November 16, 2000 7:20 AM PST
MP3.com faces new suit after settling with record labels
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Thursday's lawsuit was filed as a class action for copyright infringement by Unity Entertainment and others. The suit was filed by the law firm of Engstrom, Lipscomb & Lack.
The suit comes soon after Tuesday's consent judgment requiring MP3.com to pay $53.4 million to end a lawsuit by Seagram's Universal Music Group. MP3.com also agreed to license Universal's catalog of songs for use on its My.MP3.com locker service. Previously, MP3.com settled out of court with the other four major labels--Sony Music Group, Time Warner's Warner Music Group, EMI Recorded Music and Bertelsmann's BMG Entertainment.
Record labels and music publishers have taken legal action to stop MP3.com from offering My.MP3.com. The service had amassed a database of 80,000 songs that could be tapped over the Internet by customers who proved they had purchased the same music on a CD. But unlike other music locker services such as Myplay.com, MP3.com did not require people to copy their own CDs, instead providing a ready-made database of songs.
"On behalf of both consumers and artists, we are disappointed to receive this complaint, particularly in light of the strides we have made in securing licensing agreements from now all five of the major record labels," MP3.com CEO Michael Robertson said in a statement.
