San Diego - A federal judge has dismissed a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by major label EMI against Michael Robertson, founder of MP3.com and current head of digital music locker firm MP3tunes, but allowed the label's lawsuit against MP3tunes to proceed to trial. "Suing CEOs personally is a nasty tactic media companies are engaging in to intimidate individuals, forcing them to either enter into a settlement or face the possibility of losing their homes, cars, and all their personal belongings," said Robertson.

EMI, along with 14 other labels, sued Robertson and MP3tunes in federal court in New York in November 2007.

They allege that the MP3tunes service, which allows its 150,000 users to upload their music collections to the company's servers and then stream them from any device with an Internet connection, constitutes copyright infringement.

Robertson noted that the case will "determine if it is permissible for consumers to store their music in online commercial services for everywhere access, directly analogous to the way they currently store documents, photos and other personal data in cloud services, such as those offered by Google, Apple and others."

"Many large companies, such as AOL (Xdrive), Microsoft (Skydrive) and BT (The Vault) offer online music storage, but EMI intentionally targeted my small company thinking they would have a tactical legal advantage," added Robertson.

"Much is at stake because if we lose this case it will shut down every online storage company and cripple consumers' rights."

Robertson is no stranger to music industry litigation.

The labels sued his MP3.com venture back in 2000 over a similar locker streaming service; Robertson eventually settled with all of them and paid a reported more than $200 million in damages.

Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/40xxd

http://snipurl.com/40y62 (Scribd: text of ruling)

http://www.mp3tunes.com