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November 14th, 2007 Return to Archive
On Friday, November 9, 2007 EMI sued MP3tunes. For those
who don't know, MP3tunes is a service provider that offers a personal
Music Locker and runs a search engine called Sideload.com.
I thought I would share some background as this will be a very
important battle for all search engines and jeopardizes the rights of
music owners to store their music online and play it on all the devices
they own.
The legal scuffle between EMI and MP3tunes began in
September 2007 when, in a letter that accused MP3tunes of a wide range
of illicit actions, EMI sent MP3tunes a specific list of songs it
wanted taken down from Sideload.com. I promptly called EMI’s attorney
and said we would remove the songs, but I reminded him that Sideload
was simply a Google-like search engine, and had no actual files -- just
links to song files hosted other places. I added that I admired EMI's
progressiveness in selling MP3 files. (I use the new nifty AmazonMP3 store
and my latest buys include Nickel
Creek, Kanye
West,
Telepopmusik,
Robin
Thicke, and I'm filling in my missing 80's collection with Loose
Ends.)
I also offered to work to make sure that Sideload helped meet
EMI's business goals. The attorney didn't want to discuss that, and
instead quickly demanded a "substantial sum for past infringement" be
paid to EMI, insisting our company had violated copyright law. We
definitely didn't see things that way and felt we were forced to file a
lawsuit in San Diego asking the courts to declare our service legal. We
sent a courtesy copy to EMI's legal representation.
On November
9th, 2007 EMI filed a lawsuit against MP3tunes in New York. I learned
about it from calls I received late Friday afternoon from Dow Jones,
Reuters, and Bloomberg. (Filing late on Friday is a common tactic to
make sure the other side has little/no time to comment.) I
indicated I couldn’t really comment on the lawsuit against MP3tunes
since I hadn't even read it. Several reporters observed that MP3.com, a
company I founded in the late 90’s, had also been sued by a major
record label. MP3tunes and MP3.com are very different, as are
these cases. I added that I hoped the press would keep an open mind and
look at the underlying issues.
EMI's lawsuit complains both
about Sideload.com and the personal Music Lockers offered by MP3tunes.
Sideload is an audio search engine. It has links to audio files and
shows you where those files are on the net. Sideload does not host any
files. There are many, many such search engines. Here are just a few,
with the same starting letter “S” as Sideload: Songza, Seeqpod, and Skreemr
- all of which are probably much bigger than Sideload. Many people
simply use Google, which is likely the biggest audio search engine in
the world. Any complaint against Sideload could be leveled against
Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask since they all have links to song files.
EMI also complained about MP3tunes'
personal Music Lockers. We provide individual Music Lockers designed to
store a user's own music collection securely online so you can listen
to your music collection anywhere you want to. As an example, when I
buy songs at work from AmazonMP3, they are automatically loaded to my
personal Locker so I can listen when I get home or even on my net
radios. My vision is that in the near future people will have music
players built into every piece of electronics they own, and they will
all be connected to the Internet (at least some of the time). Our goal
at MP3tunes is to provide a system that will let you access your
personal music on any device you own. Our implementation is
responsible, with password protection required for each Music Locker.
You can't listen to or download any songs from my Locker or anyone
else's -- it's password protected and utilizes the same security
provisions used by most online services such as online banking. If it's
good enough for your money, I think it's good enough for your music. Of
course, there are services online that people use to swap music -- they
typically allow anyone to copy anything they like with no user names or
password requirements. These are very different from MP3tunes.
While
the lawsuit says "EMI" I think the RIAA is advocating this legal fight
as much as any individual label or entity. The RIAA is the music
industry's association with a focus honed on suing seemingly every new
technology that comes along (this last decade at least) . This is what
happens when you have a staff of attorneys -- they want big, long legal
fights so they can bill their clients. The problem with suing every new
technology and/or company is the opportunity to use that new technology
in a positive manner is lost. For example the RIAA sued the first
portable MP3 players. The RIAA lost -- not just the lawsuits, but the
chance to leverage an exciting new technology (MP3 players). It also
lost the ability to partner with innovative companies for
increased sales and revenues. By suing every new technology, the music
industry is missing the opportunity to use innovation to dramatically
grow its business in exciting new ways.
Early articles covering the dispute have referenced my previous
company, MP3.com. MP3tunes
has no relation to MP3.com and this is a very different situation, but
you might find it interesting to know more about that incident. At
MP3.com I invented Beam-It and Instant Listening as part of a system
called my.mp3 (MP3.com had an incredible engineering staff that took my
rough ideas and made brilliant technology). The concept was to
modernize the audio CD and move it into the digital age. Many people at
the time, such as those at LiquidAudio, were talking about doing $1
song sales (no, Apple didn't invent that idea). If people stopped
buying
CDs and instead bought $1 songs, it was easy to predict industry
revenues would crater -- I created Beam-It as a digital solution. You
could take an audio CD, insert it into your computer and in seconds
have the songs in your personal my.mp3 account for listening. With
Instant Listening, you could buy a CD online and immediately have all
the songs in your my.mp3 account for your personal listening pleasure
while you waited for the CD to be shipped to you. For the two months
Instant Listening was activated, retailers that used it experienced
sales boosts of 40-60 percent. The only way to get music into your
password protected my.mp3 account was to own the actual CD making the
CD intrinsically more valuable. If the music industry would have
adopted this technology, it could have extended the life of the CD
another 10 years. But, it chose to sue MP3.com and missed a golden
opportunity -- CD sales are down a staggering 60 percent since that
time. While MP3.com may be an interesting footnote in digital music
history, MP3tunes is an entirely different company with different
technology.
By attacking the Music Locker, EMI is attacking
the right to personal ownership of digital property. I believe people
should be able to listen to their music anywhere they want, and on any
device that suits them -- this is why we buy it. Most people are not
going to have the time or technological know-how to move the music they
own from their PC at work to their PC at home, or from their PC to
their devices (mobile phone, Internet radio and more). In this Digital
Age it will be necessary for people to direct a service provider like MP3tunes
to store their music for them, and to provide simple yet secure ways to
access it on every device they own. I want people to legally acquire
their music, and once they do I think they should be able to listen to
it everywhere.
If you can't store digital music you own in a
personal online account, then your rights to all other digital property
like movies, photos, e-books, medical records, etc can be challenged.
Nobody wants to be involved in a lawsuit, but you have to be willing to
stand up for what you think is right in this world. Digital ownership
is an important consumer right, and I am committed to doing everything
I can to defend it. I'll try and keep you apprised of future
developments. Thanks for your support.
-- MR
View the lawsuit documents here:
 MP3tunes
vs EMI
EMI
vs MP3tunes
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