MUMBAI: US recording industry body RIAA has filed a lawsuit alleging that Project Playlist Inc, the company that provides an embeddable music player most often used at MySpace and Facebook, has violated its copyright.
The suit filed by The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on behalf of nine music label companies, accuses the online music provider of a “massive infringement” of their copyrights to the songs of artistes including U2 and Gwen Stefani. RIAA has accused the website of making unauthorised reproductions of their music. “Project Playlist performs and reproduces plaintiffs’ valuable works (and induces and enables others to do so) without any authorisation whatsoever,” the RIAA said in its complaint, “without any compensation whatsoever to plaintiffs.”
Representatives from Playlist refused to comment. Though On the company’s website, Project Playlist says it is “committed to copyright protection” and does not support illegal copying of music files. “We make it easy for our users to create a playlist that points to a series of music files hosted on third party Web sites. We do not control those third party Web sites. We do not host music files.”
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Companies that allegedly facilitate the distribution of pirated content have tried to argue that because they don’t host unauthorised files, they don’t violate copyright. But that hasn’t stopped the RIAA or the motion-picture industry from filing suit.
It’s unclear why none of the labels belonging to Sony BMG Music Entertainment were named as plaintiffs. The lawsuit said that some of the artists whose music was used without authorization are U2, Eminem, Elton John, The Beatles, Coldplay, and Sheryl Crow.
The nine record labels who have filed the suit are: Warner Music Group Corp’s Atlantic Recording Corp, Elektra Entertainment Group Inc and Warner Bros. Records Inc; EMI Group Plc’s Capitol Records LLC, Priority Records LLC and Virgin Records America Inc; and the Interscope Records, Motown Record Co LP and UMG Recordings Inc labels of Vivendi SA’s Universal Music Group.
