When Are You a Leech? Lawsuit Alleges that Project Playlist Infringes Label Copyrights
A fascinating new lawsuit filed by the major record labels. The record labels sued Project Playlist on Monday alleging that the website was guilty of massive infringement. What's fascinating is that Project Playlist purports that it only allows it's users to make playlists of existing, legal music. In other words, it claims to allow its users to make a playlist consisting of multiple links to music resident on servers elsewhere. While this behavior has led to liability in Europe, it seems inconsistent with general linking law in the United States. (although the movie studios have sued so called "leeching" websites like torrentspy.com). It is unclear whether the record labels are alleging that Project Playlist is solely a leeching website like torrentspy or whether they are alleging more garden variety file sharing liability. I haven't been able to get a complaint yet, but the reports suggest that the record labels are alleging both the standard Grokster inducement claim as well as Project Playlist's illegal reproduction of the music. If it turns out that the only allegedly infringing activity of Project Playlist is the inline linking from user's playlists to third party hosted music, this could create new linking law since Project Playlist purports to do more than the typical leeching websites of the world.
