Reason #856,003 Why Suing Bloggers is Not a Good Idea

Infamous celebublogger Perez Hilton posted yesterday on his blog that there’s a reason why he hasn’t written about Leona Lewis — one of his favorite artists — in a while.

It’s because he’s being sued by her label, Sony BMG and its subsidiaries Jive and Zomba for posting widely distributed songs that were being attributed to Britney Spears. It turns out that the offending .mp3s were tracks that didn’t make it onto Spears’ newest album.

In Hilton’s words:

Sony BMG, and their labels Zomba and Jive, are suing us for streaming several songs that turned out to be by Britney Spears.

When these songs first leaked, there was a lot of doubt as to whether they were Britney or a fake. Plus, we never made any music downloadable.

Every time we saw a take-down notice from the R.I.A.A., we complied immediately. By the way, no one at Sony BMG ever contacted us about Britney.

Also, every song we posted - not knowing if it was or wasn’t an authentic Spears song - had already been all over the internet and fansites, yet PerezHilton.com is the only entity being sued by Sony BMG.

He lists a number of other talented people that he no longer covers, including my all-time favorite singer Christina Aguilera. He asked himself:

Because Zomba, which is owned by Sony BMG, is suing us and we had a lightbulb go off recently: we can’t support any artist signed to Sony BMG.

Why should we help the company suing us make money???? Especially when their lawsuit is personal!

The record industry has been notoriously backward when it comes to the Web. Their behavior towards Hilton has been no exception. It doesn’t matter much whether the gang at Sony BMG has a legitimate case against Hilton, it’s not in their long-term best interests to sue him.

Hilton may be reviled by many, but his coverage has helped to rocket some musicians from obscurity into the national spotlight. Musicians crave coverage on his site. A rave from him drives countless iTunes downloads.

If Hilton refuses to cover any artist signed to Sony BMG, you can expect that other artists will get the spotlight. That means lost revenues and lost opportunities. It would have been better to just send him a takedown notice and let the whole thing go away quietly.