without agreeing with them a license. They must still have felt worse that a federal judge in New York considers that these services do not violate copyright, because they are not obliged to review all the content that their customers, ultimately responsible for the files they upload to these virtual stores, tinker with.
This is a bittersweet victory for EMI in particular and record labels in general, as the ruling partially convicting MP3Tunes and its founder, Michael Robertson, will legalize the cloud services of Amazon, Google and Apple if upheld.
The case dates back to 2007, when EMI sued MP3Tunes for copyright infringement .
Three years later, the magistrate only partially convicts the defendant, because he considers that the US law (DMCA) protects him if he quickly removes the infringing material when notified by its owners, as MP3Tunes did in fact by removing the files from sideload's list of results. This search engine of your property locates music on the Internet and transfers it directly to the virtual warehouse.
On the other hand, the judge condemns MP3Tunes for not proceeding in the same way, removing the songs denounced, in each of the stores of its customers. He also considers that the founder of the service is guilty of uploading music to his private without authorization. Robertson is an old competitor to the labels. His first company, MP3.com, was already denounced a decade ago by the industry. That case was closed with the payment of about 69 million euros.
While EMI and the record companies have tried to convince the judge that MP3Tunes knew that its customers violated the regulations, because they uploaded songs obtained from direct download sites, the magistrate considers that the law does not require to investigate the hypothetical infractions if there has not been a claim from the owners.
The Spanish LSSI operates in a similar way. When there is effective knowledge of an infringement, but the content is removed, the person responsible is unharmed. The complex thing, in any case, is to know when effective knowledge is given.
EMI has also argued that MP3Tunes cannot rely on the DMCA because it has benefited from its customers, when it could have controlled them. The judge, however, has found no evidence of this and, in addition, argues that it is consumers and not MP3Tunes who control what they keep.
The founder of the service has always stated that record companies intend to block Internet cloud services by requiring Internet users to pay to use content they had already purchased. In fact, when Amazon unveiled its cloud in March, they threatened to sue for failing to negotiate new licenses.
This is precisely another of the key issues of the judgment, which differs from another issued in 2008. The ruling then suggested that cloud stores would be vulnerable to further copyright claims if they used a single original copy, which would be sent to multiple users of the service, as it would be an infringement of the right of public communication in its mode of making available. Instead, the judge in the EMI v. MP3Tunes case denies that the service uses this system, but "a standard data compression algorithm, which eliminates redundant data."
It is the third time that the US justice system has ruled in favor of technological services against copyright holders .
Last year, for example, YouTube (Google) won the lawsuit that pitted it against Viacom. The judge considered that the company that offers the hostel was not responsible for the infractions of its users. It was appealed by Viacom.
Source: El País
