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Lawmakers
want to legalize MP3.com service
Several U.S. Congressmen have introduced new legislation that
would legalize the services for which MP3.com faces potentially
hundreds of millions of dollars in copyright damages. Dubbed
the "Music Owners’ Listening Rights Act of 2000,"
the bill would give companies the right to copy CDs, store
them online, and stream the songs individually to listeners
who could prove they already owned a copy of the CD.
That’s almost exactly the service that MP3.com offered
to consumers earlier this year, and for which it was sued
by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and
the "Big Five" record labels -- Sony Music Group,
EMI Recorded Music, Bertelsmann’s BMG Entertainment,
Warner Music Group and Seagram’s Universal Music Group.
Although MP3.com has settled with four of the five plaintiffs,
it still faces the prospect of paying Universal as much as
$250 million in damages. Rep. Rich Boucher, D-Va., and at
least three colleagues think that’s not a good precedent
for the young online music business. "We believe that
the technology, which gives rise to this new convenience,
should be encouraged," Boucher said in a floor statement
introducing the bill. "Our legislation will remove legacy
copyright restrictions, which were written for a different
era and that threaten to strangle the technology in its infancy."
The legislation comes partly at the behest of MP3.com, which
has been circulating proposed legislation for some time. But
already it has spooked the copyright owners’ groups who
have opposed such services.
In a joint letter to Congress, the RIAA, the Motion Picture
Association of America, the National Music Publishers’
Association, the Songwriters Guild of America and royalty
distribution groups ASCAP and BMI warned of the effects of
the proposed legislation. "This legislation is misguided
as a matter of public policy and grossly unfair to creators,"
the groups wrote in their letter. "If MP3.com’s
proposal were enacted, it would set a precedent for other
commercial enterprises to refuse to pay for the transmission
and copying of any copyrighted material over the Internet
including books, software, movies or video games."
The market is already working to support "locker"
services like this, the groups added. Four of the five major
labels have already agreed to license their content to MP3.com,
and holdout Universal has made a similar deal with start-up
Musicbank. The legislation has almost no chance of being acted
on this year.
If passed, the bill could have far-reaching effects in creating
online locker systems outside the control of the record companies.
But it wouldn’t do much to help MP3.com’s situation
-- the lawsuit brought against it is for legal violations
made under existing law, and changing a law in the future
wouldn’t help it escape liability. MP3.com could not
immediately be reached for comment.
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