Indie label TVT Records Inc., home to such acts as Nashville Pussy and XTC, has joined the fray against online music company MP3.com Inc., alleging violations of copyright law in a suit filed here on Wednesday.
Following the model of the five major record labels and several publishing companies, TVT accused the San Diego, California, company of copyright infringement stemming from My.MP3.com, a service that allows users to effectively store music and then access it via any computer connected to the Internet.
New York-based TVT's roster also includes Snoop Dogg, via the rapper's nascent Dogghouse Records label.
The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York, "is the first to be brought by an independent label," TVT's spokesman Paul Freundlich said.
MP3.com executives were not immediately available for comment.
The same court ruled on April 28 that MP3.com infringed on copyrights held by the world's largest record labels by creating a database of more than 80,000 albums. MP3.com designed software that lets computer users with an original copy of one of the recordings in the database to register that CD.
It then allows the user to listen to that album over the Internet from any computer, without having to insert the original disc.
"The vast majority of TVT's roster is represented on MP3.com's database," Freundlich said. TVT is seeking to shut down the service and collect damages.
Warner Bros., Sony Music, Universal Music, Bertelsmann Music Group, and EMI Group originally filed their suit in January as part of an ongoing anti-piracy crusade launched partly in response to the success of MP3 Technology.
The MP3 format allows music to be downloaded from the Internet in small amounts of data. The compression makes it easy to store and copy music onto personal computers.
On May 10, about a week and a half after U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff ruled in favor of the major labels, MP3.com halted access to the major labels songs on the database. At the time, the company said, it was still in negotiations to license the songs from the labels.
MP3.com chief executive Michael Robertson said at the time of the ruling the service featured music from over 4,000 labels.
