Well, given they've been pretty opinionated on copyright issues in the past, even going so far as to accuse Apple and Microsoft of infringing copyright with their licensed music services, we predicted the response from the owners of BlueBeat.com to EMI litigation over their sale of the Beatles catalogue digitally would be, well, interesting. And interesting it is. Not to mention a little bit bizarre.

As EMI filed its previously reported lawsuit demanding BlueBeat.com stop selling not only Beatles tracks via its 25-cents-a-track download store, but all music owned by the label, the boss of BlueBeat owners Music Rights Technologies, Hank Risan, released a rather novel argument that proved, he said, his company wasn't infringing EMI's copyrights.

Risan says that before making music files available via the BlueBeat.com service his company makes new recordings of each track using what he calls "psycho-acoustic simulation". I think this is technology that technically speaking analyses the sound make up of a track and recreates it, rather than making a straight copy. In doing so, Risan argues, his firm creates a new master recording in which they own the recording copyright, which means that providing they pay a mechanical royalty to the songwriter or publisher who owns the actual song, they don't need any licence from the record companies.

This presumably means that none of the music on the BlueBeat.com download platform, which span out of the online radio service of the same name and which is currently in beta form, is licenced. Which would figure. As previously commented, it seems unlikely that record companies would licence a service selling tracks for 25 cents a piece even if it was the digital provider who was taking a hit on the price point. With record companies keen to ease the standard price of downloads up, they are hardly going to back a digital music service doing the opposite.

As previously reported, the BlueBeat.com bargain basement download service came to wider attention late last week when the guys at Music Ally noticed they were selling Beatles downloads, even though the Fab Four's catalogue isn't currently available via any legit digital service.

No legal expert has so far backed Risan's interpretation of US copyright law - ie that so called "psycho-acoustic simulation" shifts copyright ownership from the simulated to the simulator. But several legal experts have come forward to proclaim the argument nonsense. That said, Risan provides as evidence paperwork seemingly proving that the US Copyright Office allowed him to register copyrights in his simulated recordings (copyrights having to be registered in the US, of course). Lawyers don't seem to think that changes anything, though it could lead to some red faces among American copyright officials.

Perhaps most importantly, a federal judge in a US court failed to be convinced by the argument. Said judge promptly issued an order for BlueBeat to stop selling The Beatles and other tracks with immediate effect. As a result the 25 cents download element of BlueBeat.com does seem to have been taken down - punters are now linked through to iTunes if they want to buy digital tracks from featured artists (and for The Beatles, just a sell through to CD mail-order via Amazon). The full -track on-demand ad-free streaming element of BlueBeat does remain, however. Whether that is licenced remains to be seen. Given Risan's viewpoint on recording copyrights, I suspect not.

EMI will presumably now pursue their litigation in order to get damages. Whether the other majors will join in also remains to be seen.