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[Graham Knight]

MusicAlly and Bitterwallet are running this interesting story:

The Beatles back catalogue: No longer available for download and a weird fight for the ownership

By Mof Gimmers

Remember those mad fuckers who were making The Beatles back catalogue available for download? Well, they’re even more mental than we first thought.
BlueBeat, who were selling the Fab Four tracks have, unsurprisingly, been hit with a federal copyright lawsuit. They have been told to stop selling the music with immediate effect.
What no-one counted on was BlueBeat’s owner, Hank Risan, making one of the most insane claims in rock history!
Basically, he’s claiming that he doesn’t need to license the music as the service is using re-recorded versions of the songs using a technology called “psycho-acoustic simulation” and obtained new copyrights as a result.
Essentially, what they’re arguing is that, by ripping the albums from CD while running them through its software, BlueBeat has created a new body of work.
Want an explanation? Risan, when asked by EMI about how he wasn’t violating copyrights, said: “I authored the sound recordings that are being used by psycho-acoustic simulation.” Of course, the response was something along the lines of ‘Eh?’
Risan replied: “Psychoacoustic simulations are my synthetic creation of that series of sounds which best expresses the way I believe a particular melody should be heard as a live performance.” This particular series of sounds being Beatles songs with some pictures attached to it… almost like they’d been ripped from a CD.
Of course, this woolly answer was met with an immediate lawsuit, signifying this as piracy “of the most blatant and harmful kind” and taking a pop at the “willful and overtly defiant manner in which they are acting.”
How defiant? Well, the BlueBeat has registered for the copyright! “To make matters worse,” says EMI’s complaint, “Defendants recently sought to register their infringing sound recordings with the Copyright Office, apparently claiming that because they copied the sound recordings using their own computer system, they now own these digital copies and have the right to distribute them to the public.”
Absolutely mental.
Of course, as a consumer, you can no longer obtain the Beatles back catalogue as an MP3, however, if you really want those tracks, I’m pretty sure you know of a few places you can get them from and not worry about forking out any money.

[Dave]

Fuck's sake. Right now, anyone who knows how good the Beatles are will gladly fork out cash for their music. Anyone who doesn't care, or has only a passing interest will find other means to listen to them. Same as it ever was.

Skip forward two years...the imminent paradigm shift wherein music becomes free at the point of use and artists earn their living through merchandise and ticket sales is only a few dominoes away. The massive conglomerates that own the record companies will start cutting them loose, and major bloodletting ensues. Major losses on both creative and commercial arms will be significant, financially and creatively. Life goes on in the post-rock n'roll era and Alan Freed's ghost is finally laid to rest.

There will, inevitably, be some people who believe the internet and future technologies pertaining to it only exist in order to subsidise and service the entertainment industry, and they will no doubt fight with everything they've got to maintain their positions.

The internet is the New Beatles. Your computer is the New Dylan. Please tell the new Allen Klein to fuck off.