Napster Sued For Offering Songs It Has No Rights To

from the whoops dept

Roy writes "MCS Music America, a Nashville-based company that administers copyrights for about 45,000 songs, claims Napster has put hundreds of songs controlled by MCS and its publisher clients on Napster.com without obtaining the proper licenses for paying royalties. Napster sent MCS a form seeking a licensing agreement, but neither party signed it, the suit states. After getting the inquiry, a MCS employee subscribed to Napster and found the songs were being used without permission." While the original article refers to Napster being sued "again," it's worth noting that this is a completely different Napster. It's Napster in name (and logo) only -- and has nothing else to do with the original (sued out of existence) Napster. Still, for a company that's preaching the "respect intellectual property" mantra, you'd think they'd be a little more careful about actually obtaining the rights to the songs they were selling.
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  • identicon
    Michal, 23 Dec 2005 @ 7:22am

    everyone is a cocksucker

    What a litigious world we live in. If people knew how to behave civily it would be more like this.

    MCS: Hey you are letting people download songs you didn't buy a license for.
    Napster: I'll be damned. We'll stop
    or
    Napster: Ok, how much are the licenses.

    but no. it's straigt to sue sue sue.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Conrad, 23 Dec 2005 @ 7:30am

      Re: everyone is a cocksucker

      They've already had the benefit of selling these songs for a while. They're probably suing for uncollected royalties as much as the unauthorized sales.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      George, 23 Dec 2005 @ 10:49pm

      Re: everyone is a cocksucker

      What a litigious world we live in.

      It's true, I know some who are in law school for that very reason. They want to be hi-priced, rich attorneys and buy their big mansions. They've decided to cash in on the bonanza. I call it the donut effect.

      1. The more attorneys there are the more litigous we become, and
      2. The more litigous we are the more would-be attorneys are attracted to the field (repeat step 1)

      I doubt anyone goes to law school anymore for the sake of the practice.

      link to this | view in chronology ]


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