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MP3.com Founder Robertson Says “You Lie EMI” And Asks Your Help To Prove It

Michael Roberston, the founder of MP3.com and other music tech startups,  is being sued by EMI over his music locker service MP3tunes. "To prove their case they're claiming that all tracks online are infringements and therefore anyone that links to them or allows storage for them is a knowing infringer." says" Robertson. "Anyone with a working knowledge of online music knows EMI and the other music companies makes available thousands of tracks online for promotion." 

To build his defense Robertson is asking music lovers to do a little online detective work as they discover and download new music.  "One of our engineers has created a bookmarklet – which you can add to your browser in seconds." says Robertson. "Then as you browse you can quickly identify any promotional tracks from EMI artists and quickly send us a note about its location. Our intention is to assemble a list of EMI tracks and present them to the court as evidence that they do online promotion not only in our case but in the many other cases EMI has brought against digital music companies." Here's to get involved:

1) Drag this link to your toolbar: You Lie EMI

2) Browse your favorite music sites. If you come across links to promotional tracks that are freely downloadable: highlight the name of the artist and click the "You Lie EMI" bookmarklet in your toolbar. This will run a check to see if the artist is an EMI band. If they are not related to EMI then you will see a red "X" appear next to their name.

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3) If the artist IS related to EMI then you will see a green check mark appear next to their name. These are the links that we are looking for! EMI has told the court that they don't distribute any free promotional tracks on the Internet.

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4) The best examples are promotional sites which have DIRECT links to .mp3 downloads for EMI related arists. (Some sites offer streaming tracks to listen to, but not download.) We want direct URLs where you can download promotional tracks. Just right-click on the link and choose "Copy Link Location". Then, paste into the field of the bookmarklet. Fill out the rest of the info and click the "Submit" button.

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5) After you click the Submit button you'll see a "Thank You" message which lets you know that your link has been added sucessfully to the database

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More @ MichaelRobertson.com

Bruce Houghton on 09/16/2009 in Uncategorized | Permalink | Comments (4)
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4 Comments

  1. Robertson’s effort here is inane. Setting aside the merits of the case, how does EMI’s promotional use of its own content establish a defense for MP3Tunes?
    Is he claiming that MP3Tunes was basically a promotional use, and somehow shielded from claims of infringement?
    None of it makes any sense.

  2. It really is quite silly, is shows his lack of understanding of copyright law. The copyright holder has the rights to offer their product for any cost or free at any location and not do the same somewhere else. EMI has the right to say Myspace has the streaming rights by MP3tunes does NOT. This is their choice as the owner of the intellectual property.

  3. This is so stupid it shows how this blog doesn’t understand basic concepts of the media industry. It’s really tiring hearing the same ignorant rants about copyright.
    Then to read about tools called “You Lie” just makes it more insulting. If some .com hack doesn’t like the record labels, then don’t trade their obviously inferior product. Keep in mind that the artists choose to work with these labels.
    With so much awesome indie music out there why are you in this rut adopting political tag lines that tell people you have no desire to understand the fundamentals? Build a new reality that plays by your rules and partner with artists that don’t mind what you do with their music.

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