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

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