Now That It's Getting A Cut, Warner Says Imeem's Not So Bad
from the protection-money dept
A service called Imeem launched a little while back, and it allowed users to build playlists of music, videos and photos and share them with their friends. Despite the fact that it didn't offer any way to download copyrighted music, Warner Music sued Imeem, saying it was making money on "the illegal use of free music." How quickly things change: Warner has now dropped the lawsuit and licensed its catalog to Imeem, in exchange for a cut of its ad sales. Paidcontent says the deal is part of a trend of media companies showing a willingness to cut deals with these sorts of companies, "having decided its better to bring in revenue" than fight in court. But looked at another way, Warner is charging Imeem for the privilege of promoting its music. It paid its lawyers to threaten the company with a lawsuit and hammer out this licensing/revenue share deal, when instead, it could have simply let Imeem be and embraced the promotional value of its own content. It's pretty unlikely that Imeem will deliver significant revenues to Warner; changing how it perceives its own content and evolving its business model seems the wiser long-term bet.![Hide This Hide this](https://ii.techdirt.com/s/t/i/topclose.png)
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wtf... you can't even talk about what you listen too???
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Oh well, I will be a good little pleb.. I won't EVER use file sharing or online playlists.
Eventually, once the Media industry find out how useful they really are - people will be too reluctant to even use it anymore.
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MAFIAA Theme Song
"I'll take you down the only road I've ever been down."
Oh wait, did I just infringe on their copyrights or licenses or some similar carp by quoting a line from the song? They would probably claim so. Or at least their lawyers would.
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Free money
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Re: MAFIAA Theme Song
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When will the artists stand up and demand this revenue?
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Definitely Support Warner
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Definitely Support Warner (with comment)
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Re #6 Jeb
Gawd dang record company.
The Stones themselves needed absolutely none of that money as they were big enough. Bastards.
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Re:
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Re: MAFIAA Theme Song
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Re: Definitely Support Warner (with comment)
Warner made an empty threat that a first year law student could have knocked out of the park.
Imeem folded up and gave away part of their business for no reason whatsoever. If they wanted to give away a piece of their action over this, they should have given it to a lawyer for present and future services.
That would have been the end of it, and maybe threats like it in the future, as well.
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putatching
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