Music

Media company pays $950,000 for peddling discount Beatles songs

by Anne T. Donahue

Media Rights Technologies has learned a valuable lesson after agreeing to pay $950,000 for selling discounted MP3s by the likes of The Beatles, Coldplay, and Radiohead.

The lesson? Don’t do it.

Slapped with copyright infringement after the website, BlueBeat, was busted for peddling 25-cent Beatles tracks prior to the bands’ iTunes agreement, Media Rights attempted to claim that they weren’t selling the originals, but “psycho-acoustic simulations” that boasted re-recorded parts and “artistic touches”. Unsurprisingly, the company’s variation on the “fair use” clause didn’t fly in federal court. [via Rolling Stone]