Free for a Fee

We now have the full legal theory behind BlueBeat.com’s attempt to sell remastered Beatles tracks online for a quarter each. It’s so odd that the federal judge overseeing a music industry lawsuit against the site decided he didn’t even need to hold the hearing scheduled for tomorrow. Instead, he blasted BlueBeat’s “psycho-acoustic modeling” defense and extended his temporary injunction into something more permanent.

In a strange declaration that covers all sorts of ground completely unrelated to the lawsuit (and is littered with typos), BlueBeat founder Hank Risan told the court last week that the songs for sale on his site are totally new recordings that he created and that he in fact owns the copyrights on. This is possible thanks to the wonder of psycho-acoustic simulation, which Risan describes this way:

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