Every time Apple holds a new event, the speculation begins: will this announcement be the one in which The Beatles' music (legally) comes to the Internet? But it turns out that Apple was beaten to the punch by BlueBeat.com, which on October 30 began streaming unlimited plays from The Beatles' catalog (including the new remastered albums) and selling tracks for a quarter each.

It's at this point that you're probably asking yourself, "Self, who exactly is behind BlueBeat.com? I've never heard of it." It's true that BlueBeat.com is not well known as a music streaming destination, but you might know more than you suspect about the company behind it; Media Rights Technologies made waves back in 2007 when it sent cease-and-desist letters to Microsoft, Adobe, Radio, and Apple, demanding that the companies adopt its proprietary streamripper protection software, X1 SeCure Recording Control.

MRT has always made a big deal about copyright protection—though usually in the service of selling its DRM solutions. When I spoke to CEO Hank Risan briefly back in 2007, he insisted that he was driven by a love of music and a desire to see musicians get paid.

So are The Beatles getting paid? EMI has already told a UK newspaper that Bluebeat appears to be selling the tracks without permission, but BlueBeat insists that everything on its site is legitimate. "Our MP3s are fully-licensed audio-visual works and BlueBeat.com pays all applicable royalties," the site says.

MRT did not return our requests for comment, but a careful look at the BlueBeat site reveals something curious. The language above specifically says that the MP3s for sale at the site are "audio-visual works," the site's proprietary streaming player is called the "BlueBeat A/V player," and the site offers a link to the US Copyright Office in order to explain what an "audio-visual work" is.

This might sound like a generic designation, but it has a specific meaning in copyright law. As the Copyright Office makes clear, there is one exception to the category of "sound recording": "Under the copyright law, the sounds that accompany an audiovisual work, for example, a motion picture, are not defined as a sound recording." And A/V work is described as a "series of related images that are intended to be shown by the use of a machine or device, together with accompanying sounds, if any."

Given that MRT is so careful with the BlueBeat language on this point, and that the player does show album art and other graphics, it may be that the company is relying on some unusual understanding of copyright law to claim that its downloads are not sound recordings and thus come under a different licensing regime.

The copyright notice at the bottom of BlueBeat pages is also odd. It reads: "All audio-visual works copyright ? 2009 (reg. # PAu 3-407-524) BlueBeat, Inc, a subsidiary of MRT. BlueBeat transmits simulated live musical performances for free at 160 and 320 kb/s." Again, the fixation is on "audio-visual works," though here it's clear that these are copyrighted by BlueBeat itself, not some other rightsholder.

Without an explanation or public response from MRT, however, it's hard to say what's going on here.

Non-standard legal theories were the basis for their 2007 letters against Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, and Real. At the time, MRT claimed that the companies were violating the DMCA by not using "effective" DRM in their streaming applications (iTunes, Windows Media Player, Flash player, and RealPlayer), and MRT threatened lawsuits unless its own DRM scheme was licensed by the companies. Nothing apparently came of this threat, which was certainly unusual—MRT was not a rightsholder.

The company then removed all iTunes links from BlueBeat and issued a press release in which it said that "Apple, Inc. does not have the required government licenses to manufacture and distribute content over the Internet, nor does Apple protect their content from serial copying."

Risan said at the time, "In my review of official government records and discussions with the US Copyright Office, I was shocked to discover that Apple did not obtain their compulsory licenses. MRT will not condone copyright infringement nor risk infringement liability for our customers and partners. Until Apple is fully compliant with government regulations, iTunes will not be permitted on our sites."

In any event, the company is back in the news once more, stirring up another controversy over music licensing, this time using one of the biggest bands in the world. While the situation certainly sounds... murky, there's a part of us that badly wants MRT to succeed here. Who wouldn't want legal copies of The Beatles catalogue for a quarter each?