On 22 August a US court handed down a split decision in a copyright case involving MP3Tunes and EMI Music Group, which has significant implications for Google, Amazon and others in the burgeoning cloud storage business.

While US District Judge William Pauley ruled that MP3Tunes (and its chief executive Michael Robertson) had infringed copyright in relation to certain specific works (referred to in letters from EMI), he also found that for the most part, the service was protected by US safe harbour rules of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act [1].

As reported in our June newsletter [2], MP3Tunes launched in February 2005, offering a service by which users can upload their digital music to the company’s digital locker (i.e. the cloud) and then stream this music back to their computers and various other devices. The site operates without licences from the rights holders and is quite similar in functionality to Amazon Cloud Player and Google Music. MP3Tunes also has a companion service called SideLoad, which aggregates links to free music files available on the web and allows users to save these files into their lockers.

EMI and its subsidiaries sued the operators of MP3Tunes (and SideLoad) in 2007, arguing that it was engaged in an unauthorised use of their music. MP3Tunes relied on the safe harbor provisions for its defence, as well as raising questions about whether the storage and streaming of files owned by users needs permission from rights holders in the first place.

[1] Paid Content at: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-mp3tunes-wins-on-dmca-but-founder-robertson-may-take-a-hit/

[2] Australian Copyright Council at: http://www.copyright.org.au/news-and-policy/details/id/1973/