For anyone who’s interested, Michael Robertson — whose mp3tunes.com service is being sued by EMI for what the record label claims is copyright infringement — has posted a lengthy overview of the issues (as he sees them) on his website. There are links to the statement of claim from EMI as well as Robertson’s countersuit against the record company. I wrote about the latest battle (the founder of Linspire has been down this road many times before) a few days ago when the EMI suit was launched.

EMI’s suit is kind of ironic, given the comments that Edgar Bronfman of Warner Music just finished making about how the industry has wasted too much time suing people over the past few years. And if you’re nostalgic for those years, or just can’t get enough of the Metallica “sue them until they drop dead” approach, check out this comment from KISS front-man, reality-show star and all-around loudmouthed moron Gene Simmons in a recent Billboard interview:

“Every little college kid, every freshly-scrubbed little kid’s face should have been sued off the face of the earth. They should have taken their houses and cars and nipped it right there in the beginning. Those kids are putting 100,000 to a million people out of work.”

Mike Masnick at Techdirt definitely has a point: mp3.com and Linspire (formerly Lindows) founder Michael Robertson does seem to have a way of getting sued. I’m not convinced that it’s a deliberate strategy on Robertson’s part, as the Techdirt post suggests, but it certainly seems to happen with alarming regularity. I guess that’s what happens when you spend most of your time trying to drag the record companies kicking and screaming into a new business model. The latest suit is from EMI, which has a long and tangled history with the entrepreneur.

The first go-round came with mp3.com — and in particular a service called MyMp3, which allowed you to upload your music to the company’s servers and stream it from anywhere. Even though the service checked to see whether you had the right to the CDs you were uploading, the record companies saw it as unauthorized copying and therefore copyright infringement and sued. Universal later acquired the assets of the company (CNET bought the domain name). After launching a Linux-based competitor to Windows (and being sued by Microsoft), Michael Robertson launched another online music venture called mp3tunes.com, with a number of features. In addition to the ability to store music online and stream it to anywhere, the site allows users to “sideload” songs from other websites, in effect, transferring them to an online locker run by mp3tunes. This works for songs acquired legally, but also apparently for songs acquired illegally.

And so, another lawsuit: EMI says that Robertson is effectively trying to do much the same thing he did before. And that’s not all the lawsuits, either. In addition to mp3tunes, the entrepreneur started another service called AnywhereCD.com earlier this year, which allowed users to buy CDs and have them shipped — but also allowed them to download mp3 versions of the songs right away, in DRM-free format.

One of the service’s original partners was Warner Music, but that deal fell through within days of the launch (as I wrote here) because WMG didn’t like the DRM-free download option. There were suits and countersuits, and while the two sides eventually settled, the venture wound up going under. One thing is for sure: music fans may be getting screwed in various ways, but the lawyers are making out like bandits.

At last, EMI has announced what many digital music fans have been hoping for, something that has been the subject of rumours ever since Apple supremo Steve Jobs wrote his Reagan-style “tear down this wall” anti-DRM rant awhile back: for the first time, a major record label will sell music free from DRM. The songs will be $1.99 each, and will be higher quality, or consumers can opt for lower quality with digital rights management. The deal reportedly includes the entire EMI catalogue of more than 5 million songs, and previously purchased songs can be upgraded. There are lots more links at Techmeme, including the official release from EMI — which is here — as well as live-blogging of the keynotes from Jobs and the EMI gang by Crunchgear, more details from CNet and some perspective from Cynthia Brumfield over at IPDemocracy.

This is pretty huge. Maybe even bigger than the Beatles :-) The big question, of course, is whether this will start a DRM-free land rush of any kind, or whether EMI will be left to twist in the wind. My hunch is that the other labels will wait and see whether the move pays off, and when they realize that they can sell even more music if it is free of DRM, they will open up as well.

Steve O’Hear of ZDNet doesn’t think EMI’s attempt will get much traction, however, because it means paying more for something you can already get for free. And my friend Paul Kedrosky thinks that EMI — which he describes as an “also-ran” in the music biz — is effectively buying market share.

On a Canadian note, EMI’s new DRM-free songs will be available at iTunes.ca as well (Canada already has a source of DRM-free independent music: a site called Puretracks). Does DRM prevent you from buying more music from official or legitimate sources? Let me know in the comments.

Update:

Gizmodo has some interesting behind-the-scenes details about the EMI and Apple deal, including the fact that EMI came up with the idea rather than Apple, and that the 256kbps format and the pricing were both Apple’s idea.

Okay, maybe the first day of the new year is a little early to be calling someone the year’s biggest loser, but I’d like to start the bidding early by nominating Coldplay’s record label, which as far as I can tell is EMI (the record company the Sex Pistols made infamous).

A note inserted in the band’s latest CD — a label you can’t see until you buy the disc — has a laundry list of places you probably won’t be able to play the new CD you paid so dearly for, a list that includes many portable music players, most computers, CD players in cars, and other incredibly common places for playing music. Arif in Hyderabad found the note after buying the disc.

What is a company thinking when they do this? It might not be as bad as the comically inept DRM exploit that Sony tried to foist on an unsuspecting public, but it’s still a ridiculous way to approach your market or your customers. Assume that they are thieves, and tie their hands in every way imaginable so that they can’t enjoy their music as they wish — after they’ve already paid money for your product. Nice.

I’d like to hope that we could chip away at that kind of dinosaur thinking this year, but I’m not optimistic.