EMI loses case against digital music pioneer

A New York District judge has dismissed EMI’s copyright infringement lawsuit against MP3Tunes CEO Michael Robertson. In November, 2007 14 record labels affiliated with the EMI filed the suit, claiming MP3Tunes’s internet locker service encourages copyright infringement. The service, which has 150,000 customers, provides personal, password protected accounts known as lockers that allow all music stored in them to be shared between PCs, game consoles, DVRs and cell phones.

The judge has allowed the suit against the company itself to proceed. It will eventually determine if it is permissible for music to be stored in cloud services the way documents and photos are. Interestingly enough, EMI has not sued the similar services offered by Microsoft, AOL or BT. Robertson believes that the reason behind that is that EMI decided it would be easier to make an example out of his small company.