LOS ANGELES -- More than 50 music publishers and songwriters, including country artist Vince Gill, on Wednesday said they filed a copyright infringement suit against Web music firm MP3.com.
The lawsuit was filed last week in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against MP3.com, which is being acquired by Vivendi Universal and is currently transforming itself from music industry rebel to partner.
Plaintiffs also include the estate of Roy Orbison.
Neither MP3.com nor Universal Music officials were available for comment on the latest lawsuit against MP3.com, which had been forced to pay out more than $160 million to major labels and publishers to resolve a different copyright suit.
That landmark suit stemmed from a database of more than 80,000 albums that MP3.com created as part of an "online music locker" that allowed users to store music digitally and later access it via any computer connected to the Internet.
The songwriters and publishers involved in the latest suit announced Wednesday contend it is the first suit against MP3.com seeking damages for enabling so-called "viral infringements" of about 1,000 songs.
The suit seeks actual damages and profits of MP3.com and alternatively statutory damages of $25,000 per song as well as a permanent injunction against MP3.com.
In their complaints, they allege that MP3.com is liable for direct infringement by converting songs to the MP3 format, a compression format that turns music on compact discs into small digital files.
While MP3.com has the same name as the popular format, the company had no patents or involvement in the creation of MP3, which has become wildly popular among Internet users for swapping and downloading songs.
The format is loathed by the music industry because it enables fans to download songs without copyright protection and was also at the center of a suit filed against Napster.
The suit alleges that once converted to the format, MP3.com then loaded the songs onto its servers and is liable for contributory infringement by creating "on demand" access to the infringed works by subscribers; and vicarious infringement for "viral distribution" of the infringed works downloaded by subscribers and then passed on to others.
Ric Dube, analyst with research firm Webnoize, called the songwriters' and publishers' lawsuit against MP3.com frivolous.
"These plaintiffs are saying that every time people used other services like Gnutella to download songs, MP3.com contributed to that," Dube said.
"They're going after MP3.com because Universal has deep pockets," he added.
MP3.com's technology is what led Vivendi Universal to buy the company. Once considered a pariah by the industry, MP3 is working with major labels through a key deal to provide its technology to the Pressplay subscription service being developed by Universal and Sony Music Entertainment, a unit of Sony.
Pressplay's service, which is slated to launch this fall, plans to use MP3.com's media delivery and subscription management technology.
Pressplay and a competing venture called MusicNet by rivals AOL Time Warner's Warner Music, EMI Group and Bertelsmann's BMG are the industry's efforts to fill the void left by Napster, which has seen its usage evaporate following a court-imposed injunction.
Copyright Management Services, which represents the licensing interests of many of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit announced on Wednesday, said it initiated contact with MP3.com in an attempt to negotiate reasonable license terms and avoid litigation.
After negotiations broke down, the independent songwriters and publishers were forced to file the action to protect their rights, the company said.
