Techotic

Michael Robertson, the CEO of MP3Tunes speaks out when EMI have decided not to only sue MP3tunes but Michael personally when they named a sum in their law suit that could effectively will bankrupt Michael, costing him his house, car, kids’ college funds.

Here is what Michael wrote on his personal website:

This week in a New York court attorney’s for EMI made the argument about why I should be personally liable as CEO of MP3tunes. They are suing not only MP3tunes, but also me personally and are going after my home, cars and kids college funds in their suit. I’m fighting back because it’s wrong to go after someone simply because they are the CEO and MP3tunes is not about piracy. We let people listen to their own music collection (not others). Unlike most others online, we are strict about not sharing music between Lockers. I’m not alone in having to personally face the attacks of music attorneys. Besides misguided suits against end users the labels are personally suing other CEOs in a calculated strategy to try and intimidate company executives and investors from doing digital music start-ups.

Late last year EMI filed a lawsuit against MP3tunes for copyright infringement because we offer secure Music Lockers and a music search engine called Sideload. MP3tunes offers a personal service where each user can store their music library in a password protected area and then listen to it from any web page in an iTunes style interface, sync it to other computers they own or stream the music on a net radio, TiVo, Wii or other electronic device. Unlike virtually every other online service we do not allow public access to music files for “sharing”, listening, or any other purpose (unlike services from AOL, Microsoft, Google, etc). Nevertheless, EMI sued MP3tunes and named me personally in the lawsuit.

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