EMI So Scared Of EFF Amicus Brief In MP3Tunes Case, It Asks Court To Reject It

from the what-are-you-scared-of? dept

There's been a lot of attention paid on various news sites over the past few weeks to the motions for summary judgment in the MP3Tunes case. If you don't recall, EMI sued MP3Tunes and (separately) its founder, Michael Robertson, arguing that the music locker service violated copyright law, even though it's designed to let individuals store and access their own music -- but not to allow others to access that music. The whole case has been quite bizarre and we're finally getting close to at least an initial ruling on how the court sees things. I was waiting until that ruling came out to cover it, but EMI's latest move is somewhat baffling.

You see, the EFF, Public Knowledge, the Consumer Electronics Association and the Home Recording Rights Coalition teamed up to file an amicus brief. That's nothing surprising and barely noteworthy. Those groups file amicus briefs on all sorts of similar cases having to do with the entertainment industry trying to stretch the interpretation of copyright law in a way that hinders new technologies. What makes things odd is that EMI has filed to have the court bar the brief from being used. The arguments are somewhat silly. Effectively, they argue that the court had asked the parties to keep their own arguments for summary judgment to a minimum (less than 35 pages). However, EMI states, this brief is really just supporting MP3Tunes' position, and thus, giving MP3Tunes a way to get more arguments than the 35-page limit allows.

Of course, it seems like all this really serves to do is to call a lot more attention to the EFF/PK/CEA amicus brief and to make you wonder what the hell EMI is so scared of having the court read about. And, really, shouldn't EMI be focused on staying in business these days, rather than worrying about what folks like the EFF and PK have to say about copyright law? If you want, you can see both the amicus brief and EMI's complaint about it after the jump.

Filed Under: amicus brief, copyright, dmca, music lockers, safe harbors, storage lockers
Companies: cea, eff, emi, mp3tunes, public knowledge