Via http://www.3news.co.nz:Are you ready for your Monday morning cup of WTF? This boggles the mind. A digital music retailer called Bluebeat.com tried selling the Beatles catalog on their site for 25¢ a song. The only problem? The Beatles haven't licensed any of their music for digital sale yet. Now let's forget for a second that this company chose perhaps the most conspicuous artists they could have to try and rip off. Let's forget too how notoriously litigious EMI has been in protecting that band's songs. Hell, let's even forget that they tried to digitally sell an artist that pretty much everyone and their mother knows hasn't released anything digitally yet. No, those insane details aren't even the dumbest part of the story.
Displaying a set of balls the size of watermelons, Bluebeat claims they are within their rights because what they are selling are not, in fact, the actual Beatles tracks, but are instead exact recreations of the tracks created through 'pyscho-acoustic simulation'. Sure. That ought to hold up in court.
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5 comments:
Ah, yes, the old psychoacoustically-identical performance defense. Which could almost work if they almost certainly hadn't used the tracks they don't have license to as samples (run through whatever clever algorithm) to produce a work with no independent artistic merit. Well-done. And even if they bought that aspect of their defense, there's the little problem of the fact that they marketed it so as to deceive and deprive the original artists of sales. I don't see how they can possibly believe that they have a leg to stand on with that.
WTF?- indeed.
Was the guys name Danger Mouse by chance?
#1: The who?
#2: No, the Beatles.
#1: The who?
#2: No, dammit! The Beatles.
Just when you thought the Oscar for moronic copy write infringement would go to Psystar for taking on "the other Apple", these guys show up and Kanye West it to *a whole 'nother level*.
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