EMI sues MP3Tunes sues EMI sues...

In what seems to be a never-ending spiral of lawsuits, EMI have responded to a lawsuit from MP3Tunes by suing back.

MP3Tunes and Sideload are Michael Robertson's companies. He originally ran MP3.com, before that collapsed in lawsuits and he sold up to Universal. MP3Tunes is a musiclocker service, where you can upload songs and listen to them whenever you're near the internet; sideload is a music file search engine.

Back in the summer, EMI sent a takedown notice to Sideload, grumping that a search engine which finds musical files could discover stolen and illegal tunes. Sideload responded with a lawsuit.

This latest action, suggest Robertson, is in response to the response:

EMI's complaint says MP3tunes' two Web sites offer an integrated music service, allowing users to listen to music on their computers, obtain copies of songs online, transfer music to their computers and portable devices, and distribute it to others.

Sideload.com streams music to users, enabling them to listen to a wide array of music on demand, the complaint said.

Robertson sold MP3.com and "ultimately started this one as a vehicle to achieve a comparable infringing purpose," the complaint read. "MP3tunes, however, does not own the music it exploits; nor does MP3tunes have any legal right or authority to use or exploit that music."

Which seems to be a digital nonesense - after all, Roberts makes radios which people use to listen to music on, but they have no rights to the music which their technology exploits. It's a pity to see EMI - who under their new owners had been showing signs of taking a slightly less lawyertastic approach to digital territory disputes - behaving like it's still 1999 (even admitting it's effectively fighting the mp3.com battle through a proxy.) Perhaps the US team need to get a memo from London?