Michael Robertson Popular Books

Michael Robertson Biography & Facts

Michael Robertson (born 1967) is the founder and former CEO of MP3.com, an Internet music site. In the years following his departure from MP3.com Robertson has launched several companies, including Linspire, SIPphone, MP3tunes, and Ajax13. He is also founder of OnRad.io, a search engine for radio and DAR.fm, a website for recording audio from internet radio. Robertson faced numerous lawsuits from major record labels due to copyright infringements from the company's "Beam-it" and "Instant Listening" programs. MP3.com settled the majority of these lawsuits for tens of millions of dollars. The company was later acquired by Vivendi Universal for $385 million. Robertson founded OS technology company Lindows, which later changed its name to Linspire after settling a trademark lawsuit with Microsoft. Linspire focused on creating an easy-to-use Linux-based operating system for desktops and laptops. In 2003, Robertson founded SIPphone, which developed free VOIP software called Gizmo5. Google acquired the company in 2009. Robertson also launched MP3tunes.com in 2005, a music download service without digital rights management (DRM). MP3tunes faced a copyright infringement lawsuit by EMI and eventually filed for bankruptcy in 2012. Robertson earned a bachelor's degree in Cognitive Science from the University of California, San Diego, and currently resides in San Diego. He self-identifies as a libertarian and has been recognized for his innovative contributions to technology. Career MP3.com Robertson was the founder of the original MP3.com. Despite the early success of MP3.com on Wall Street (the day of the stock IPO (ticker:MPPP), the stock rose from $28 to peak at $103), Robertson quickly led his company into a firestorm of lawsuits generated by the major record labels and music publishing concerns. The litigation sprang from Robertson's "Beam-it" and "Instant Listening" programs. "Beam-it" was a functionality that allowed people to quickly load their existing CD collection into online lockers at my.mp3.com and access their private music collections online. "Instant Listening" allowed instant access to CDs purchased online from participating retailers. However, to launch the service Robertson essentially had to duplicate every music CD ever created. Although MP3.com purchased the CDs for their index and users had to supply their own copy as well, MP3.com violated copyright laws by failing to acquire licenses for the music that was internally duplicated by digitally storing the material on their servers. Virtually every major record label sued MP3.com, and Robertson's company settled the majority of the lawsuits for tens of millions of dollars. Universal Music, however, held out and took the issue to court. After the trial started, in the case of UMG v. MP3.com, MP3.com was found to have violated copyright laws and ordered to pay as much as $250 million to Universal Music Group. MP3.com paid $53.4 million to settle Universal Music's claim. This legal outcome triggered a class action complaint charging MP3.com and certain officers, including Robertson and company directors with violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The action was ultimately resolved under the terms of an agreement whereby the defendants, while continuing to deny all liability, paid into an escrow account $35,000,000 and agreed to issue 2.5 million shares of MP3.com common stock which MP3.com valued at the time at $5,391,000, in exchange for complete dismissals and releases of all claims with prejudice. In addition, under the stipulations, MP3.com agreed to institute certain corporate governance enhancements. Many saw the case as simple copyright infringement on a grand, even record-breaking scale. The first line of the Court's opinion reads: "The complex marvels of cyberspatial communication may create difficult legal issues; but not in this case. Defendant's infringement of plaintiff's copyrights is clear," rendering such speculations moot. MP3.com was acquired for $385 million by Vivendi Universal during a buying spree by Vivendi's CEO Jean-Marie Messier. The acquisition was completed on August 28, 2001. After the purchase by Vivendi, Michael Robertson cashed in with an estimated $103 million. In hindsight, after Messier departed Vivendi, the new Vivendi management determined the corporate acquisitions spree to be reckless and later sold MP3.com to CNET which now manages the site. Messier's buying spree accumulated billions of dollars in debt for his company and resulted in company shares falling to 20% of their previous value. Vivendi was compelled to sell off many other companies to scale down its debt. Linspire After leaving MP3.com, Robertson started an OS technology company, Lindows. Since Lindows created a Linux based operating system designed to compete with Microsoft's Windows operating system, Microsoft filed trademark related lawsuits in the United States and abroad. Given that the trademarked "Windows" name was in some jeopardy, Microsoft paid to settle the lawsuit they initiated with a $20 million payment to Lindows and certain licenses with Lindows agreeing to change their name worldwide to Linspire. Linspire championed an easy-to-use system for desktops and laptop computers and signed on popular retailers, both offline and online, including Walmart.com, TigerDirect, Frys and MicroCenter. Linspire was based on Debian (and later Ubuntu) with a KDE interface. Linspire was most distinguished by CNR, an early app store. In 2008, Robertson attempted to sue Linspire's bank, Comerica, in an attempt to get Comerica to refund severance payments which had been made to laid-off Linspire employees. Robertson alleged the severance payments were actually funds which had been embezzled by the laid-off employees. The San Diego Police Department investigated and quickly came to the conclusion that this was a simple dispute between Robertson and Linspire's CEO at the time, Kevin Carmony, and no embezzlement or other crime had been committed. Robertson lost the lawsuit without it getting past summary judgment. Robertson then filed a civil suit against the six former employees directly, for which he was counter sued. The jury sided largely with the employees, awarding a $238,000 judgement against Robertson. A smaller judgement of $80,000 was awarded to Robertson, however, this judgement was vacated and set aside by Judge Taylor. Judge Taylor stated in his ruling, “It is plain to the court that Linspire [Robertson] was not required to act in the protection of its interests as it did. Rather, Linspire [Robertson] approached this case as a vehicle for a test of will as between Robertson and Carmony.” In an effort to defend the names of the former employees being sued by Robertson, a website critical of Robertson called Freespire.com was launched in February 2008. The Freespire.com site states that it is "dedicated to shedding light on the REAL Michael Robertson," and discloses information and facts about.... Discover the Michael Robertson popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Michael Robertson books.