Bluebeat To Pay 950k

The owner of BlueBeat.com, the website that posted and sold digital copies of Beatles tunes a year before it was legal as well as Coldplay and Lily Allen tracks at 25 cents apiece, has agree to pay EMI, Capitol Records and Virgin Records America $950,000 to settle the lawsuit filed by the record labels two years ago.

BlueBeat owner Hank Risan previously argued in court his company was selling “psycho-acoustic simulations” – reportedly unique versions of copyrighted materials, not the originals – but a federal judge didn’t buy the claim, calling Risan’s description of the recording process a long-winded way of describing sampling and not an independent work.