Online music provider MediaNet Digital, owner of the MusicNet service, has recently come under attack by various music publishers, sparking an entirely new legal battle for the ailing music industry. Last Wednesday, the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) announced that they would be representing a group of music publishers in a class action lawsuit against MediaNet for alleged non-payment of mechanical licenses. News of the lawsuit was made public last week by the NMPA, stating that MediaNet has participated in “willful, ongoing copyright infringement” through its online white-label service, MusicNet.
MediaNet defended itself against the allegations in a statement on Thursday, saying “This complaint is completely without merit. In an age of rampant piracy, MediaNet is one of the few companies, along with Napster and RealNetworks, that pays copyright holders and artists for their work. The suit is contrary to the core beliefs and business model under which MediaNet has operated since its inception.”
Others point to a flawed payment structure for online mechanicals as the problem, where labels are delivered payment for master recordings and publishing licenses with one check, part of which may or may not make it to the artists themselves. Many representatives of big-name artists claim that they can’t remember the last time they received a check for digital mechanicals, or that the payments have been irregular at best.
“It is critical to the future of music that creators take a stand against free riders such as MediaNet that earn profits on the backs of others’ work,” stated NMPA President and CEO David Israelite. “The case of MediaNet is particularly egregious because it offers copyrighted musical works to its partners and consumers knowing that it does not have permission to do so and that it is not compensating the copyright owners.” The lawsuit comes in the middle of Copyright Royalty Board (
CRB) hearings to establish mechanical royalty rates for the use of musical works, including streamed music services such as MediaNet.