Mobile phone tunes prompt $45m lawsuit

EMI Music Publishing is suing a website that lets users change their mobile phone ringing tones to popular songs, because it says the service breaches copyright.

Yourmobile.com, run by Californian technology incubator Global Music One (GMO), offers short clips of hundreds of songs, ranging from the Indonesian national anthem to the Venga Boys, that users can upload to their mobiles for free.

In a lawsuit filed in a federal court in New York this week, EMI is seeking at least $150,000 for each of 300 songs on which it holds the copyright that were distributed via the site. These include John Lennon's Imagine, the James Bond theme and Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit.

EMI alleges in its filing that GMO and its chairman Ralph Simon "are copyright pirates. They have engaged in a deliberate, fraudulent and deceptive scheme, engineered by Mr Simon, to infringe EMI Music Publishing's copyrights in immensely popular musical compositions."

GMO has since removed the songs named in the suit. The company could not be reached today for comment, but Simon told Dow Jones Newswires that he was working on a settlement with EMI and already had licensing deals in place with other publishers.

See also:

MP3: making sweet music on the net

The music industry has been shaken up by the emergence of MP3-based music websites such as Napster. Critics accuse them of facilitating piracy while advocates say they make it easier for unsigned musicians to have their music heard. We look at what all the fuss is about.  08 Aug 2000

Napster mulls copyright-friendly system

Digital music firm Liquid Audio could hold the key to the future of embattled music sharing site Napster.  04 Aug 2000

Napster verdict could sink UK pirates

British music industry officials today welcomed the decision by a US judge to pull the plug on the Napster music swapping system, saying it would help their fight against online music piracy in the UK.  27 Jul 2000

Napster ordered to suspend service

A judge in the US has effectively ordered that music-swapping site Napster be closed down.  27 Jul 2000

Like this story? Spread the news by clicking below:

 del.icio.us     Digg this     reddit!