Broadcast Music, Inc. alleges the mobile carrier is selling ringback tones without acquiring the proper licenses.
Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI), a music royalty collection and distribution group, has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against mobile carrier T-Mobile USA, alleging it sold ringback tones without the necessary licensing agreements.
According to a suit filed Dec. 19 with the U.S. Federal Court in the Central District of California, Los Angeles, BMI alleges T-Mobile has failed to sign the same ringback license as rival carriers.
“Despite extensive BMI efforts spanning several years, T-Mobile has not signed a license agreement,” it said in a statement to The Register. BMI adds the suit covers more than 50 titles from its repertoire, but declined to confirm the specific songwriters, composers, or music publishers it was representing in the suit.
The BMI suit follows on the heels of a case from last year in which the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) had begun suing mobile telephone companies with the argument that the playback of ringtones on a customer’s phone in public requires a public performance license, and that without one they are committing copyright infringement.
NY District Judge Judge Denise Cote later ruled that ringtones are exempt from the “public performance” dictates of the Copyright Act. She said that it exempts “those performances of a musical work that occur within the ‘normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances’ this performance would not count as a public performance.”
With the decline in physical media sales BMI is surely trying to get new revenue wherever it can, and with it’s own estimation of some $235 million dollars in ringback tone sales in 2009, it’s clearly found a target.
“It is a music use area that we see a continuing growth rate for,” says Richard Conlon, BMI’s Vice President for New Media & Strategic Development.”
Targeting T-Mobile is apparently part of its plan to profit from that growth.
Stay tuned.
jared@zeropaid.com
Its hard to say exactly what this lawsuit is all about. Its not a lawsuit on public performance… I don’t think it is anyway. From what I read it sound more like BMI is suing T-Mobile for selling ring tones without getting permission to do so. Or that a customers ring tone is stored on a server rather than on the phone, so I guess they might be arguing that the service should require a license? The only one that would really make sense is that they didn’t pay them for selling the ring tone, if its either of the other two BMI can piss off and stop being greedy little bitches.
The dinosaur knows about its impending doom and stages a final feeding frenzy, lol