Digital Music Pioneer Is Found Liable in Copyright Suit; New York Times, 3/28/14

Ben Sisario, New York Times; Digital Music Pioneer Is Found Liable in Copyright Suit:

"Michael Robertson, a pioneer in the digital music business who has repeatedly clashed with record companies over legal issues, was found liable this week for $41 million in a long-running federal copyright infringement suit.

Mr. Robertson’s latest conflict with the music industry was over MP3tunes, a company he founded in 2005 and shut down two years ago. MP3tunes let its users back up digital music files on remote services on the Internet — an early version of the so-called cloud lockers that technology giants like Apple and Google offer as part of their standard suite of digital music offerings...

During the MP3tunes trial, Mr. Robertson said that the company canceled the accounts of users who abused the locker system. In a statement on Thursday, he accused the music industry of suing his company “to send a message to others not to partner with us or to emulate our business,” and criticized the system of statutory damages for copyright infringement, which led to charges of up to $100,000 per song.

“I’m still holding out hope that the legal system will end up at the right place,” Mr. Robertson added. “Sometimes it takes a while with new technologies.”"