Rich Fiscus
4 Nov 2011 13:52
EMI continues to lose their fight to prove MP3tunes is liable for copyright infringement.
Responding to a filing from EMI lawyers in which they argued the judge was mistaken about two key points in the case, a federal judge reaffirmed his original decision.
The first contested point was whether the DMCA covers recordings released prior to 1972. These recordings are covered by state, rather than federal copyright law. The second is whether MP3tunes' policy for cancelling the accounts of repeat infringers fulfilled their DMCA obligations.
Not surprisingly, the judge ruled that his previous decision was correct on both issues. He also agreed with his earlier ruling that MP3tunes failure to remove songs from users' lockers following DMCA notices does, in fact, make them guilty of contributory copyright infringement.
In addition, he upheld his own decision that MP3tunes founder Michael Robertson is liable for his own personal use of a MP3tunes file locker for infringement.
On his personal blog, Robertson mused about why EMI's lawyers would waste their time (and EMI's money) presenting the same argument before the same judge a second time. He suggested it may be a case of EMI's lawyers taking advantage of the company's management and ownership turmoil.
Robertson wrote:
Extensive turnover in EMI's management means nobody is there to oversee the litigation costs or strategy. Currently EMI is owned by the megabank Citigroup who is likely unaware of the runaway legal expenses or fruitless strategy since they are concerned only with finding a buyer for EMI to get their multi-billion dollar investment back. The litigation firm senses this leadership vacuum and operates unimpeded taking every opportunity to drag out what is now a 4 year legal process with countless motions. An unlimited legal budget benefits only the lawyers not EMI. Maybe it will take a new owner to rein in the attorneys, but any objective analysis shows they are hurting EMI more than helping.