The Artful Jurist

“We don’t need no education… .” So sang Pink Floyd in its classic hit, Another Brick in the Wall. But I’m guessing the band’s happy its lawyers got a good legal education. The musical group won a major battle in Britain’s High Court when the court ruled in the band’s favor and ordered record company EMI Group to cease selling downloads of individual tracks of Pink Floyd albums.

The band sued the record label, claiming that “unbundling” original albums was a breach of its contract. Pink Floyd maintains that its music albums are “concept” works that seamlessly meld one song with another as part of a greater product. Naturally, that sort of “concept” disappears when you take one track out of context and sell it separately. (Of course, that’s just what happens when a radio station airs only one track of an album, and I don’t recall hearing Pink Floyd grumble about that.)

Apparently, the contract clause at issue dates back a decade, before iTunes and other web-based music retailers came into play. EMI claimed the contract didn’t apply to Internet sales. The court disagreed.