RIAA Sues MP3.com
Today in Federal District Court in New York, the Recording Industry Association of America filed suit against MP3.com for copyright infringement with regards to its new Beam-It software. Stating that MP3.com was "in reckless disregard of the law", the RIAA begins its second round of litigation over digital music.
The motion, filed this afternoon, claims that it "is not legal to compile a vast database of our member's sound recordings with no permission and no license."
This comes shortly after MP3.com announced last week that using its new software entitled Beam-IT, users can place a music CD into their CD-ROM drive and connect to MP3.com databases. When the database recognizes the tracks and CD's that user instantly has access to the songs from my.mp3.com using music stored on MP3.com servers. It serves as a memory for what CD's you have registered with your account and thus, you can play them from the archives of MP3.com
The RIAA claims that the actions of the Internet music site are completely inappropriate and that they had no choice but to file suit against MP3.com after repeated requests to work out a deal between the recording industry and the Web site.
Read more about Beam-It on BetaNews.com, or view the Beam-It demonstration at MP3.com. The RIAA can be found online at http://www.riaa.org/.
eFront will keep you posted on the proceedings in the coming weeks.