MIT has had to shut down its eyebrow-raising Library Access to Music Project (LAMP). The project has been overzealously heralded by some as a panacea to the problems of P2P on college campuses, as it purported to make thousands of songs freely available on the campus' cable TV network. The service made great use of the so-called "analog hole," ostensibly skirting US Copyright issues by broadcasting below-CD quality analog music to devices that could not easily be used by end users to capture music (e.g., TVs). The service looked completely legal, although cynics were quick to point out that entities such as the RIAA would likely wrangle it to the ground using whatever methods possible.
It turns out that the LAMP's fuel, as it were, was not "properly licensed" in the view of several recording labels. LAMP had purchased $30,000 is music in digital format from Loudeye, a Seattle-based company that specializes in encoding, management, and distribution of digital media. Loudeye was informed in recent days by recording industry representatives that the company does not have the legal right to provide its services to MIT under these circumstances. Apparently the contractual arrangements between Loudeye and the recoding industry were previously not well understood. MIT has stated that Loudeye had assured them multiple times over the past year that the proposed MIT usage of their encoded products would in fact be legal. Given the players in the game, it is likely that Loudeye was under the impression that they were legally capable of providing such services to MIT. That is, until the RIAA and friends had something to say about it. Now, however, Loudeye is saying very little. The LA Times has one executive pointing the finger at MIT:
"We provided content to MIT," Loudeye publicist Stan Raymond said. "We did not provide licenses for them to issue that content."
Originally MIT had planned on working out copyright deals with objecting parties, but it looks as though the avalanche has led them to stop the service entirely, at least for now. As usual, the denizens of the music industry are painting MIT as the villain here.
Kelly Mullens, a spokeswoman for Vivendi Universal's Universal Music Group, said, "It is unfortunate that MIT launched a service in an attempt to avoid paying recording artists, union musicians and record labels. Loudeye recognized that they had no right to deliver Universal's music to the MIT service, and MIT acted responsibly by removing the music."
MIT has stated that they remain committed to providing the LAMP legally. What's to stop LAMP and other similar services from going out and buying regular CDs, and encoding them manually? Certainly not common sense, but since when has common sense had anything to do with the music industry?
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