It looks like embattled music service Project Playlist has someone other than Facebook in their corner. This morning, after remaining silent all weekend over the MySpace ban, they are announcing a much-needed agreement with Sony BMG to give users direct (and legal) access to that library.
Sony was never part of the litigation by the big labels that was filed on April 28, 2008, choosing instead to pursue negotiations. Warner Music, EMI and Universal, the three other big music labels, remain hostile to Project Playlist. And until all the labels have given the company a green light (and the litigation is settled), it’s unlikely MySpace will un-ban them.
One down, three to go.
Interesting. Sony is (or was) one of the big labels which always chose legal fight instead of negotiations. What changed?
What changed is that because PP does not host the files, thus is a secondary publisher, it is actually technically legal, only primary publishers can be prosecuted under current copyright law.
But that didn’t stop them from suing Napster? I can’t remember the details but wasn’t Sony one of the first ones to threaten Napster with legal action (if my memory serves me right)?
yeah, no.
yea and the Napster case has really stopped file sharing. The point remains Napster was a different technology.
Fair enough. I am pretty sure this is not the usual way of proceeding for Sony though
They live to fight another day!
Yasser
http://www.jobstaxi.com
wow who would of thought Sony would do this…Sony BMG is a hard-headed company…seems like they are changing for the new year
I WANT SEE NEWS
Shouldnt that be Sony Music and not Sony BMG
I still can’t understand how what they’re doing is anything illegal – or even wrong. There’s no other business on the internet that is as stupid as the music industry. I can’t imagine ANY business saying to google, ‘don’t provide users a link to our material, and if you do, we’ll sue’. It’s ridiculous. I mean, can you imagine if other businesses operated this way?
If playlist was anything more than a search engine with bookmark capability it might be something else – but that’s all it is. A search engine with a bookmark service and you can share your bookmarks with your friends. they own and host nothing. They only facilitate the search findings between one and many.
I can’t believe I’m even saying this – but don’t buy anything from a major label. I seriously can’t wait till they go under completely. And ‘agreements’ (shakedowns) like this are only delaying the inevitable.
Does it mean we will HAVE to listen to T-Pain (signed on Sony BMG) ? Big pain…