Peter Kafka of All Things Digital, part of The Wall Street Journal Digital Network, confirms that one of my favourite music sites and Webware 100 Winner, Grooveshark, is being sued by EMI.  Here is Grooveshark’s statement sourced from Peter’s post:

“For the past year, Grooveshark has been in talks with EMI Records and other copyright holders to negotiate licensing agreements for the use of their content. We are pleased to announce that over the past few months Grooveshark successfully concluded mutually bene?cial agreements with many artists, labels, and publishers that we hope to be a template for other such agreements with additional copyright holders.

Recently, EMI Records chose to abandon the template we’ve built with the help of other major copyright holders and opted for their traditional intimidation tactic of ?ling a lawsuit as a negotiating tool. We ?nd the use of this negotiating strategy counterproductive, as Grooveshark has been willing to conclude an agreement with EMI Records that is economically sustainable for both EMI Records and a start-up company the size of Grooveshark.

Grooveshark is run by a group of young and passionate musicians. We love music, we make music, and we believe that the use of all music should be paid for. We adopted this core philosophy at our inception and to date have concluded agreements with hundreds of record labels, major US performance rights organizations, and thousands of independent artists who support Grooveshark’s business model. (See: Grooveshark Artists)

As musicians, we support the rights of copyright holders and strive to sign sustainable agreements with all content owners, ensuring that all artists get paid– or we agree to remove content from our system in accordance with our DMCA Takedown Policy. We hope that EMI Records eventually follows the lead of the many forward-thinking labels we are already working with, who would rather get their artists exposure and a fair share of our revenue than block content access and force customers to illegal networks.

We understand that the economy of the digital music business is in a state of ?ux, and we hope to help ease this transition by providing the required new tools and services that lead to the next generation of the music industry. We respect the ownership rights of the major labels and publishers, and our core mission has always been to compete with piracy by offering a service that is genuinely better than what illegal networks offer, while also ensuring fair payment to copyright holders. Our next important step on our road to success is to conclude a mutually bene?cial agreement with EMI Records that is sustainable for both EMI and Grooveshark.”

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Whatever your position on file-sharing may be, it will most certainly be skewed when you learn that a mega-band such as Radiohead, who famously distributed their last record with a pay-what-you-like model, are taking the stand against the RIAA.

In the case of file-sharer Joel Tenenbaum, a Boston University student, versus the RIAA, Radiohead will testify against the RIAA as part of a protest against unnecessary preying on filesharers, according to Tenenbaum’s legal team which consists of Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson and student members of his class.

Radiohead has publically spoken out against the major labels’ agenda to profit from questionable sharing of music in the legal arena, and specifically the lobby groups that represent them such as the RIAA and IFPI.  In fact, Radiohead is one of several A-list artists that have embraced file-sharing culture in one way or another to propel their independent marketing of their music and, to a certain extent, have proven that the very labels that made them what they are today have been rendered obsolete.

All this comes to a head just after the founders of The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent search platform, were found guilty in a landmark file-sharing case spearheaded by Swedish anti-piracy lobbyists, preceded by the public crackdown of the popular music streaming service, SeeqPod, which was forced to close.

Linking the decline in music sales to illegal filesharing carries very little water in this day and age as there are so many other contributing factors to the manner in which music is consumed and the availability of media to the public in general.  The fact is that, for the major labels, going to court is profitable.  In the cases where it’s not, it sets a precedence for future cases that will turn over handsome settlements.  The attitude toward file-sharing, and the laws around it no less, will not change until the investment in the judicial system will no longer yield rewards for the copyright holders, the majority of which are represented by only four corporate institutions worldwide.

Related Post: Copyright Laws and Issues on the Colbert Report

Presumably in response to EMI’s recent formal complaint and Warner’s lawsuit last year, SeeqPod filed for Chapter 11  with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of the Northern District of California two days ago.  The music search engine which rolled out an attractive pay-for-play advertising programme for artists is liquidating its assets by selling its source code to developers for $5000, perhaps encouraging many services just like SeeqPod to emerge in the future.  Yet another sorry day for the music industry…

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