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Record companies sue Project Playlist on copyright

reuters.com — Nine major record labels filed suit against an online music provider on Monday, accusing Project Playlist Inc of a "massive infringement" of their copyrights to the songs of artists such as U2 and Gwen Stefani. Project Playlist (http;//www.projectplaylist.com) enables its users to easily find, play and share music with others for free.

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  • Surferess, on 04/29/2008, -4/+21I'd have to say it is amazingly easy to find an mp3 on this service. It is like having a Kazaa-like service, but instead of taking the file from the hard drive of the other person you take it from an online hard drive/server. Not all servers will serve up the MP3 file URL, but plenty of servers do. I figured it wouldn't last long. Personally, as a musician, I do not condone file sharing, per se. It is sometimes hard to figure out what is legal, but it isn't hard to figure out what is moral.
    Not that morality is most people's first priority.
    • seanhive, on 04/29/2008, -1/+8But at the same time file-sharing is THE biggest asset to small, unknown artists. It only hurts you when you get big.

      Viral spreading of independent new music is not immoral, but stealing the hot new record from the record companies is.
      • regression, on 04/29/2008, -2/+10Actually, when you do get "big", the labels are what hurt you as was proved by Radiohead's In Rainbows. It has been their most profitable album BY FAR and they relied on donations.
      • BurnTees, on 04/29/2008, -1/+1if you own your content and put it out there for free, great...your call. but if you don't put it out there for free, whether you're a new or old band, it's still illegal.
        • twiztedambience, on 04/29/2008, -2/+3Charging kids $10-$17 for a CD is immoral also, which breaks down to about $99 cents a song. Having Gwen Steffani get paid 100s of millions of dollars while people in this world are starving is immoral also. Yes she earned her money -- but in a vastly inflated market very similar to professional sports. There's a reason people like college sports more, and it is similar to why people like indie bands/labels. There is more drive and determination to do well when you didn't just earn enough to retire on in about one day for one song. Unlike professional sports (with the exception of teams like the GB packers) the consumer controls the market for music and sites like this one will continue to pop up.
      • bdbr, on 04/29/2008, -0/+1The difference is that people who listen to independent artists are often music lovers. We listen to a lot of music and we buy a lot of music. This stuff isn't on the radio, so the only way to hear it is to download it (yes, its illegal, but the labels don't mind so much). The people who download big label music are often casual listeners who usually don't really care enough to buy it, and they'll move onto something else in a couple of weeks.

        I've bought hundreds of songs and several CDs just in the past few months...all discovered via downloads. I avoid RIAA music to keep them off my back.
    • Witchbaby, on 04/29/2008, -0/+1Wait...how do you do it?

      *logging in to snag some mp3s*
    • Kontra8, on 04/29/2008, -0/+2Seems to me you are finding it hard to figure out corporate morality where they like charging fixed amount for something that can be reproduced infinitely for free. They also like charging many times for something you already paid for... once for cd, then again for download on pc, then again for mp3 player, then again for phone download etc etc.

      You are looking at small picture instead of big picture. Morality is social category thats changing with times. Yesterday's immoral is today's moral. Business needs to change in virtual world. Corporations are resisting changes and trying to maximize profits at expense of users wallets and convenience.

      In most cases it has nothing to do with morality my friend. I would say most of ppl who download music are just fine and moral ppl. Also there are many shades of gray too.
    • Bilabrin, on 04/29/2008, -0/+1I use Playlist on my Myspace page and I'd say that I own probably 75% of the artists I promote. I also make sure to put plenty of indy/self publish stuff on the list as a way to spread the messasge and hopefully increase sales for these smaller guys. I stopped downloading MP3's for moral as well as quality issues but I have no qualms about re-downloading mp3's from a lost or stolen CD that I've already bought.
  • sgrfsh, on 04/29/2008, -2/+18While I don't condone stealing music, again speaking as a musician, I do find services such as last.fm and Pandora to be invaluable tools in finding new and interesting music. For me, using Kazaa, Napster, and the like, was merely another tool for the same purpose. If I like something I prefer to have a physical product that won't disappear when the hard drive decides to blow up. The fact is that there is simply no other way to be exposed to interesting music. Radio and television are non-entities in that regard because they don't cater to anything but a tiny, targeted demographic. The major labels don't bother to invest in the majority of worthwhile artists, so all I see and hear in the 'outside' world is dross, or the same crap I've heard for the last 10/20 years. They don't have to because there is apparently no end to Britney sound-a-likes, and [insert your country] Idol will be supplying 'talent' for some decades to come.

    In fact, radio is mostly a joke. I lived in Las Vegas for 5 years, and honestly, for being the 'entertainment capital of the world' they have the most pathetic line up of radio stations I ever had the displeasure of hearing. Turning on the radio there is like being transported back to the 70's or 80's. It's like, time moved on, but ClearChannel didn't. It's actually kind of ironic that a lot of what I listen to now is produced by amateurs and is available for free most of the time.
    • jefree, on 04/29/2008, -0/+1I find the whole music business, file sharing and what is described here to be some sort of commentary on capitalism because "sgrfsh" is right. Why would the profit making entities of a business present and promote a 2nd rate product? And what kind of system punishes a process where a produced product can have a production cost of nearly $0.00 when you can simply file share and copy? What if Oil became free and easy to copy? Would the oil companies be able to "copyright" the use of oil? The only real problem (and what copyright tries to stop) is that is musicians and music producers in general don't get paid well, then talented people will not be motivated to create music for distribution and the quality of music will tend to go down as these talented, motivated and driven musicians choose to do something else with their lives to be compensated. Yeah, you will still have some good music and it will be true music loving musicians, but if the music product become nearly $0 then the motivation to sell and provide music will go way down.
    • com2, on 04/29/2008, -0/+1You know why all the stations are playing music from the 70's & 80's... it's called declining royalties, the older something is the less you have to pay the label for it, in most cases that is.
  • gubatron2, on 04/29/2008, -0/+9Record companies need to understand that the internet will do for them in the future what the radio has done this last century.
    Promote their artists. Sites like project playlists are free promotion, free distribution.

    If it wasn't for the radio, Elvis Presley probably wouldn't have been famous at all, just a local artist, or semi known singer, just like any other before the radio. The internet has the same power, and they're trying to kill music distribution online cause they can't figure out the goodness change will bring.
    • fkr3, on 04/29/2008, -4/+2The record labels are using the internet for distribution and much more, and plenty of sites exist to help you discover new music legally. The only thing they're not doing is using the internet to give away their products for nothing.
      • TRScheel, on 04/29/2008, -1/+2Here's my issue:

        Why is a new audio cd $14.00 (see 1st amazon link) and a new DVD movie $18.00 (see 2nd amazon link). CD has 70 ish minutes of audio, DVD has 90 minutes of audio AND 90 minutes of video, plus enough songs on there that it might as well hold an album. When you compare audio CD's against movie's its obvious that the CD's are way overpriced.

        It blows my mind that these record companies dont get the fact that if they sell their songs for something like a quarter a song and set up a system where I can just redownload the song a million times over that people will actually buy it. It seems they cant get past the idea that their media is not worth as much as it used to be. I am all for supporting the artists but I these prices are ridiculous.


        http://www.amazon.com/Phobia-Breaking-Benjamin/dp/ ...
        http://www.amazon.com/Van-Wilder-Rise-Taj-Unrated/ ...
        • BurnTees, on 04/29/2008, -0/+1just a thought on this. movies make their money when it comes out in the theater and then additional money when it comes out on dvd. music is all new content. with that said, to cover the costs, movies have the initial in theater income plus dvd, so they're not relying soley on dvd income to cover the costs while record companies rely completely on cd and digital sales.
          • Smuikas, on 04/29/2008, -1/+2Music makes their money when the artist performs it live and then additional money when it comes out on CD.

            I fail to see the difference (except that free audio for a band could be very very good advertising for the live shows... doesn't always work with things like Rap, which tend to suck live)
        • Smuikas, on 04/29/2008, -0/+4In 2006, the average hollywood film cost 6.8 million to make. Typical audio CD required 80-120 hours in a studio, at around $500 an hour. So you're talking 40-60 thousand dollars in up front recording costs. Then there's mastering and other post production - which costs I don't know how much. On a quick survey of online mastering services, it's between $500 and $1000. Of course, these are no-name solutions - I'm sure mastering from Dre or similar would be upward of $1m.

          So, for an A list album you're looking at about 2-3 million including marketing. Add in overhead for manufacturing and distribution, and I can see how it MIGHT reach $10 an album -- for an A list album. The record companies probably pad this to make up for losses on albums that don't sell well.

          There is also a distinct difference between DVD and audio sales, in that there are MANY more audio CDs made in a year than films. Audio CDs also tend to be more narrowly focused than films - a broader swath of people will like one film than one audio CD.

          I don't know average sales numbers. But if you can find them, you'll probably see that the average number of copies sold per album is much lower than the average number of copies sold per film.

          Of course, there are some niggling details, such as the cost of an AAA album does not compare directly to the average cost of a hollywood flick. Now, if you compare the cost of Titanic (120 million or so IIRC) to the cost of an AAA album (3-4m), there's a huge divide that we don't see translate down to the price level.

          Then there's all the price fixing conspiracies you hear thrown about with little solid evidence (I've yet to see solid evidence, anyway - if you have, feel free to link..)
      • gilzow, on 04/29/2008, -0/+0What gets me is that I can pick up a brand new copy of an "old" DVD (maybe released last year) for $6 or less at Best Buy, Circuit City, Wal-Mart, etc. Yet, a brand new copy of an "old" CD is still $15-$20. And what about all the old CDs that are now out of print, and not available for legal download?
  • chirwan, on 04/29/2008, -0/+11hmm this might be the same as bittorrent sites hosting links instead of the actual content. not sure how this is gona go..
    • TRScheel, on 04/29/2008, -2/+1I always saw that in the same kinda light that if someone asked you where the pot dealer in your town was and you pointed him out, are you in the wrong?
    • jenrzzz1, on 04/29/2008, -1/+2The charges against the TVLinks guy were dropped, but of course this is a civil case, that was criminal.
  • nelsonjs, on 04/29/2008, -1/+55The record companies do not get it at all. They are the only industry that sues their own customers.
    • BurnTees, on 04/29/2008, -6/+4are you a customer of the gap if you steal the clothing there?
      • Scheissen, on 04/29/2008, -0/+7downloading≠stealing

        gg
      • com2, on 04/29/2008, -1/+3If I buy a shirt from the gap and sew together a copy of it to give to a friend is that stealing?
        • P522, on 04/29/2008, -0/+0That's not analogous, but people do pay for patterns and materials when they sew their own clothes.
        • brianara3, on 04/29/2008, -1/+0Yes, and I pay for internet and CD-Rs when I pirate my music. Your point?
        • P522, on 04/29/2008, -1/+0The designer gets paid a royalty on the sale of the pattern. In your example neither the composer nor the performer get anything for the copy you make.
      • redxxx, on 04/29/2008, -0/+2Yes, if you also buy stuff there. Being a shoplifter does not preclude being a customer. Downloading music without paying for it does not preclude paying for music.
  • H2Glitch2007, on 04/29/2008, -0/+34Go OGC yourself RIAA
  • SteveRyherd, on 04/29/2008, -0/+2We want music. We want portable music. We're tired of buying one format, and then buying another 5 years later... We like variety in our music and we like it accessible. The best thing a record company could do now is scoop up a lot of unsigned artists, sort them very well according to genre and "sounds like". Nickel and dime the prices and sell them online DRM free then get a whole bunch of tailwind money.

    Variety and innovation will out-pace piracy and sharing... and even with sharing, people will want more of what they like. The paradigm has already changed, someone just has to do it right.

    Open source music would be a really neat idea. Online collaboration, remixing and sharing would help new artists see how songs are mastered and work with other artists to form great songs.
  • childofme, on 04/29/2008, -5/+1shoulda done it legal like http://www.volumevote.com did
  • crushtheenemy, on 04/29/2008, -1/+17Shouldn't they just sue the internet instead, seeing it's where the files are stored?
    • Echomote, on 04/29/2008, -3/+2No, they'd sue the people hosting the files, not the entire Internet. Fool.
      • Phreakinus, on 04/29/2008, -0/+1Wow lol Echomote totally didn't get that this is a joke
        • jnava121, on 04/29/2008, -0/+0NO FOOL, SUE BINARY THAT DAMN BINARY AND HIS 10 terrorist file sharing friends, those two terrorists should be sued !!!!!
    • stonebone4, on 04/29/2008, -1/+4You can't sue a series of tubes
  • donores, on 04/29/2008, -1/+3WE SHALL NOT BE MOVED
  • dildoolielly, on 04/29/2008, -3/+19Answer: Criminalize more people, build more prisons
  • mdoenges, on 04/29/2008, -1/+3Really, Seriously?
    I thought we were past this whole the Internet is the enemy of the music industry thing.
    Stop chastising the stuff that works, maybe the BMG ASCAP and the RIAA could work out some sort of royalty deal with the site
    RATHER THAN SUING THE FING ***** OUT OF EVERYONE
  • stonebone4, on 04/29/2008, -1/+29Dear Record Companies Suing Project Playlist:

    When I hear about a band someone tells me I would like, I immediately use my Project Playlist plugin in Firefox's built-in search. I listen to a few songs that are on there from that band, without downloading them, only streaming them online. Entire songs, not crappy 30-second samples that tend to be useless when you like bands that don't follow the same boring song structure used in 99% of popular music.

    If I like the band, I immediately go to Amazon and I buy the album, such as I did last night when a friend recommended a band called Porcupine Tree to me.

    If I don't like the band, I close the tab and forget I ever bothered.

    Just a hint - maybe you should stop with the frivolous lawsuits and find a method just like this to promote your artists so that you sell more music. People who steal are going to steal anyway, and you're only pissing off actual customers (like me) with nonsense like this.

    Signed,
    Someone In Your Target Market That You Don't Know A Goddamn Thing About, Esq.
    • jnava121, on 04/29/2008, -0/+4Dear Someone,

      Please give us your address so we can Sue you for copyright infringement. Under the Digital I heard it through soundwaves act, we can sue you for sharing the song telepathically with friends. This also includes humming, and re-reading an non authorized verse. Please pay us 8,000 dollars since our Law- Suit is foolproof. Also we know you don't have a couple of thousand in the bank to cover attorney's fee in a civil suit .

      Thanks,

      Record Company Guy
    • theysayjump, on 04/29/2008, -0/+3A-*****-men.
  • SpoonusBardus, on 04/29/2008, -1/+4Amazing that they *still* don't get that threatening people and throwing their weight around won't force people to go back to buying CDs.
  • SilverBlade2k, on 04/29/2008, -1/+18***** THE RIAA
  • Beatmiser, on 04/29/2008, -0/+20Thank god that the Record Companies are looking out for Bono and Gwen, I think that the hovels they live in might be blown over by a stiff wind leaving them huddling in the cold and unable survive- shivering like lost children in the night. This action will enable them to survive one more furtive day!
  • viperr227, on 04/29/2008, -3/+3I don't really see why its a bid deal yo, because music is music your gonna find it on-line anyways almost everyone in America who has excess to the Internet has downloaded music illegally. What's the riaa gonna do sue everything that breathes a word that is related to illegal downloading
  • jcastillo81, on 04/29/2008, -1/+3The creation of the digital media file means there is an infinite supply. When someone "steals" an mp3, a record does not magically disappear from a warehouse or store shelve. No one's property is taken from them. If someone made it easy and free for everyone to replicate clothing, would you be a thief if you no longer paid for clothing? Distributors would die because they would no longer be necessary. The people that really care about fashion would find ways to support their favorite designers and designers would be required to find opportunities for their fans to support them.
  • Fallout911, on 04/29/2008, -1/+13I like stealing your music and will continue to do so until you go bankrupt.
  • uberamd, on 04/29/2008, -2/+9Why don't they sue google while they are at it? After all, doing the search: ( intitle:"index of" mp3 "song name" ) finds MP3's as well on public servers...
    • cwings, on 04/29/2008, -1/+1The site doesn't simply provide an index of songs available on other websites and link to them offsite, it caches and hosts the files itself for playback meaning they're storing the songs on their own servers. Google only caches the directories not the files.
  • exformation, on 04/29/2008, -0/+14And this is why we can't have nice things.
  • shazbot, on 04/29/2008, -0/+1They aren't breaking any laws here. They are just allowing you to search the web for mp3s, like Google. Is SkreemR going to be next?
  • dukeochutney, on 04/29/2008, -0/+8news flash: record companies sue everyone who has ever had contact with their records.
  • Comp1demon, on 04/29/2008, -0/+7I don't get it?
    SO this site figures out where are the legal music is hosted and makes it easy for you to find it and listen to it?

    Example - I am into some obscure band like Insane clown possee (bad example but hey roll with it).
    Jennifier of omaha Nebraska has the ICP song Im looking for on her myspace page.
    The service finds the song on Jennifers page and enables me to listen to it as if i was at jennifers myspace page?
    Well as long as jennifers Myspace isn't private - I don't see the issue?
    If her page is public I can go to her page and listen to it - all this service does is allow me to listen to it without having to read about the cute teddy beats jeener is into.

    Seems kind of grey line - but if all it is doing is indexing already avalable music that is legal, just making it easer to find - then I don;t see the issue. I never understood how linking to something can be infringing.

    the point is if it is on the internet and cand be found - to point someone to it shouldn't be infringing or illegal. I just don't get it.

    someone care to explain this to me or let me know if i have the general idea here?
    • Surferess, on 04/29/2008, -0/+2Ok here is how it works. Yes you can go and listen to the song. That is not what the RIAA and major labels are talking about. They are talking about that playlist gives you the URL to the song, and you can just go save the song to your hard drive. Listening to the song isn't the problem, although many savvy folks can just rip the song when they find it, it is downloading the song in an mp3 format that is the desirable ends. As I mentioned before, not all servers will serve up the MP3 in downloadable format, but places like fileden do. You can take the URL, open it in another window, drop the mp3 URL address into the address bar and hit enter and you have a savable copy from the file menu.
  • JSStewart, on 04/29/2008, -1/+2Did anybody bother reading the Project Playlist copyright notice? They claim to go to great lengths to link to only legally posted music, and offer to immediately remove any links to music that may somehow infringe.

    Maybe it's a load of crap, but I think in a legal confrontation, they may be able to prove they have made a good faith effort here to keep it all legal, and they should be able to get away with this.
  • TwoLOUD, on 04/29/2008, -0/+6Suck my dick RIAA, yes suck my big dick you scum *****!

    there sue and bitch happy
  • neodorian, on 04/29/2008, -0/+4Is project playlist like seeqpod in that it only provides a frontend for search and playback of all the files sitting around on various web servers?
    • MrTito, on 04/29/2008, -0/+1Never heard of seeqpod, but yeah it sounds similar. And by similar, I mean exactly the same as you described.
  • wellyuk, on 04/29/2008, -0/+3People just need to sit tight and last this out a little longer. The record companies will either learn from the repeated mistakes and take advantage of services such as this, or they will die out. There's only so long they can continue to make unsubstantiated lawsuits and they simply can't beat the millions of file sharers around the world
  • greyhatloki, on 04/29/2008, -0/+1I was waiting for this to happen...
  • smoger, on 04/29/2008, -0/+4so the RIAA believes it's illegal to acknowledge the existence of mp3's hosted on the internet? ..because that's all the PP does...
  • damnasteroids, on 04/29/2008, -0/+2I can't decide whether to digg this or bury it due to the sheer dumbness of the thing. as people have already mentioned, project playlist only indexes mp3s hosted on other public servers and streams them.

    if anything, I'd expect the RIAA to use it to track down actual uploaders to sue.
  • KFantasy017, on 04/29/2008, -0/+1There goes my music.
  • sandiegodude, on 04/29/2008, -0/+0Hey RIAA I use project playlist on my social network page! Are you coming after me next? "OMG you didn't pay for the sound to touch your ears! You are breaking teh lawz!!!"

    Assholes. This isn't even file sharing, at least on the end user side. You're just listening to it, you're not keeping it, that's it. RIAA want's a piece, let PP start streaming ads in between the music (but start providing reliable hosts that don't up and disappear constantly)

    I'm still waiting for the RIAA to collapse in on itself, considering it isn't paying out the money to the artists it wins after assraping the people they sue anyway.
  • digjam, on 04/29/2008, -0/+1DAMN!!!! I just want to stop listening to music altogether bcos of RIAA!!!!!!
    • bdbr, on 04/29/2008, -0/+1Just stop listening to THEIR music. There's a lot more music out there from non-RIAA labels. Much of the top 10 based on radio plays or sales is RIAA music, and its just vapid and repetitive. Most of the top 10 based on quality alone is from non-RIAA labels.
  • pnunn, on 04/29/2008, -1/+0Seems to me like label execs are suing anyone in sight just to prevent the axe from falling on them. Stall all you want dudes- doesn't change the fact that you should have been saving the money you spent on blow all these years while you strung bands along when you weren't throwing them into debt and eating on their tab. Your jobs will be gone soon. C@#$sucking slimebuckets.

  • reed311, on 04/29/2008, -4/+3It was only a matter of time. This site has been cheating songwriters out of their due royalties for a while now.
  • MattMillz, on 04/29/2008, -0/+1Wow, this is just a music specific search engine, much like google's image search!!!!!?
    They don't host music files, just index there location.
    The RIAA have used similar services to this like BayPST to find copyright infringer's!
  • khrome23, on 04/29/2008, -1/+0ProjectPlaylist does two things. One, it allows you to search for music files *on the net* (not on their site because *they don't host any*). So is RIAA going to sue Google, Yahoo, Dogpile, and all the other search engines too? Because they do the same thing.

    The second thing it does is allows you to play the music with their player. So, is RIAA going to sue Microsoft because I can send MP3s using Outlook? Because Oulook is a messenger, just like the PP's widgets are.

    All this really does is give these inflated music labels more power, and taking power away from independant artists that can benefit from tools like ProjectPlaylist to market their music.

    I'm sure there is a balance where everyone can be happy if they concentrate their efforts in listening to the ideas of collaborative artists like Trent Reznor instead of suing everyone. But in a way, I guess it's nice to know who really makes music for the money, and who makes it for the love of the art.
  • JohnnyRad, on 04/29/2008, -0/+1htttpguidedog + project playlist = filesharing
  • P522, on 04/30/2008, -1/+0Oh, this is one of those services that helps people steal bandwidth. They link to songs on the Web through their player so that the visitor does not even see the Web page that the song was on. So people on MySpace can have background music without loading songs on their own server, they just take someone else's bandwidth.
  • doub1, on 04/30/2008, -1/+0I know how this story ends. Why anyone would start a business like this is beyond me.
  • TheDude213, on 04/30/2008, -0/+1Ironically U2 and Gwen Stefani are the least used songs on anyone's play list, if used at all.
  • tylerromes, on 04/30/2008, -0/+1The RIAA is like The Grinch. It sucks that this happened, but I guess rules are rules. I am a avid lover of a pretty similar website, nutsie.com, it's pretty similar (but is actually still running). check it out, here's some personal favorites.

    iTunes Top 100 - http://www.nutsie.com/playlist/iTunes%20Top%20100/ ...

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