I’m glad Mark Hopkins from Mashable wrote this post about Imeem — which just bought Anywhere.FM, a startup from YCombinator — and MP3tunes, the online music-sharing service from serial entrepreneur Michael Robertson (founder of Linspire and the original MP3.com). I’ve been watching the back-and-forth between Michael and Imeem CEO marketing VP Matt Graves on the Pho list with interest, since MP3tunes is being sued by EMI and Anywhere.FM does something very similar.

As Mark explains in his post, Michael asked the Imeem VP for his views on the legality of what Anywhere.FM does, and Graves said that he didn’t want to talk about the terms of the Anywhere.FM deal “now or ever, on the list or privately,” although he said he was sorry Michael was being sued. Robertson then responded that he just wanted the Imeem exec’s thoughts on whether the service was legal, and if so why — and was obviously interested in finding an ally in his lawsuit with EMI.

Graves shut this line of inquiry down as well, which I must admit I find odd. There’s no question that in the past Michael — rightly or wrongly — has been a lightning rod for lawsuits related to his various online services, but how does it help to avoid the issue? If Anywhere.FM and MP3tunes are similar services, and one is being sued by a record label, doesn’t it stand to reason that the other might as well? Perhaps Graves thinks he can avoid such an outcome so long as he doesn’t talk about it.

I wrote about the EMI lawsuit in this post, and linked to Michael’s overview of what the lawsuit is about, which is well worth a read. In a nutshell, EMI claims that an MP3tunes feature called Sideload is illegal, and so are the online music “lockers” that the company provides, where users can store songs — including songs that they have purchased through Amazon or other online services, which can be transfered directly into the locker. Sideload is much like Seeqpod (which is also being sued) or Songza.

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.

Online music service Lala.com — which until recently was aimed at trading music CDs — has remade itself in a rather dramatic way by launching a free music-streaming service that automatically syncs with your iPod, and by signing a licensing deal with Warner Brothers Records. As Gizmodo describes it, Lala scans all the music you own — whether it’s from ripped CDs or downloaded music in iTunes — and then lets you listen to it anywhere (streaming through your Web browser) for free. In other words, it assumes that you own it. Lala founder Bill Nguyen has a string of startups on his resume, including Onebox.com, which he sold in 2000 for $850-million.

In addition to the free streaming service, Lala has a pay-for-download store, which (at least to begin with) will be selling only albums — for between $6.50 and $13.50 each — rather than individual songs. Lala is clearly hoping that the appeal of free streaming will convince users to adopt the service and then they will be more likely to buy music there as well. As an added feature, Lala has also developed a way of letting you “sideload” music into your iPod through your browser, without having to download it and then import it into iTunes. The service apparently only works with iPods.

It will be interesting to see whether Lala’s streaming service gets slammed by the major record labels (apart from Warner, of course, which seems to be willing to take a leap of faith that it will lead to more downloads). Michael Robertson, the serial entrepreneur behind services such as The Gizmo Project and Linspire — a Linux-based alternative to Windows — tried something similar several years ago with Mp3.com and was effectively shut down by legal threats from the music industry.

His service allowed you to put a CD in your computer, have it scanned and then immediately listen to the music from it without having to rip and upload it all to the company’s servers (Mp3.com ripped CDs and created a library of songs). Lala’s service is slightly different in that someone has to upload the songs — but each song only has to be uploaded once. Fred von Lohmann, a lawyer with the Electronic Freedom Foundation, says this may help protect the service from legal attacks.

“This is different from what MP3.com was up to with BeamIt (and for which they were sued) because the *initial* copy is uploaded by the users. MP3.com made the initial copies themselves.

Why does this matter? Because of the DMCA safe harbor that applies to hosting material on behalf of users. Pretty clever lawyering — wish I’d thought of that back in 1999.”

A more recent service Robertson launched called AnywhereCD lets you buy a CD and immediately download the tracks as non-DRM-protected mp3 files (the CD is delivered by regular mail). Although the service had a licensing arrangement with Warner Brothers, the record label forced AnywhereCD to remove its music by filing a lawsuit against the company (AnywhereCD has counter-sued). AnywhereCD also allows you to “sideload” songs into your iTunes, into a locker at another Robertson-owned music service called Mp3tunes.com or onto a mobile device.

Lala’s bet is definitely a risky one — and an expensive one: the company, which has raised $14-million from several venture capital groups including Bain Capital, says it expects to pay more than $140-million to the record industry over the next couple of years, and admits it will likely lose about $40-million in the period. Sounds like a great business model, doesn’t it?

In the end, Lala faces the same challenges as any other music service (apart from the dumb name, of course): will it be able to offer enough variety and selection to appeal to enough users to make it worthwhile? To me, one of the big issues is the album-only part — I think people have gotten a little too used to buying individual songs for that to fly (I know I have). It also remains to be seen whether Apple will get upset that the sideloading feature effectively bypasses its iTunes software (Susan Kevorkian of IDC says Apple may be just fine with it).

Would free streaming and the sideloading feature make you likely to try Lala? Jupiter Research analyst David Card has some thoughts here, and Liz Gannes at GigaOm says Lala should be congratulated for taking a risk.

Michael Robertson has been a thorn in the side of the music business longer than just about anybody, including Steve Jobs and Shawn “Napster” Fanning. He created the original MP3.com (history here), which, like Napster, was shut down by a record industry lawsuit, and more recently created Mp3tunes.com — which allows you to upload music and listen to it through the browser.

Now he’s taking another crack at the industry with the launch of something called AnywhereCD. But before the new venture was even a day old, Michael’s plans, which he writes about on his blog, had hit a major snag. The service is designed to allow music fans to buy a CD and instantly get access to mp3 files of the same songs — but without necessarily taking physical delivery of the CD. This apparently got at least one label upset: Warner Music came out within hours of Michael’s announcement and ordered him to remove any WMG files from the service — even though all the appropriate royalties would be paid as though someone had actually bought the CD. Warner said in a statement that AnywhereCD was selling its music in a manner that “flagrantly” violated their agreement.

I’m continually struck by the bizarre contortions the industry forces people to jump through. The original MP3.com had a service called My.MP3.com, which allowed you to listen to music through the browser after verifying that you owned the original CD — which I thought was brilliant. It was shut down too (MP3tunes.com requires you to upload all the music before you can listen to it). Warner’s response seems particularly out of step given that some labels like EMI are offering straightforward non-DRM files.

Is the record industry doomed to just never get it?