The Big 4 record label EMI sued Bluebeat.com this week, claiming the site is selling unauthorized digital copies of the Beatles albums.
The site sells each track for $0.25 but EMI says they have “not authorized content to be sold on Bluebeat.com.”
Bluebeat garnered the attention of the label and curious downloaders because the Beatles tracks have never been officially been digitized, and certainly would not sell for 25 cents when all other tracks on iTunes sell for $1.
Perhaps just as notably, Bluebeat allows for free streaming of some tracks, including those by the Beatles.
Bluebeat, in their defense, say that they actually own the tracks and the copyrights for those tracks. What? MRT, the parent company behind Bluebeat, says they ran the Beatles tracks through psycho-acoustic simulation and added new pictures to the MP3s, thus making them completely new pieces of media. Media of which they own the copyrights for.
For those confused, (everyone), “Psychoacoustic simulations are a synthetic creation of that series of sounds which best expresses the way I believe a particular melody should be heard as a live performance,” says MRT CEO Hank Risan.
Today, a federal judge has ruled in favor of EMI and granted the label a temporary restraining order against Bluebeat and MRT. Judge Walter almost immediately agreed that Bluebeat was not selling new tracks, just copyrighted materials run through “psycho-acoustic simulation.”
The judge also tore apart their other argument of having all new “audio visual work” by saying (via Ars): “However, as one court obviously pointed out. [Defendant] cannot invalidate the copyright of an independent and preexisting sound recording, simply by incorporating that sound recording into an audiovisual work.’”
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Result for: Downloader
Nintendo has decided that the Internet Channel - the Wii’s Opera Internet browser - should be free to all users. Up until now, Nintendo charged users (expect for lucky early downloaders) 500 Wii Points to download the browser.
The company has also decided to offer a free NES game to anybody who did spend a few dollars to buy the Internet web browser for the console. A version of the Opera-based browser is also available for the Nintendo DS console to provide Internet access on the handheld.
Besides being able to access the Internet now for free (if you have a wireless connection, of course), more users can now also try out streaming some music, video or Internet streams to the Wii console with TVersity.
Result for: Downloader
Microsoft has announced that they will be offering Xbox Live for free to anyone who downloads the GTA IV expansion The Lost and Damned, for the week of February 17th-22nd.
Xbox Live multiplayer is normally reserved to those who pay for a Gold account, but the software giant is adding extra cross promotion for the downloadable content.
Additionally, Rockstar Games and XBL are promoting the expansion with a week of events that include the “chance to take on hip-hop DJ Statik Selektah in a special Game with Fame event and to play against “the people behind the Grand Theft Auto franchise” in a Game with Rockstar.”
The downloadable content, which reportedly cost Microsoft $50 million USD to secure exclusively, will sell for 1600 Microsoft Points beginning on the 17th.
