Monday, April 28,2008 @ 4:20pm
Project Playlist hit with record industry lawsuit
The music site Project Playlist has been hit with a lawsuit filed by the record industry, Reuters reports. Some nine labels, including companies owned by Warner, EMI and Universal, have filed suit in the US District Court of Manhattan, accusing the site of numerous copyright infringements. The site lets users search for songs and create streaming playlists, in a much more targeted fashion than services such Pandora or Last.fm; the site does not, however, have a license for any of the content it offers, even though it makes money on advertising.
"In short (Project Playlist's) entire business amounts to nothing more than a massive infringement," the labels' court filing claims. Should they win, the labels are seeking to have the site's illegal music streaming halted, and unspecified damages paid in compensation. The companies note that Project Playlist is extremely popular, receiving an average of over 600,000 visitors daily, and 9.5 million page hits.