Thanks for your support nonetheless, we really appreciate it - to read the (fake) story, see below. <more>

This might be one of the last news posts I put onto Muselive.com. Yesterday we received a letter from Warner Inc. (below)

Warner US

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Dear Sir or Madam,

It has been brought to the attention of Warner Music Inc. (“Warner Music”, “we”, “us”) that the website www.muselive.com (“Site”) with the IP addresses of 72.232.90.234 is conducting unauthorised activities which infringes certain copyrights and trademarks that are owned by Warner Music Inc.

Warner Music Inc. currently owns the trademark related to the term “Muse”. On the 3rd February 2007 this trademark was extended to include a number of additional classes. One of these is a Class 42 which protects the use of the term in relation to Internet Domain Names. To protect the integrity of the Muse brand we will now be actively pursuing legal actions to ensure that the use of these domain names are relinquished. Other Muse related terms also covered under this act are “Apocalypse Please”, “Butterflies and Hurricanes”, “Knights of Cydonia”, “Map of the Problematique”, “Micro Cuts”, “Muscle Museum” and “Plug in Baby”, all of these are now protected from being used within Internet Domain Names without the express written permission of Warner Music Inc..

Warner Music Inc. also owns the international copyright to the following, but not limited to, Muse related forms of content: digital media; lyrics; tablature; visual likeness. These copyrights are being deliberately flouted on a large scale and are damaging the integrity of the intellectual property that we own and have invested in. Warner Music enforces its intellectual property rights very aggressively by using every legal option available.

In order to promote a cooperative and beneficial relationship with fans, Warner Music prefers to send out written requests such as this first, rather than institute litigation or request that your ISP disable your website.

We therefore, without limiting any right, remedy or defence available to us, must ask that you comply with the following requests:

1) Relinquish the use of the Internet Domain Name www.muselive.com

2) Remove any digital media (such as mp3 files, video files, streamed or downloadable) from your server that are copyrighted works of Muse. This includes all live material, studio material, and non-musical material (such as interviews) [admin: bollocks ]

3) Remove any instances where the lyrics of Muse are reproduced without the express written permission of Warner Music.

4) Remove any interpretations of the music of Muse provided in the form of tablature, song scores or “MIDI” files.

5) Remove all photographic material of the members of the band Muse that have been published without the express written permission of Warner Music.

We ask that you advise us within a period of seven (7) days of the date of receiving this notice on whether you intend to comply with our request so that we can determine whether legal action will be required beyond this point.

Thank you for your cooperation on this matter. Please contact us with any further questions at copyright@wmg.com.

Regards,

Sofia Proll
Warner Music Incorporated,
Litigation Counsel,
75 Rockefeller Plaza,
New York,
New York 10019.
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So, we have a few choices. We're not the only people in this situation - I've been speaking to a few of the other fansites and they, too, have received similar letters. The choices...

a) Fight Warner collectively (all fansites teaming up, who'd have thunk it!) - this would be expensive and time consuming, and many of us have university degrees to be getting on with. If the other fansites want to do this, we encourage them, however due to our other commitments we would probably have to exclude ourselves :-(.

or

b) Shut doors - This, unfortunately, is the most likely option.

or

c) Ignore Warner. Carry on as we are and pretend the letter was never sent. Wait for Warner to disconnect us from our ISP - an abrupt ending, but might extend the life of the site a bit more. However, Warner might sue us. Not fun.

All comments would be appreciated - thanks guys, you're so damn snazzy :-)

The Muselive.com Team

Source : Muselive.com / Warner

i say we fight it.

gutted its true though...

WHAAAT??? OH NOOO! PLEASE DON'T CLOSE THIS SIIITEEE!!!

In an ideal world, it would be great to team up. But as you say, there are degrees to be done, and it looks like the big guys win again.

even if admin dont have enough time to fight it the amount of fans on here is mad. so we can fight it. Fans Vs he record company.

but this is like Major news. as in a whole new era of internet. if warner do it others will follow soon.

...so is it still a joke?

This is all a joke. Blah blah blah

Believe me now people?

This site was really going places as well. Thanks a million Warner.

april fools ftw

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RaymondM :
This is all a joke. Blah blah blah

Believe me now people?

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+1. Denial, methinks..

april fools yeah

i saw this on the microcuts site - terrible news

ths site can't close down! Even Chris said this is the best site out there!

i just hope its an early April fools from warner!

catastrophe!


http://www.muselive.com/forums.php?m=posts&q=23135

*chuckles*

Does anyone even know what date it is?

It's odd. I'm going on holiday tomorrow, and when I come home there may be no more Muselive...


And Tanuki, if you read the 7 page long thread in the General section, you'll see that we've been through this already.

Jeez! Why are people still thinking this is April Fools? Stop living in denial folks. It's happening. We all know Warner are a bunch of ass holes, and really, i'm suprised it didn't come sooner tbh.

wank... if they shut you down, i will be so fucking angry

Got to be an april fools joke

warner are complete twats. i would love to hear what muse themselves have to say on this matter.

i just dont think they would want this. we still buy all their stuff hell most people buy all versions of the singles they release we all buy posters t-shirts their albums everything!! just because we get the odd live video here doesnt mean we dont spend the money when the releases come along.

they should be targeting P2P sites not us.

EVERYONE - Please contact all news media around, like NME.com, Radio 1 and XFM and spread the story.

Right now I don't fucking care if it's a joke or what, I really want the band themselves to step in and say something, especially since Tom Kirk himself has confirmed that it's the real deal. Yeah, it's a pipe dream, but I can't imagine that they would be at all impressed by Warner's legal manouvering. This has gone on for long enough and a lot of people have been upset by it.

u idiots. its april fools day.

having read other posts - we can still wind up the media though.

ah...yeah...april fools joke...*hope*

Man...I cant believe people are taking this seriously...

i think the best option would be to get a new domain name and run a simple forum. Follow their rules but keep the site

If this is true why is it just Muse being targeted?? What about all the other bands on Warner???

Tom - can you please confirm in your news post that this is not an April Fool's joke?

It's really pissing me off now the amount of people saying 'oh it's not real because April 1st and almost eveything on that day is a joke..'

you guys aren't the only ones in fear of closing their doors. the only thing we can do is try and get press coverage and make warner look like the greedy corporate whores that they are and be embarrassed by the backlash they receive. they're blaming their losses on things like this? well we'll show them exactly why they lose money.

we're all going to have to work together to try and stop this. and if we're lucky by some divine intervention (or warner actually listens to the band) it'll be reversed.

woahh.. keep the site!!! or close the downloads part down but everybody chip in a few pounds and we'll send off all copies of the downloads to each other!!

its a very good letter though. probably the one they sent out by email a while ago - especialy during the leakage of smbh - then altered a bit.

in the words of Mr T

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I'M NO FOOL

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