Hank Risen, the owner of BlueBeat.com, which was found last week to be selling MP3s of the Beatles' catalogue for as little as 15p per track, has defiantly stated that he owns the copyrights in the songs that he's selling.

EMI filed a lawsuit against the company, and Hank Risen - the owner - has issued a bizarre defense filing that claims that he - not Apple Corps or EMI - owns the sound recordings. He says that because he's re-recorded them using "psycho-acoustic simulation" which "express the way [he] believe[s] a particular melody should be heard as a live performance", he owns the recording.

Risan told EMI in an email that he's got a successfully registered copyright on those recordings with the US Copyright Office, but a judge will now have to decide whether those recordings are sufficiently different to the originals to justify a new copyright. Legal precedent, particularly with regard to sampling, suggests he might be facing an uphill battle.

For now, though, BlueBeat.com still continues to offer free streams of the Beatles' catalogue, and 25-cent 160kbps MP3s. It'll be interesting to see how the judge in the case interprets the law. We'll keep you posted.

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Tags: Audio Music BlueBeat EMI Beatles Copyright Music downloads Lawsuits

BlueBeat claims it owns copyright in Beatles tracks originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:03:24 +0000

In what's being described as an industry first, Queen are joining up with Logitech to offer their new album "Absolute Greatest" exclusively first the Wi-Fi-enabled Logitech Squeezebox Radio and music player.

From now, owners of the Logitech Squeezebox Radio can listen to the new Queen album before it hits the shops on 16 November, as well as see and hear unique Queen content.

This content includes a series of Queen photographs that have been made available for the first time, in addition to exclusive track-by-track audio commentaries in which Brian May and Roger Taylor talk through the composition and history of each famous song.

To access Queen goodies, Squeezebox users need to select the Queen application found under the Squeezebox Radio's new Apps menu.

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Tags: Audio Logitech Queen Logitech Squeezebox EMI

Logitech's Squeezebox Radio gets Queen album early originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 29 Sep 2009 11:10:42 +0100