Universal Music has pulled the plug on plans by Nine Inch Nails man Trent Reznor to launch a website where fans can upload their own remixes of NIN songs. The site was designed to promote the new Reznor remix album, being released by Universal's Interscope this week. But Universal fear that if fans upload mash up mixes of NIN tracks sampling other songs they don't own they may make themselves liable for copyright infringement charges, just as they are suing other sites for allowing such infringement. So they have put a block on the whole promotion.
Writing on his website Reznor explains: "Universal feels that if they host our remix site, they will be opening themselves up to the accusation that they are sponsoring the same technical violation of copyright they are suing [YouTube and MySpace] for. Their premise is that if any fan decides to remix one of my masters with material Universal doesn't own - a 'mash-up', a sample, whatever - and upload it to the site, there is no safe harbor under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and they will be doing exactly what MySpace and YouTube are doing. This behavior may get hauled out in court and impact their lawsuit".
Reznor's relationship with Universal is already pretty poor, of course, mainly because he keeps telling fans to illegally download his music. Though moving forward the NIN man is now outside his recording contract and is considering ways to release his music himself without major label support - making future fan based remix projects more viable.