MP3tunes.com

Bankruptcy will not protect MP3tunes.com or founder Michael Robertson from answering for the copyright violations they allegedly committed, according to EMI, the record company that's home to The Beatles, The Beach Boys, and Coldplay.

CNET broke the news today that MP3tunes.com, a music locker service that let users store songs on the company's servers and then access them from Web-connected devices, filed for bankruptcy protection.

The service was noteworthy for being one of the first unlicensed music locker services and helping to pave the way for similar services offered by Google and Amazon. But MP3tunes.com … Read more

MP3tunes.com, the music locker service that rose from the ashes of pioneer sharing site MP3.com, has filed for bankruptcy, records show.

MP3tunes.com was sued out of existence by EMI, one of the four top record companies, according to founder Michael Robertson, a technology entrepreneur who started Linspire, MP3.com, and DAR.fm. In 2007, EMI accused MP3tunes.com of violating its copyright and so ensued more than four years of litigation, heaping loads of legal costs onto the startup music service.

"Four and a half years of legal costs and we're not even out of … Read more

A federal judge has decided that MP3tunes, a music locker service accused in a lawsuit of enabling mass piracy, has protection under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. But the judge has also ruled that the company's founder, Michael Robertson, is personally liable for music he uploaded to the service without permission of copyright owners.

In a 29-page decision, U.S. District Judge William Pauley granted the summary motion filed by record company EMI on the two points.

Pauley, from U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, ruled that Robertson and MP3tunes.com are liable for … Read more

Amazon shot past Apple and Google into the cloud and generated a lot of buzz by launching a new service last night that lets people store their digital media on the company's servers.

What the company didn't do was license the rights to do this from the major Hollywood film studios and top record companies. Certainly, many from the film and music camps believe that without obtaining the proper permission, Amazon's new service violates their legal rights, multiple sources from the entertainment sector told CNET.

Cloud Drive, announced late Monday, is a hard-drive backup service accessible via … Read more

One of the chief concerns that some in the music industry have about digital-locker services is that at least a couple of them allow all songs, even pirated tunes, to be stored in the cloud.

Thomas Hesse, digital chief for Sony Music Entertainment, said as much at the Midem conference in France on Saturday, according to Billboard.

"We are very uncomfortable with a model where you can just throw anything into the cloud and stream it, if what you threw into the cloud was not legitimately purchased," Hesse said during a panel session. "It's not the … Read more

Roku, the set-top box known for streaming Netflix movies from the Web to users' television sets, has teamed with MP3tunes.com to offer users the ability to stream their iTunes music libraries to their TVs.

"For the first time, music lovers can play their personal iTunes music collection on their TV without a home server," MP3tunes and Roku said in a statement Tuesday. "Roku has added expanded support for personal music collections with the addition of MP3tunes."

Michael Robertson, the entrepreneur who loves to challenge the music sector and the founder of MP3tunes.com, is once … Read more

An article about Apple's plan to "soon" launch a cloud service featuring music and movies stirred up a great deal of speculation on Thursday. "Soon," however, is a relative term because Apple has yet to snag licenses from the top four music labels, sources tell CNET.

The Boy Genius Report's article cited an anonymous source who declared that the Apple service will offer "streaming music and movies from Apple's servers to your computers," will sync iTunes with devices, and will stream content from a home computer to other Web-enabled gadgets.

While … Read more

Web radio and cloud music are hot--largely thanks to the recent success of Pandora, but that doesn't stop Michael Robertson from declaring that what online radio currently offers is "lame."

Robertson, the controversy-courting founder of MP3.com and Linspire, is preparing to roll out a new online music service called BYO.fm. He said that BYO taps into Web radio's potential to enable users to act as their own program directors.

"All online radio does now is transfer audio over the Web," Robertson said. "Web radio should be personalized."

BYO, which stands … Read more

Apple executives have spoken to the top four recording companies about plans to offer a streaming music service free of charge to consumers, multiple music industry sources told CNET.

Apple's managers haven't revealed many details about their plans but did discuss offering iTunes users a means to store copies of their music libraries on Apple's servers. The benefits to an iTunes user would include the ability to back up music and access songs off the Web from any Internet-connected device and conceivably from anywhere in the world.

Apple's song downloads apparently aren't affected. Apple has … Read more