Now for the hilarious irony. Many of us here and there are pretty familiar with a fellow named Hank Risan –founder and CEO of an outfit called Media Rights Technologies (MRT). Back in the days when Digital Rights Management (DRM) was a key component of the Big 4 labels’ digital download business model, Risan attempted to sue Microsoft, Adobe, Real Networks and Apple into using MRT’s patented music protection instead of their own--citing copyright infringement via DMCA violations. Being that DRM is designed solely to protect copyright owners, one would assume on first pass that Mr. Risan is/was "fighting the good fight" for the RIAA and it’s clients. Erm…..move forward to today and given that DRM’d music is pretty much dead—what’s a poor rich boy to do? A quick peek at BlueBeat’s dot com trail tells that it’s owned by Risan's MRT. heh…so much for protecting other’s rights.
Didn’t take long for the recording industry to hiss and strike. Yesterday as a result of legal action by EMI (principle owner of the Beatles catalog) a federal judge ordered BlueBeat to stop selling Beatles music. As was the case back then it’s now everclear in the court’s eye that MRT/Risan is just a fine print bottom feeder bandit. Hello!
I checked out Bluebeat.com about 10 days ago when this story first popped on my radar. Very polished and peppy for would be purloiners. But as of this post…it appears that their whole show is off the grid—including parent co. MRT. Being that the judge’s ruling only demanded that they stop selling Beatles cuts—I don’t think they’ve shut down; maybe but Risan? give up? NEVER
—more probably the onslaught of news traffic has cooked their servers for the time being. How's that for protection?! /hilarious irony. What to follow? Given Risan’s past hold outs and previous stifled trips to the bench-- one can only watch as his unprecedented cajones bulge ever bigger and bluer. As for MRT and it’s near dead DRM horse……me thinks changing the R in their acronyms to Revenge apropos as (to me)...this is arguably another smarmy attempt to breath life into Risan's first born long toothed grey mare. Think anti-virus companies propagating worms and bots.
Oooooo…I’d better act quick and see if mediarevengetech.com and digitalrevengemanagement.com is taken!
Some fun side trips:
Do some snooping on BlueBeat.com and Mediarightstech.com at:
http://web.archive.org/
and
http://websiteshadow.com/
