p2pnet.net news:- Last December a group of corporate rockers, including two members of the Big 4 Organized Music cartel, attacked Wolfgang’s Vault, a site that sells music memorabilia and rare recordings, claiming they never gave permission for the items to be sold.

But owner Bill Sagan isn’t taking it lying down. His lawyer, Michael Elkin, has since filed a 40-page counterclaim against the musicians and their labels, Sony BMG and Warner Music Group.

“Far from being about bootlegging, consumer confusion or infringement of any sort, this case is actually a blatant attempt by two of the largest record labels in the world - using artists as a front - to secure new income streams and destroy a legitimate business,” the suit says, according to Reuters.

Sagan also says the two labels, “unsuccessfully sought to negotiate licenses to the concert footage, and when that was not possible, ‘conspired with each other to concoct fictitious legal claims in an effort to appropriate for themselves the use of musical recordings through an abuse of this judicial process’,” the story continues.

However, on the site, “Last Monday, December 18, 2006, surviving members of the Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin, The Doors and Santana filed a complaint in federal court in San Francisco against Wolfgang’s Vault, an independent, small Bay Area website to stop offering music fans access to a treasure trove of rock memorabilia and recordings,” says Sagan.

He says he bought the archives of the “late, legendary concert promoter Bill Graham (given name, Wolfgang) from Clear Channel Communications.

The archives included vintage posters, handbills, tickets, postcards, photography, audio and video recordings from Graham’s Fillmore concerts (which he owned), “as well as live recordings of those concerts (and others) which, until the website’s launch, had gone unheard by music fans for decades,” says Sagan. “The website does not charge its visitors and offers concert recordings as free streams; various memorabilia are also available for sale.”

The “lineage and ownership of the concert recordings figures to be a contentious topic in the case,” adds Reuters. “A trial date has not been set.”

(Cheers, Julie)

Slashdot it!

Also See:
corporate rockers - Oldies sue Wolfgang’s Vault, December 20, 2006
Reuters - Rock archive web site countersues bands, labels, March 5, 2007
site - Wolfgang’s Vault: Frivolous Lawsuit, December 26, 2006

If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at thIs the end (of the Net) nigh?zze University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.

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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!

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