RIAA Sues Puretunes.com Music Web Site
from the leaving-the-country dept
Back in May, a Spanish service launched offering music downloads, claiming they were legal, because they received permission from the Spanish authors' and performers' rights societies. They claimed that, under Spanish law, that was all they needed to offer the downloads. As expected, the music industry does not agree. Today, the RIAA filed a lawsuit against the site to try to get it shut down. My only bit of surprise is that it took this long. Also, you have to wonder why it's the American association suing the Spanish company - though the RIAA says it's because they're selling to people in the US. In other words, they're saying that US law applies to everything on the internet, since anyone in the US can make use of anything on the internet. Apparently, local laws mean nothing. Update: Now, this is interesting. It turns out that Puretunes may not actually exist any more. Despite this lawsuit just now being filed, the service went completely offline approximately a week after it launched in May. No one involved with the company can be found. People who signed up in those first few days and paid for a year's subscription are not happy.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
