Universal Stops Nine Inch Nails Remix Site

Nine Inch Nails recently release a remix album of Year Zero, titled Y34RZ3R0R3MIX3D (or Year Zero Remixed). Trent Reznor has been a supporter for fan mixes or remixes of his band's material and this time he wished to host a remix community website on nin.com to be companion with the remix album. However, it was stopped at last minute due to a lawsuit between Universal Music Group against YouTube (under the Google umbrella) and MySpace. The Universal Music Group thinks, by letting Nine Inch Nails to host the original multitrack master file on their website for fans to download and remix them, would lead to open themselves up to the accusation that they are sponsoring the same technical violation of copyright they are suing these companies for. So Trent Reznor was forced to postpone the remix site until he can figure out an innovative way to do so and avoid the potential violation.

Here is Trent's original message posted on Nine Inch Nails official website:

19 November 2007: Copyright Fun

Several years ago I persuaded my record company to let me begin posting my master recording files on nin.com, in order to see what kind of user-generated content would materialize from my music. I had no agenda... the main reason I did it was because I thought it was cool and something I would have liked to do if it was available to me. A lot of really fun stuff started to happen....communities developed, web sites were created, even traditional radio got in the game and began playing the fans' mixes. I felt the experiment, despite not having a specific purpose, was a success. So much so that we're now releasing a remix album that includes some of this fan-created material as well as the actual multitrack master files for every song from my latest record, .One piece was missing to me and that was an official nin.com presence for aggregating all of the fan-created remixes. Several intrepid fans had stepped up and done a great job providing a destination for people to post these, but I felt all along this was a function I should more directly support. So, upon release of this new remix album, our plan has been to launch an on nin.com that would provide a place for all fan remix material and other interactive fan experiences.Or so I thought.On Saturday morning I became aware of a legal hitch in our plans. My former record company and current owner of all these master files, Universal, is currently involved in a lawsuit with other media titans Google (YouTube) and News Corp (MySpace). Universal is contending that these sites do not have what is referred to as "safe harbor" under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and therefore are in copyright violation because users have uploaded music and video content that is owned by Universal. Universal feels that if they host our remix site, they will be opening themselves up to the accusation that they are sponsoring the same technical violation of copyright they are suing these companies for. Their premise is that if any fan decides to remix one of my masters with material Universal doesn't own - a "mash-up", a sample, whatever - and upload it to the site, there is no safe harbor under the DMCA (according to Universal) and they will be doing exactly what MySpace and YouTube are doing. This behavior may get hauled out in court and impact their lawsuit. Because of this they no longer will host our remix site, and are insisting that Nine Inch Nails host it. In exchange for this they will continue to let me upload my Universal masters and make them available to fans, BUT shift the liability of hosting them to me. Part of the arrangement is having user licenses that the fans sign (not unlike those on MySpace or You Tube) saying they will not use unauthorized materials. If they WERE to do such a thing, everybody sues everybody and the world abruptly ends.While I am profoundly perturbed with this stance as content owners continue to stifle all innovation in the face of the digital revolution, it is consistent with what they have done in the past. So... we are challenged at the last second to find a way of bringing this idea to life without getting splashed by the urine as these media companies piss all over each other’s feet. We have a cool and innovative site ready to launch but we're currently scratching our heads as to how to proceed.More to come….By the way, the potential implications of a lawsuit like this one go well beyond creating hurdles for a Nine Inch Nails remix site. Here is an from technology site regarding a similar lawsuit Viacom has filed against YouTube:Indeed.posted by Trent Reznor at 3:24 PM