And so it ends: the site that was selling digital downloads of Beatles songs - the only ones doing so anywhere in the world - have been shut down at the order of a US judge, reports the NME.
We reported before on the legal travails that two interlinked sites, Bluebeat and Basebeat (though Bluebeat was the principal entry point), and their backer Hank Risan - who as that linked article points out, has intriguing ideas about what constitutes "infringement" (not buying his software = infringement, in one court case he filed in the US in 2007) - had run into after selling the Beatles songs earlier this month.
Risan claimed in a court filing that the digital downloads used "psycho-acoustic simulation" and therefore were exempt from copyright provisions that would normally apply to the songs.
US District Judge John F Walter heard that and didn't agree. To quote NME, he
prohibited both sites and their owner, Hank Risan, from streaming or selling songs by the Fab Four and other artists, including Lily Allen and Coldplay, for good.
Which means that the wait must go on for digital downloads of Beatles tracks. If indeed you are waiting, and haven't simply bought the CDs cheaply from Amazon and ripped them long ago, if that's your musical taste.
And Risan? We suspect we'll hear from him again, but with this track record we aren't encouraged that we'll hear him being on the winning side of a court judgement. The long and winding road awaits.
