05 November 2009

Disingenuous? Sounds like a lawsuit in the making

Ethan Smith has an article in The Wall Street Journal about the Beatles and the war over their music:
The Beatles catalog finally became available for paid digital downloading, but not the way the band's record label, EMI Group Ltd., intended.
London-based EMI on Tuesday filed suit against Bluebeat.com, accusing the online retailer of violating copyright law by offering the British band's entire catalog without permission.
Also named as defendants in the suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, were Bluebeat's parent company, Santa Cruz, California-based Media Rights Technology Inc., and Media Rights Chief Executive Hank Risan. A spokeswoman for EMI said the company "has not authorized content to be sold or made available on Bluebeat."
Mr. Risan, the Media Rights chief executive, in a telephone interview Wednesday, called EMI's lawsuit and statements "disingenuous". In a series of follow-up emails he declined to elaborate, saying he would have more to say later Wednesday or Thursday.
The Beatles music has long been an elusive prize for online music services like Apple Inc.'s iTunes Store. But the band and EMI have never reached an agreement to license the music for online sale. The Beatles, for instance, are a notable absence from Google Inc.'s OneBox, the new service that lets users listen to a song once, free of charge, from a Google search-results page.
Bluebeat.com lets users listen to music on its website for free, and sells MP3 downloads for just 25 cents. As of midday Wednesday, that included the entire Beatles catalog, which EMI and the band have never authorized for online use. The 25-cent price point is far less than the 99 cents to $1.29 typically charged by the iTunes Store.
Separately, TheBeatles.com began selling a $280 USB stick carrying digital copies of the entire Beatles catalog. That compares with a list price of $260 for the CD boxed set of the same material, released in September.

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