Judge orders BlueBeat to halt sales of Beatles MP3s
By Sean P. Aune
A judge has ordered BlueBeat to immediately halt sales of The Beatles MP3s on its site, but the company is coming back with a rather unique defense.
The saga of the BlueBeat Web site (previous stories here and here) continued into court yesterday according to Wired. As EMI Records is suing the company for damages and copyright infringement due to its offering of the complete Beatles catalog as MP3 downloads, something the band has continued to avoid doing, the site’s owner, Hank Risan, is offering a unique defense.
According to Mr. Risan, he owns the copyright to the MP3s offered on his site as he re-recorded them through a method called “psycho-acoustic simulation.” Don’t worry, we haven’t heard of it either. In defense exhibit A, Mr. Hisan includes an email he sent on Nov. 2 to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) that states:
Psychoacoustic simulations are my synthetic creation of that series of sounds which best expresses the way I believe a particular melody should be heard in a live performance.
Don’t worry, we’re still confused how he feels this gives him the right to sell unlicensed copies of songs.
According to Mr. Hisan, he has registered and received copyrights on these recordings, and indeed the ID3 tags on any songs purchased through his site show BlueBeat as the copyright holder of these recordings. U.S. District Judge John F. Walter is not buying this argument, though, and has set aside the arguments of BlueBeat for the time being and ordered them to halt all sales of the recordings in question. As of 12:30 p.m. EST today, we are finding The Beatles songs as still playing via streaming on the BlueBeat site, and the “Buy” buttons still appear to be active.
Essentially it appears that Mr. Hisan is claiming that he has recorded these songs in some special way that make them his own creation, and are somehow fundamentally different than the original recordings. Never mind you are still hearing Paul McCartney’s voice when you play “Get Back”, that isn’t actually The Beatles, but instead a “psycho-acoustic simulation” of Sir McCartney’s voice.
Somehow we don’t see this ending well for Mr. Hisan.
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