EMI uses Rapidshare, says MP3tunes
p2pnet view Music | P2P:- In the latest move in the continuing saga of Michael Robertson’s battle with EMI, the moribund UK member of the Big 4 organised music cartel, he says he’s found “great new evidence” of how EMI “directs people to download free MP3s they themselves uploaded to Rapidshare”.
EMI isn’t only continuing its attack against Robertson of earlier MP3.com and Linspire fame, p2pnet posted recently, it appears to have escalated it.
Robertson’s answer? “I’m working right now on video responses to EMI’s exhibits”, he told us. “It’s a battle of the videos!”
Now he’s filed filed opposition to EMI’s papers “about why the Sideload.com music search engine and MP3tunes’ personal cloud storage are allegedly copyright infringing”.
And today, “We turned up some great new evidence like how EMI itself directs people to download free MP3s they themselves uploaded to Rapidshare”, he says.
“They say Rapidshare is a known piracy haven and criticize Sideload.com for linking to it yet they use it in their own business. In another example we demonstrate to the court that a song they’re complaining about is actually hosted on a EMI owned and controlled server.
“”For the first time in a copyright legal battle videos were submitted and video responses were generated and they’re available for all to see on Youtube (links below) and viewers can decide if a music search engine and personal cloud music should be outlawed.”
Robertson continues >>>
When EMI filed their lawsuit more than three years ago they claimed to “never” release promotional MP3s — therefore every link in the Sideload.com music search engine was a copyright infringement. They also said that the MP3tunes secure personal cloud music service was making thousands, if not millions, of unauthorized copies of EMI songs.
Astonishingly, today EMI has done a flip turn and is now complaining about the exact opposite behavior which illustrates why DMCA protection is required for internet companies since they will never be able to build technology which appeases the major record labels. They’ll always be able to manufacture an argument about why a technology is infringing their works.
In our case they are now claiming that MP3tunes doesn’t make ENOUGH copies of their works — a complete reversal of their original claims and that Sideload makes links incorrectly or to undesirable places.
In defense of the Sideload.com music search engine MP3tunes told the court that EMI promoted bands by distributing free MP3s online. EMI told the Judge our position was “pure fantasy” claiming that EMI never distributes free MP3 songs online.
Thanks to our users we quickly amassed a list of more than 1400 such fantasy EMI songs that were available online and in depositions they finally admitted they put free songs online so they would spread “virally”.
Confronted with these facts EMI’s position changed and they’re now saying that Sideload is linking in the wrong manner or to suspect places. To illustrate this they point to several examples. They say we link to Rapidshare which they called a known haven of piracy.
However we uncovered internal emails where EMI themselves put songs on Rapidshare and sent email to others instructing them to download them from Rapidshare.
With EMI spreading files far and wide, their experts grudgingly admit that it’s impossible to tell which links are authorized and which are not.
Still EMI in their court papers select a few of the tens of thousands of links in Sideload.com to complain about. To illustrate they use video examples so MP3tunes made video responses to explain the situation.
First they complain about Hercules Theme, by retro-disco band Hercules & Love Affair.
Remarkably this MP3 is located on a server controlled by EMI so if they didn’t want anyone linking to it they could simply remove the file or add a robots.txt file, but instead they complain about how Sideload.com is linking to it. (Of course you don’t need a search engine to download the song – just click that link, it still works.)
(EMI Video Exhibit 1 – Part 2 – 1:20)
MP3tunes shows in our video response that Sideload is not linking to some clandestine location, but rather to a public location and that in fact Google offers links to stream and download the same song from the identical location.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_6-5N3HC9k
|Next EMI shows a video about how Sideload links to Buffalo Soldier by Bob Marley.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aobnfWJHC8
In a video response MP3tunes shows how Microsoft’s Bing and Google’s search engine links to the same song in the same location.
http://www.youtube.com/mp3tunes#p/a/f/1/WJygYNpgkuA
Finally EMI shows a video of a link to Every Breathe You Take by the Police from Sugarbears.org.
http://www.youtube.com/mp3tunes#p/u/9/ieeooBWxoqw
Again, the video response shows that Google and Microsoft have links to the same song and offer both streaming and download links right from their own server.
http://www.youtube.com/mp3tunes#p/u/12/L4W6QaiFIOQ
These videos illustrate that Sideload is a search engine and thus eligible for protection under the DMCA. Because it focuses on music files does not mean it’s less qualifying for protection than a Google or Bing – which have links to music files as well.
Another argument less amenable to a video response is that MP3tunes because of our storage methodology is not making an optimum number of copies to satisfy the record labels. In this case, EMI is astonishingly complaining that MP3tunes doesn’t make or keep enough copies on servers. (Yes, this is a complete turnaround from their original complaint filed more than 3 years ago!) However Congress had the foresight to recognize that “in the ordinary course of their operations service providers must engage in all kinds of acts that expose them to potential copyright infringement liability.”
They authored and passed the DMCA “limiting the liability of service providers… ensuring that the efficiency of the Internet will continue to improve and that the variety and quality of services on the Internet will continue to expand.”
MP3tunes storage methodology is employed by every major internet company and probably most of the minor ones too. We do nothing exceptional and any complaint lodged against MP3tunes would have as much merit if lodged against Apple, Facebook, Google, Yahoo or any company offering online email or storage.
If you offer a service like MP3tunes which enables people to listen to their own music everywhere on any device, it will be impossible to appease the record labels. They’ll always be able to claim you’re making too many copies or too few simply because they don’t want such a service to exist. It’s as futile as trying to round pi – you’ll always be too low or too high.
“This is why you have courts and these latest papers are an important milestone”, says Robertson, adding:
“Later this month the final papers will be filed and then oral arguments in late January after which we expect the Judge to pass down a ruling on the legality of a music search engine and cloud music storage.”
Stay tuned.
p2pnet – EMI v Robertson: ‘battle of the videos’, November 23, 2010
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
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December 2nd, 2010 at 9:25 pm
So EMI like P2p now?
It is a little bit late. isn’t it?
December 2nd, 2010 at 11:07 pm
So if EMI puts mp3 files up does that make them legally freeware?
December 3rd, 2010 at 1:20 pm
” So EMI like P2p now?
It is a little bit late. isn’t it? ”
They always did like P2P.
That’s the truth of the matter.
What they DON’T like are unsigned artists and the general public being able to access and distribute their own creations easily and cheaply.
I’m not the only one who’s noticed that every service they sue out of existence they end up owning, and populating it exclusively with label owned content. Even the ones they don’t sue out of existence they use financial pressure to exclude unsigned, un ‘featured’ artists ( Emusic the most recent example ).
P2P is great as long as the labels hold all the keys to all the doors. This particular lawsuit is bringing that out into the open.
December 3rd, 2010 at 5:02 pm
The crowdsourced list which alleged to be MP3 files distributed by EMI (“Thanks to our users we quickly amassed a list of more than 1400 such fantasy EMI songs…”) was, in the online copy I saw, mostly crap — my spot check of artists I knew well revealed that many artists were not on EMI, or the artists had been on EMI at some point in their career but the freebie songs were from non-EMI work.
So I’d sure want to check the paperwork on this latest claim that EMI was using lockers to promote work.
December 3rd, 2010 at 9:08 pm
well done. nice article and awesome defense.
December 4th, 2010 at 1:53 pm
We must destroy all the corporations of parasites including the banks and the entertainment industry.
Lobbying and financial contributions to election campaigns must be illegal.
December 8th, 2010 at 11:48 am
” So I’d sure want to check the paperwork on this latest claim that EMI was using lockers to promote work. ”
How much does EMI pay you ?
Waaay too much, I’m sure.