[YAFCIL] Microsoft, Yahoo and Real Networks Sued

It's all just money to lawyers...

Photo Credit: borman818

It seems hot off the heels of the last copyright infringement case the greedy lawyers have once again poked their heads up. Music Copyright Solutions (MCS) has filed a suit against Real Networks, Yahoo and Microsoft for an alleged copyright infringement in their Rhapsody, Yahoo Music and Zune Marketplaces, respectively.

I can’t help but agree with Matt Rosoff from CNET in saying this is perhaps one of the boldest and most short-sighted lawsuits regarding copyright infringement. MCS administers copyrights for over 45,000 compositions. They are named as the lead plaintiff along with a number of songwriters including Mark Farner from Grand Funk Railroad, Areatha Franklin, the Carpenters and Emmylou Harris.

The Lawsuit

The issue appears to be that whilst the services did get a license to the recordings, they did not get a license to the compositions. How could this have possibly happened though? The services had to get the license to the recordings from somewhere, surely the compositions would be covered also.

copyright was originally intended for, “to promote and incentivize creative works”

As techdirt says, its all still speculation at this point, but it appears that for the songs licensed from major labels the recording and compositional rights were licensed. The songs owned by independent companies may have had their recordings licensed, but it would appear they haven’t had their compositions licensed.

So the MCS decided rather than politely let them know these compositions were not licensed, and offer them a license (which I’m sure they would be happy to obtain), they would rather sue and risk setting a potentially devastating precedent. If this actually gets to court the MCS are asking for $150,000 per violation or the amount earned from streaming the songs, whichever is more. The lawsuit names more than 200 songs, and even more recordings, which brings the potential liability for each defendant to over “tens of billions of dollars”. A number far greater than any of these services have ever earned.

A case like this once again muddies the waters of copyright, and helps to confuse everyone nicely, surely they could have sent a DMCA notice, or a request to remove to the songs from the service, or just offer a damn license for the compositions. The very idea of taking an adversarial (lawsuit) approach to resolving this issue, is beyond absurd.

Attack your enemies, and friends too?

Surely the MCS can understand the benefits of these online stores. If they can't they are clearly in the wrong business, and if they can, why on earth would they want to become enemies with these services that are some of their few allies online. After all without these online distributers all we would have is file sharing as a means to gather digital music.

If this case were to actually be successful, aside from it being near impossible to remunerate the MCS, no one would risk setting up an online music store. The precedent set would present far to big a liability to even risk creating an online music store.

Then again, this perfectly highlights what is so wrong with copyright at the moment. It’s doing nothing but keeping lawyers employed, which (no offense to lawyers) is an extremely bad thing as it means the laws clearly are not working as intended.

Lets all remember what copyright was originally intended for, “to promote and incentivize creative works”. To give artists a reason to create, not to give lawyers or publishing companies a job. If this case were actually successful, it would set a precedent that seriously hinders the original intention of copyright.

After all what’s the point of being allowed to sell and license your music if no one is willing to setup a store because they make themselves a target for these types of lawsuits?

[via TechDirt, Seattle Time, Electronista, CNET]