Los Angeles – A federal judge has found that BlueBeat.com, a
website that began selling Beatles songs online for 25 cents each in 2009,
guilty of copyright infringement, the Associated Press reported. BlueBeat had
argued that it actually owned new copyrights on the "psycho-acoustic
simulation" versions of the Beatles recordings it created, but U.S.
District Judge Josephine Staton Tucker rejected this claim in her ruling last
week.
"[The] obscure and undefined pseudo-scientific language appears to be
a long-winded way of describing ‘sampling,’ i.e. copying, and fails to provide
any concrete evidence of independent creation," Tucker wrote.
In November
2009, another judge ordered a preliminary injunction that got the tracks removed,
but not before BlueBeat had distributed more than 67,000 Beatles songs, AP reported,
citing court documents.
The owners of the Beatles’ copyrights, including EMI
and others, are now likely to seek monetary damages on those illegal
distributions.
The Beatles’ catalog finally became available for legal digital
purchase on Apple’s iTunes only just recently, on Nov. 16.
Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/26hvfx4
(Bloomberg)
http://tinyurl.com/yhnq674
(DMW previous coverage)
