Beatles music for free... NOT

Sidin Vadukut — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 11:27:00 GMT

Being a part of the minority, of 11 people or so, who don't particularly like the Beatles, I was not particularly saddened by this piece of news on NRK's website. NRK, in their own words, is the BBC of Norway. I assume Beatlemaniacs hit by the economic downturn will be most saddened:

Yesterday we wrote that NRK is podcasting all 212 episodes of the radio series “Our daily Beatles” - with the original music - for free. Some thought this was too good to be true. And it was…

Our new agreement with rights holder TONO gives us rights to publish radio and TV shows we aired a long time ago. But the agreemnt NRK has with rights holders IFPI and FONO only allows us to publish shows that has been aired the last four weeks. And since “Our daily Beatles” was aired in 2007, we have to pull it from the podcast (see below for details about the agreements).

While the music of the Beatles is all nice and happy and about yellow submarines and all that, the rights to those tracks are protected by complete fiends who just won't see copyright infringement and let it be if you know what I mean. They won't even let you imagine getting that music cheaply if you know what I mean.

So the poor guys at NRK, after a day or so of thundering publicity, finally decided they couldn't put out podcasts with free tracks in them.

However things are still looking good for the Beatles themed Rockband game that was announced in October to much Beatlemaniac glee. Later this year fans can expect to pick up fake instruments connected to gaming consoles and play along to Beatles songs.

On the other hand if you are a Dire Straits fan like me and don't care for the Fab Four then you can instead read on about:

Japanese invent high tech space diapers

Now run along and make Satyam jokes like everyone else.

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Beatles music for free... NOT