned by Paul McCartney; both MPL and Peer International are represented by the Harry Fox Agency. The publishers are seeking statutory damages of $150,000 for each work infringed - the maximum amount the law allows. The RIAA seeks the same dizzying damages (amounting, in its case, to some $60 billion) in its January 21 suit against MP3.com, claiming that its member companies gave no consent to MP3.com to duplicate some 45,000 CDs in question, and that My.MP3.com users are effectively accessing infringing reproductions of copyrighted sound works. A hearing for a summary judgment motion in the case is scheduled for April 14, 2000. (MP3.com itself filed a lawsuit last month in a California state court against the RIAA and its president/CEO Hilary Rosen, claiming amongst other things defamation and unfair business practices.) In an interview held before news of the MPL/Peer lawsuit broke, MP3.com founder and CEO Michael Robertson told Pro Sound News that he feels his company is ""on the right side of the law"" with regards to the RIAA lawsuit. ""We believe this is a fair use issue, and we think our system is designed that people have to have physical proof that they have a CD,"" he maintained. Asked whether he feels MP3.com has been singled out from similar online music storage services, such as one offered by Myplay.com that has users upload their music collection themselves, Robertson said, ""There's a certain irony. The end result is the same. You have a field to plow, and [the RIAA is] saying, 'Well, you have to use a horse - you can't use a tractor.' But the end result is still a plowed field."" Robertson also pointed out that with Myplay, users can upload music files from any source; with My.MP3.com, users must first possess a physical CD. As for consumers using friends' CDs or CD-Rs of copyrighted music to transfer files into their My.MP3.com account, Robertson acknowledged there was nothing in the service to block them from doing so. ""The way we look at it, the best we can do is [to provide] the same security that the music industry has today, which is the CD,"" he said. ""This is why none of these secure music formats are going to work, because as long as [the record industry is] making CDs, [consumers have] the content.""Source: Pro Sound News