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RIAA countersues webcasters

9 June 2001 9:26 by Petteri "dRD" Pyyny

Now, when we're almost seeing light in the end of the tunnel in many digital media court cases, including MP3.com's, Napster's and 2600's, there are plenty of court cases coming up..

Legal issue over webcasting royalty fees was risen in May when RIAA sued Launch Media, because RIAA thinks that Launch's LaunchCast streaming service violates Launch'ex existing streaming contract because its "too interactive".

After Launch was sued, webcasters joined their forces and attacked RIAA seeking court decision over this issue (what level of interactivity violates streaming royalty system's limits for user interactivity) and sued RIAA. Team that sued RIAA included MusicMatch, MTVi Group, Xact and DiMA (alliance of webcasters).

And of course this backfired -- in Friday, RIAA filed countersuit against webcaster's trade union, DiMA. Three webcasters were mentioned in lawsuit; MusicMatch, MTVi and Xact Radio.

In a statement, MusicMatch called the recording industry suit "unnecessary" and said it was confident the court would find that its service was eligible for the kind of statutory licensing that covers other broadcasters.

RIAA recently asked the U.S. Copyright Office to disqualify certain Webcasters that personalized Internet radio services from an upcoming arbitration process, said Jonathan Potter, executive director of DiMA, the trade group for Webcasters that filed last week's suit against RIAA.

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