For MP3.com these days, it's one step forward, and one step back.
On Tuesday, a New York federal district court judge handed independent record label TVT Records a victory in its copyright infringement case against MP3.com. Judge Jed Rakoff handed down a summary judgment in favor of the record label, which had sued MP3.com for the creation of its My.mp3.com streaming locker service in January 2000.
It wasn't an entirely unexpected verdict, as Rakoff had issued a similar ruling last year in a lawsuit brought by the Recording Industry Association of America.
The two parties are back in court on March 26 to determine the extent of the damages MP3.com will have to pay for willfully infringing on the label's copyrights. Damages could reach up to $150,000 per infringement, although Rakoff awarded substantially less than that in the RIAA case.
MP3.com will also resurrect its legal defense of challenging the validity of the copyrights that TVT Records claims it controls. Sound recordings are normally registered with the copyright office as works-for-hire, which allows the record labels to retain the rights to that work.
If a judge finds that the sound recordings are not work-for-hire, the labels wouldn't have claim to the copyright and therefore would not receive infringement damages because they would not own the copyright.
It's the equivalent of a legal Hail Mary pass, but the company doesn't have much to lose. So far the company hasn't won any major courtroom battles since it launched its controversial service last year.
MP3.com did manage to sign a licensing deal with Maverick Records -- home to the Prodigy and the Deftones.
The marketing deal allows MP3.com to add Maverick performers to the My.mp3.com service, and enables Maverick Records to use the digital music company's website to promote its bands.
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Digital music discussions: Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) spent the better part of last year blasting the record labels for not moving their content online in the two years since he helped pass the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Congress allowed the movie, music and broadcast industries to custom-design the law so the entertainment industry would move its content online -- but that hasn't happened to Hatch's liking. So on April 3, Hatch will open up hearings to discuss how copyright law needs to be modified to make it easier for technology companies to get access to entertainment content.
Few political pundits expect any serious changes in the law until 2003 at the earliest, but the move does mark the first time the Senate will start looking at how the DMCA might need to be altered.
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SDMI hopes to fly: The Secure Digital Music Initiative hopes to have digital rights management specs in place by the summer despite the loss of its chairman Leonard Chiarigione in January.
The 200 technology and content companies hope to have the open standard ready in time for consumer electronics groups to build the security standards into the new devices. As part of that plan, the SDMI group plans to move ahead with the testing of Phase II technologies, which includes non-watermarking solutions to the digital security issue.
The group is already moving closer to approving a watermarking format, after narrowing the choice to four standards.
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SXSW: That's South by Southwest -– one of the largest music, film and interactive conferences in the country that runs from March 9 through March 18.
Tens of thousands of attendees will descend upon Austin, Texas -– dubbed the live music capital of the world -– to talk about the latest in convergence technologies when they're not seeing the thousand or so bands who make the trip from around the world to play one-hour showcases.
This year, the conference focuses on how the entertainment industry has changed after the tumultuous year that saw digital distribution take on a more prominent role than ever before.
