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A federal court has issued a preliminary injunction against the digital music vendor Bluebeat after the site offered up high-quality MP3s of the Beatles’ catalog without permission. According to the Los Angeles Times, the judge overseeing the case, which came after EMI Music and Apple Corps. issued a copyright infringement lawsuit against Bluebeat, said there was no distinct difference between the Beatles’ recordings and the “psychoacoustic simulations” that Bluebeat claims they added to the music that would have allowed them by a legal loophole to sell the Beatles catalog digitally.
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As Rolling Stone previously reported, Bluebeat was recently selling the newly remastered Beatles catalog for a mere 25 cents per track on its now-defunct Website, even though the owners of the Fab Four’s music have yet to agree to any digital deal. Bluebeat was also selling the entire Beatles in Mono box set digitally for only $53.25, well below the market value the Beatles would command on either an iTunes or Amazon MP3 store.
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Hank Risan, the defendant and owner of BlueBeat, tells the The Los Angeles Times he had a “secret agreement” with EMI to post the Beatles’ music. “In secret agreement, we worked together to create protected works that would ensure they would get paid royalties. That’s what we did. We were authorized by EMI and the labels and the RIAA to create such works, which we’ve been using for many years. We did this with their permission.”
Risan went on to argue confusingly that even though BlueBeat never asked for approval to post the Beatles songs, they had received permission. “Did we just do this on our own? No. We did it through a very, v...
Article Source: Rolling Stone : Rock and Roll Daily