WHEN DOES THE HURTING STOP !?
EMI Music Publishing filed a $45 million copyright infringement suit against Global Music One today, accusing the company of allowing users to download more than 300 EMI songs for use as ringing tones on their cell phones. EMI filed the suit against Santa Monica, Calif.-based Global Music for its "YourMobile.com" Web site that allows users to change their telephone ring tones and substitute pop songs instead of normal ring tones. In a complaint filed with the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, EMI said Global Music and its president Ralph Simon had "engaged in a deliberate, fraudulent and deceptive scheme" to infringe EMI's copyrights. Among the songs available for download at GMO included John Lennon's "Imagine," Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," The James Bond Theme and "Start Me Up," by the Rolling Stones. In fact, those are but a few of the songs that might greet visitors upon their arrival to EMI's site, http://www.emimusicpub.com . GMO spokeswoman Debra Davis said the company had already removed the songs from its site when EMI sued, and called the suit a "knee-jerk reaction" by a company that is still reeling from having stayed on the sidelines too long with Napster. "Here you have a music industry that didn't react quickly enough with Napster, and they want to prepare themselves and make sure they're included this time," said Davis, who noted that the GMO site logs more than a million downloads of the disputed ring tones each month. |
And this is not even a joke !! Can you believe it ?
