The decision follows a court decision in a case brought by the
Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), an organisation
representing five major record labels, for copyright infringement.
MP3.com has been in negotiations with representative of the RIAA in
an attempt to avoid damages which the record industry estimates at
$6 billion.
Robin Richards, president of MP3.com said it regrets this new
step and that it would inconvenience over 500,000 My.MP3.com
account holders.
The My.MP3.com service was launched in January 2000. The company
built up a library of popular CDs, copied them onto a server
accessible from its web site and invited subscribers to customise
and download the music files from any location. In an attempt to
avoid copyright infringement, subscribers were required to either
demonstrate that they already owned any of the CDs from which they
wanted to download MP3 format tracks or purchase the CDs from an
on-line retailer co-operating with MP3.com.
However, the precautions were insufficient. Judge Jed S. Rakoff
said MP3 was simply replaying for the subscribers converted
versions of the recordings it copied, without authorisation, from
copyrighted CDs.
Damages in the case will be determined at a trial to begin on
August 28th.
