RIAA Closes Muxtape.com

One of my favorite music sharing websites, Muxtape.com is apparently closed this week and perhaps for good. It seems the Recording Industry Association of America, (RIAA) finally caught up with the site and shut them down for copyright violation.

The site allowed users to upload music mixes containing 12 songs each and share those mixes with other members and the public through Muxtape's streaming capability. At no time could anyone download a song from Muxtape for free. For every song that was uploaded, Muxtape provided a link to a music sales site, such as Amazon.com, where listeners could buy a legitimate copy of the song. There were some songs that are not available at Amazon or any other online music store because of it being out of print. However these were on Muxtape, made available for people to listen to.

Apparently the RIAA has been in contact with Muxtape over the legal issue: "For the past several months, we have communicated our legal concerns with the site and repeatedly tried to work with them to have illegal content taken down. Muxtape was hosting copies of copyrighted sound recordings without authorization from the copyright owners. Making these recordings available for streaming playback also requires authorization from the copyright owners. Muxtape has not obtained authorization from our member companies to host or stream copies of their sound recordings."

Attorneys have opined that Muxtape should fight this case: ""According to Fred Von Lohmann, Electronic Frontier Foundation’s senior intellectual property attorney, the site is protected under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which provides for a so-called “safe harbor” for hosting material on behalf users, and the same defense used by user content sites like YouTube.... I think they have a strong legal defense,” Von Lohmann told RollingStone.com. “The problem is if they might not have that money to go to court and take on the RIAA.”"

Muxtape is not the first popular site to be closed by the RIAA. Earlier this week, Cliff Bolling's 78 RPM Records website was also shut down. The site made songs from his large 78 RPM record collection available as free MP3 downloads. Most of the songs have been long out of print. It is a good bet that the RIAA had this popular site closed too.

The RIAA not only wants to shut down music sharing websites (as has long been their practice), but are also going after many streaming websites and online radio stations to get them to pay higher per-song royalty fees. The higher fees are being applied only to online music content and not to traditional broadcasting stations.

If the RIAA gets thir way, the prospect for listening to music online will be greatly diminished. For music fans, this will be a sad time if streaming music of all types go away.