RIAA speaks out about Muxtape shutdown
Earlier this week, online mixtape site Muxtape temporarily closed down, blaming a ‘problem’ with the RIAA (although promising to be back up soon).
Now the RIAA has been talking about the problem to Portfolio, giving details of its issues with Muxtape:
“For the past several months, we have communicated our legal concerns with the site and repeatedly tried to work with them to have illegal content taken down. Muxtape was hosting copies of copyrighted sound recordings without authorization from the copyright owners. Making these recordings available for streaming playback also requires authorization from the copyright owners. Muxtape has not obtained authorization from our member companies to host or stream copies of their sound recordings.”
Views differ on the clash, with many bloggers slamming the RIAA for trying to squash a potentially important new music discovery service, while music industry types point out that the site was trying to make its fortune from allowing people to upload and share copyrighted music, albeit by streaming.
What do you think? Should the RIAA have held fire to allow deals to be struck between Muxtape and its labels, or should Muxtape have moved faster to go legit? Post a comment and let us know your thoughts!
August 21st, 2008 at 5:10 pm
“…the site was trying to make its fortune…?”
Ummm, how? By not serving ads anywhere on the site? RIAA comes off looking like a dumb gorilla once again.
August 22nd, 2008 at 8:38 pm
If there trading in copyrighted material that they have no agreement for payment structure for they should be shut down. This web site is not a great revolution of invention its simply one computer talking to another swapping stolen material for someones benefit as well as the artist or labels loss. Torrents and sits as this all help in killing the Music industry tiny indys to the Majors. This is not just a story of Major domination but also of indys being hit the hardest they dont have the money, power, or resources to protect their artist. As a label owner , we don’t need Muxtapes help. Dont forget, over 2300 Retail stores have gone out of business since 2001 in the USA and digital is not picking up the slack at all for the Indys. Digital is great for increasing the profit margin at Apple for mini pods but its rainbow is a black one for the labels. Copyright has to be respected, there is no new world, we’re all still suck here on earth unfortunately.