A federal judge has rebuffed XM’s efforts to have a lawsuit by several major music labels (Atlantic, BMG, Capitol) thrown out of court and a trial will proceed, according AP . U.S. District Judge Deborah A. Batts issued a ruling Friday finding merit to the companies’ claims that XM is cheating them by allowing users to storre songs on combo satellite radio/MP3 players. XM argued that it was protected by the Home Audio Act of 1992 allowing radio recording for private use but the judge disagreed. She said XM’s deal with the labels covered the satellite radio service only and that by providing the means to store songs, the company was acting both as broadcaster and distributor.
I haven’t read the whole decision yet but this quote picked up by AP is worth noting: “It is manifestly apparent that the use of a radio-cassette player to record songs played over free radio does not threaten the market for copyrighted works as does the use of a recorder which stores songs from private radio broadcasts on a subscription fee basis.”
The company stands by its claims.
Subscriber content
?
Subscriber content comes from Gigaom Research, bridging the gap between breaking news and long-tail research. Visit any of our reports to learn more and subscribe.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
["wijax_68e09300dd48aa6884ea38da91c9349b","wijax_9659479e281562bf173e4fe39b03e2ad"]
{"source":"https:\/\/gigaom.com\/2007\/01\/19\/xm-loses-first-round-in-court-battle-with-music-labels\/wijax\/49e8740702c6da9341d50357217fb629","varname":"wijax_08011e510e6d5cb8aa510fe8848b05cd","title_element":"header","title_class":"widget-title","title_before":"%3Cheader%20class%3D%22widget-title%22%3E","title_after":"%3C%2Fheader%3E"}
{"source":"https:\/\/gigaom.com\/2007\/01\/19\/xm-loses-first-round-in-court-battle-with-music-labels\/wijax\/49e8740702c6da9341d50357217fb629","varname":"wijax_08011e510e6d5cb8aa510fe8848b05cd","title_element":"header","title_class":"widget-title","title_before":"%3Cheader%20class%3D%22widget-title%22%3E","title_after":"%3C%2Fheader%3E"}
Comments have been disabled for this post