The London based music company, EMI Group, has yet not made the song available on Apple Inc.'s iTunes Store or OneBox, a new music service on Google. Neither has the company reached an agreement with any retailers to license the music for online sale.
But a little known online music retailer, Bluebeat.com, is letting users listen to the song for free on its Web site and selling MP3 downloads.
Consequently, EMI on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against Bluebeat.com and its parent company, Media Rights Technology Inc., for selling their songs without permission.
According to the law suit filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, the music company has accused Bluebeat.com of copyright violation “and misappropriation of pre-1972 sound recordings”.
A publicity stunt?
Turning a deaf year to the lawsuit, the online retailer is still offering downloads at prices such as $3.25 for "A Hard Day's Night" album, and 25 cents per Beatles track etc.
In fact, Media Rights Technology has dismissed the lawsuit as "disingenuous", adding that the company would have more to say in the upcoming days, The Wall Street Journal reported.
But Bluebeat.com doesn’t seem to have any legal ground to stand on. It may, very soon, have to give up on selling downloads of the music catalog by The Beatles.
Could it be a mere publicity gimmick? It sure seems like one. The company is certainly aware of the copyright law, and it is likely that Bluebeat.com is after some media coverage by resorting to this gimmick, which is surely cheaper than ads.
Though EMI will be offering a collection of re-mastered Beatles catalog on a UBS drive from Dec. 8 onwards, the songs will still be limited to physical format.
Unless the company ties up with some music retailers to license the songs for online sale, music piracy will continue to take place.
Readers’ reactions
Many readers online, who are discussing the latest issue, have supported the lawsuit by EMI against Bluebeat.com
A reader named Bantry commented on, PCWorld, “Ihope Apple Corps wins a big settlement against BlueBeat, and closes their site down for this illegal act on their part.”
Another reader named TJSpyke posted his view on the same site, “I hope this site gets shut down, they are illegally selling songs that they have no legal right to sell. They are violating copyrights on purpose and are in big trouble (especially if the judge orders them to pay a fine for every copy of every song. Say, $10,000 per song. If they sold 25K songs, that would be a $250K fine).”
Math
Unless the intent was to make TJSpyke look stupid, the article shouldn't have gone with a quote that is so wildly off in it's math. If they sold 25k tracks and got fined $10,000 per track, that would be $250 million.
TJSpyke's Math
Someone needs to check their math before they send in comments as $10,000 * 25,000 would result in a fine of $250,000,000, which I think is just ridiculous. Sure they should be punished, but that's cruel and there would be no way for them to pay a quarter of a billion dollars.
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