RIAA files copyright suit against Project Playlist

The recording industry filed a lawsuit on Monday alleging that Project Playlist, a company that provides an embeddable music player used at MySpace and Facebook, has violated its copyright.

According to a copy of the complaint obtained by CNET News.com, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed suit on behalf of nine record labels and accuses Project Playlist of making unauthorized reproductions of their music.

"Project Playlist performs and reproduces plaintiffs' valuable works (and induces and enables others to do so) without any authorization whatsoever," the RIAA said in its complaint, "without paying any compensation whatsoever."

"Defendant is well aware that the overwhelming majority of the sound recordings in its index are infringing," the RIAA continued. "The overwhelming majority of the third-party Web sites that host these recordings do so illegally."

In the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court of the Southern district of New York, the RIAA has asked for unspecified damages.

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.

Representatives from Project Playlist could not be reached. On the company's Web site, Project Playlist said that 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," Project Playlist said on its site. "We do not control those third party Web sites. We do not host music files."

Companies that allegedly facilitate the distribution of pirated content have tried to argue that because they don't host unauthorized files they don't violate copyright. That hasn't stopped the RIAA or the motion-picture industry from filing suit.

The most recent example was TorrentSpy, a popular BitTorrent tracker that closed down last month after fighting a two-year legal battle with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).

The lawsuit against Project Playlist was first reported by Reuters.

[mattumanu]

They want to shut down legal competition

I'm a podcaster, who writes the music for my show as well as hosting and other duties. By targetting the services that allow me to easily distribute my show (and other shows) the RIAA seeks shut people like me down. Read the list of "third party" sites. Many of them host legitemate material.

[Imalittleteapot]

Media Player?

Would this also make Windows Media Player illegal too? I can use it to play illegally copied music.

A friend also has a website with links that when clicked play audio files via requesting Media Player to load and redirecting it to the audio file hosted on their site.

If my friend was hosting illegal music instead of audio commentary, or illegal movies then could they sue Microsoft for facilitating copyright violations by producing Media Player?

What about the flash player from YouTube that I can embed in my page? Instead of playing the song with this I could simply find the whole video on YouTube, and then embed the whole video right onto my page. Also, consider that if I embed the YouTube video, the files aren't even hosted by the third party anymore. They really are hosted by YouTube. Wouldn't YouTube's embedded flash player actually make a more logical target? Well at least I think that's how YouTube videos are hosted. Don't really use it much.

[aka_tripleB]

This will be costly for the RIAA

Especially if they lose. Project Playlist clearly has a legitimate use for its software. Not all, if not most, of the music played through the software is infringing copyright law. And the DMCA cannot be invoked, because it's not Project Playlist that is circumventing any protection that may have been placed on the music. Depending how the music is "reproduced," there might not be a case at all. But seems how there is no evidence on my computer that any music file was copied to it, it would appear that there isn't much of a case there. So the only people the RIAA should be going after are the people that are hosting the servers that have the infringing content on them.

But we know all about the RIAA and its lawyers: they're lazy. They don't try to do any research or do a little work that will do what they say they are trying to stop (they claim to be trying to stop copyright infringement of their client's work). It's pretty clear now that they are just trying to extort money from people.