Grooveshark has won a lawsuit against it by Universal Music, with a court rejecting Universal’s argument that would have seen Grooveshark lose DMCA-protection status on songs recorded before 1972.
The court called it a massive overreach, and TechDirt also says that this defence was also rejected when EMI tried to sue MP3tunes. Also in its judgement, the court did give some dismissals on some parts of Grooveshark’s counterclaim, but those were minor – it upheld most of the other points of the counterclaim.
So why did they brought this defence? Well, for some reason, pre-1972 works are not technically protected by federal copyright law, but through state laws – and, like how many state laws in Australia are, they tend to be confusing. According to TechDirt’s analysis, basically Universal said the DMCA is federal law and should not apply to recordings made before 1972.
Basically, it’s a major victory for Grooveshark. However, it’s not all over yet – there are other lawsuits from the other three big record labels it has to go through.
via The Verge