A judge has handed controversial music streaming service Grooveshark a major win in a dispute with record label Universal Music, rejecting an argument which would make Grooveshark responsible for determining the copyright status of all pre-1972 recordings. Arguing in a New York court, Universal had attempted to claim that safe harbor provisions in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) do not apply to recordings made before 1972, as the recordings were not covered by federal copyright law at the time of their creation.
I would bet coffee and doughnuts that it's less that Universal's lawyers believe that than that Universal's executives have ordered the legal team to use anything they can find, no matter how flimsy, to attempt to kneecap Grooveshark and other things that inconvenience the old-media cartel.
