RIAA sues Project Playlist

p2pnet news | RIAA News:- Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG and their RIAA like to accuse their file sharing victims of being “massive” online distributors of copyrighted music.
Now they’re levelling the same charge at Project Playlist which, among other things, offers an embeddable music player.
“Create a FREE myspace music playlist!” – it says.
And, “Our internet search engine allows you to locate media files that are freely available on the world wide web,” it states. “The listings in our search engine are automatically gathered from music blogs, trade-friendly concert archives, artist websites, record label websites and other public sources. In addition to automatic gathering, we accept submissions to our search engine by our users.”
Infringement. Right?
Well, “Projectplaylist.com allows you to discover all of this free music legally because we respect the rights of copyright holders and we insist that you do as well,” the owners insist, going on >>>
We pay royalties to songwriters and music publishers, and we respect the performing artist’s choice. Some performing artists make their music freely available on the web, others allow you to listen to only a few freely available songs through a promotional site, and a few would prefer that none of their music be heard on the web at all. If an artist tells us that our search engine is linking to an illegally posted song, we will immediately take down the link to that music file.
“Facebook music playlist, MySpace Music Player, Facebook playlist, Friendster playlist, Tagworld playlist, Gaia playlist, Myspace MP3 Players/Player, Myspace MP3 Playlist, Hi5 playlist, Music playlist/player codes and Myspace playlist”
That’s the line-up and, according to Beta News, Project Playlist, “Ostensibly … purports to be a site where users can share lists of their favorite music,” going on:
But, “lists alone do not a business model make, as indicated by the fact that songs chosen by members can be made to play in sequence, in Windows Media, RealPlayer, or Flash.
“That might not be a problem for a site like Pandora or Last.fm that pays royalties; but in the case of Project Playlist, it’s the stuff that lawsuits are made of.”
And that’s what’s happened, with the RIAA the in the driver’s seat.
States Project Playlist >>>
We are in the process of building an index of links to music files posted on webpages that meet reasonable criteria as having the legal right to host music files for streaming to end users. Although we cannot control the music files posted on webpages by others, we can and do prohibit uploading or downloading of songs to or from our site. In other words we do not host music files, nor do we make them available. We only enable users to find these files and listen to them. We also require as a condition of the Terms of Use of our site that you not add to our index any links to webpages that you know to host illegally posted music files.
An affiliate of KR Capital Partners LLC, Project Playlist’s, “entire business” is nothing but a “massive” copyright infringement, say the labels who, according to Reuters, are, “seeking to enjoin Project Playlist from continuing to offer its customers free music and are also seeking unspecified damages.”
.
.Stumble It!
Beta News – Record labels take aim at a clever playlist ’sharing’ operation, April 28, 2008
Reuters – Record companies sue Project Playlist on copyright, April 28, 2008
Subscribe
to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.phpNet access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details. Download here.






April 29th, 2008 at 7:53 am
They should have just dropped all the legal suck up. It only infuriates the cartels who don’t care if it’s legal or not
April 29th, 2008 at 8:39 am
“We pay royalties to songwriters and music publishers”
The problem is you forgot to pay off the RIAA
April 29th, 2008 at 11:45 am
“lists alone do not a business model make”
True.
IMHO SLAPP style lawsuits filed by anachronistic IP squatters specifically for the purposes of eliminating competition, stifling innovation, and artificially propping up corporations that are already on life support does not a business model make either…
April 29th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Sites like these don’t make the cartels mad, they make them jump for joy at the thought of being able to squeeze money out of someone.