A music website that illegally streamed and sold music by the Beatles has been forced to pay record labels almost $1m [£625,000]. Other artists whose copyright had been violated included Coldplay and Radiohead.
US-based Bluebeat.com denied doing anything wrong on the basis that the tracks has been distributed using owner Hank Risan's "psycho-acoustic simulation" -- a technique based on using tracks that he'd purchased on CD. In other words, he was ripping the songs from a CD or LP and then selling them for just 25 cents [15p] a pop.
The BBC reports that Bluebeat's defence failed to impress district court judge Josephine Staton Tucker who described Risan's methodology as "obscure and undefined pseudo-scientific language that appears to be a long-winded way of describing sampling."
Archie Robinson, the company's attorney, implied that as the settlement was a fraction what EMI Group plc, Capitol Records and Virgin Records America had been trying for, the labels were tacitly agreeing that Bluebeat was in the right.
"I felt that was sort of an acknowledgement on their part that they don't have the damages they claimed," he said. "So long as we pay royalties, we can stream their music all day and all night without a problem."
----Julian Marszalek
spinner.com
