02 Dec Spinrilla Suffers Legal Blow In Unauthorized Uploads Fight

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Spinrilla was one of the hottest music apps on the scene when it first launched but now it appears that a shift in business could come soon if recent legal maneuvers spark changes. A lawsuit brought by the RIAA on the behalf of a collective of record companies has culminated in a federal judge striking down Spinrilla’s defense that users are uploading music to the service thus making it exempt from DCMA takedowns.

Digital Music News shared in a detailed report on Tuesday (Dec. 1) that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) launched a suit against Spinrilla on behalf of Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Music Group.

The suit charges Spinrilla with infringing on the rights of its collection of artists and connected personnel by allowing the hosting of music onto its service. In effect, the lawsuit specifically says that Spinrilla is, “ripping off music creators by offering thousands of unlicensed sound recordings for free.”

Spinrilla’s legal team claimed that the lawsuit was overblown with the labels treating the service like the one-time music free-for-all hub Napster, which shifted music business practices across the board and effectively gave birth to the streaming era. The RIAA lawsuit says that Spinrilla’s founder and creator, Jeffrey Dylan Copeland, found a way to bypass the uploading of copyrighted content and passed that information on to Spinrilla users.

Digital Music News shared a statement from RIAA’s legal team which reads as follows:

“We are gratified by the court’s decision, which sends a message that online streaming providers cannot hide behind the actions of their users to avoid their own liability for copyright infringement that occurs through their systems. The decision also reaffirms that merely characterizing unauthorized copies of sound recordings as ‘mixtapes’ does not make them any less infringing than any other unauthorized uses of copyrighted works.”

The RIAA and Spinrilla are preparing to do battle in court beginning next year with reported pretrial claims for damages being examined.

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