The continuing mystery as to why an obscure music site began selling unauthorized Beatles downloads got a little stranger today with Bluebeat.com asserting it actually owns the songs it’s selling.

Earlier this week EMI announced it is suing Bluebeat for selling Beatles songs online without the proper licensing. At this time no online music service, including iTunes, Napster or Amazon MP3, is authorized to sell Beatles downloads.

But not only did California-based website Bluebeat.com begin selling the entire Beatles catalog in the form of MP3 downloads last week, but the site offers the tracks at bargain-basement prices, averaging about 25 cents per song and $3 to $4 per album.

Now Bluebeat says it doesn’t need permission to sell the Beatles tracks because … (wait for it) … The company already owns the recordings.

Yes, you read that right. According to Bluebeat, neither Apple Corps nor EMI own the sound recordings the website is currently selling.

Bluebeat.com owner Hank Risan claimed in a court filing this week that he re-recorded the Beatles tunes using a process he referred to as “psychoacoustic simulation.” Furthermore, Risan claims to have registered the re-recorded tracks with the U.S. Copyright Office.

What the hell is psychoacoustic simulation? For an answer we need to go to a Nov. 2 e-mail Risan sent to a member of the Recording Industry Association of America.

“Psychoacoustic simulations are my synthetic creation of that series of sounds which best expresses the way I believe a particular melody should be heard as a live performance,” wrote Risan to the RIAA. “I had explained this back to your organization, in late 2001, when I was at your offices in Washington, for the purpose of demonstrating Bluebeat and our X1 technologies for digital transmission protection.”

In other words, Risan evidently took the original Beatles tracks and did something to them, and is now selling the songs as downloads on the Bluebeat website. Whether he pumped them through a filter, changed the equalization or just boosted the bass, Risan is claiming the end results are not the sound recordings owned by EMI and Apple Corps, but rather are something different, and are covered under the same copyright rules & regs as songs covered by other artists.

According to Wired, a Los Angeles federal judge will soon rule on the validity of Risan’s claims. Meanwhile, Bluebeat.com is still selling Beatles tracks at incredibly low prices. At least, for now.

Click here to read the Wired article.

Click here to read Risan’s e-mails to the RIAA.

Click here for Bluebeat.com.