James Delahunty
29 Mar 2011 17:03
Santa Cruz-based Media Rights Technologies has agreed to pay the Beatle's EMI Group label $950,000 to settle a copyright infringement lawsuit.
Using its BlueBeat.com website, the company sold music tracks containing Beatles content for 25 cents each, before they were ever available on iTunes. The site also sold tracks from Radiohead, Coldplay and many other acts without acquiring a license to do so.
Media Rights had originally denied copyright infringement, saying it wasn't offering the original tracks but instead had re-recorded the music and inserted some new artistic effects based on a technique dubbed "psycho-acoustic simulation."
U.S. District Judge Josephine Staton Tucker dismissed the argument. She described it as "obscure and undefined pseudo-scientific language (that) appears to be a long-winded way of describing 'sampling.'" Beatles' tracks first appeared on the iTunes service in November after lengthy negotiations.