The five major record companies have been hit with a class-action lawsuit charging that new CDs designed to thwart Napster-style piracy are defective and should either be barred from sale or carry warning labels.
The suit was brought this week in Los Angeles Superior Court by class-action specialists at the law firm Milberg, Weiss, Bershad, Hynes & Lerach on behalf of two Southern California consumers.
It marks the first legal challenge of CD copy-prevention technology to "tackle the issue on an industry-wide basis," Alan Mansfield, an attorney representing the two named plaintiffs in the complaint, said Friday.
It also follows criticism from some members of Congress and from Dutch consumer electronics maker Philips, co-creator of the compact disc, that the anti-piracy CDs are technically flawed and could impinge on consumers' rights to copy music for their own use.
The suit names all five of the major record companies--Vivendi Universal's Universal Music Group, Bertelsmann's BMG Entertainment, EMI, Sony Music Entertainment and AOL Time Warner's Warner Music.
Reuters.com
It marks the first legal challenge of CD copy-prevention technology to "tackle the issue on an industry-wide basis," Alan Mansfield, an attorney representing the two named plaintiffs in the complaint, said Friday.
It also follows criticism from some members of Congress and from Dutch consumer electronics maker Philips, co-creator of the compact disc, that the anti-piracy CDs are technically flawed and could impinge on consumers' rights to copy music for their own use.
The suit names all five of the major record companies--Vivendi Universal's Universal Music Group, Bertelsmann's BMG Entertainment, EMI, Sony Music Entertainment and AOL Time Warner's Warner Music.
Reuters.com
