Randy Lewis and Todd Martens, LA Times; Beatles catalog is temporarily banned from music website BlueBeat:
Capitol Records this week filed a suit against BlueBeat, which says that songs produced by digital regeneration are akin to songs performed by cover bands and do not run afoul of copyright law.
"A federal court in Los Angeles this week issued a temporary restraining order against a music website that recently had been offering the entire Beatles catalog for downloading at 25 cents per song. The Santa Cruz-based BlueBeat earlier in the week was hit with a copyright infringement lawsuit by EMI's Capitol Records, the group's U.S. label.
The order set back a novel legal argument by BlueBeat that songs produced through digital regeneration are akin to songs performed by cover bands and therefore do not run afoul of copyright law. BlueBeat had argued in court filings that its downloads were legal because the company had created entirely new versions by computer through a process called "psychoacoustic simulations" that makes the re-created songs sound just like the original recordings.
"We analyze them and then synthesize new songs, just as you would read a book and write an article," said BlueBeat Chief Executive Hank Risan. The site's "intention is to create a live performance, as if you are there listening to the actual performers doing the work as opposed to a copy or a phonorecord or CD of the work."
But the court didn't buy it. On Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge John F. Walter sided with EMI. "Plaintiffs have . . . produced sufficient evidence demonstrating that [the] defendants copied protected elements of their recordings," the ruling said. "Indeed, screen shots from BlueBeat's website show track titles with the same names as the plaintiff's copyrighted works.""
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-bluebeat7-2009nov07,0,5668337.story
No comments:
Post a Comment