Michael Robertson

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Michael Robertson at the 2006 O'Reilly Emerging Telephony Conference.

For the Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles rugby league player, see Michael Robertson (rugby league).

This page is on the businessman. For the tennis player see Michael Robertson (tennis).

Michael Robertson (born 1967) is the founder and former CEO of MP3.com, which quickly became one of the most popular Internet music sites. In 2001, after leaving MP3.com, he created his second major company, Lindows.com, Inc., producer of Linspire (originally Lindows), in San Diego, California, U.S.. In the years to follow, Robertson launched additional businesses, including SIPphone, MP3tunes, and Ajax 13.

1 Career
2 Education and personal life
3 Cited References
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Career

[edit] MP3.com

Robertson was the founder of the original MP3.com. Despite the amazing financial success of MP3.com (the day of the stock IPO (ticker:MPPP), the stock rose from $28 to peak at $103^[1]), 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" program, 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 from anywhere in the world. And also "Instant Listening" which allowed instant access of 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 failed to seek licenses for the music that was internally duplicated by digitally storing the material on their servers.

Massive lawsuits erupted, with MP3.com claiming fair use and record labels claiming copyright infringement. Virtually every major record label sued MP3.com with MP3 settling the majority of the law suits. Universal Music, however, held out and took the issue to court. After the trial started, in the landmark case of UMG v. MP3.com, MP3.com was found to have violated copyright laws^[2]. MP3.com paid $53.4 million to settle Universal Music's claim ^[3].

Some believed that MP3.com received unfair treatment by being lumped in with the Napster copyright case which took place during the same period.^{[citation needed]} Others noted that the ruling came from the 2nd Circuit District Court in New York, which is media company, not technology, friendly.^{[citation needed]}

Some have speculated that a different outcome was likely if the case had been tried in the 9th Circuit Court (a federal district court that serves the West Coast) instead of the 2nd Circuit Court (a federal district court that serves the East Coast). Still others saw the case as simple copyright infringement on a grand, even record breaking, scale. However, the first line of the Court's opinion read: "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.^[4]

MP3.com was acquired for $385 million by Vivendi Universal during a buying spree by Vivendi's CEO Jean-Marie Messier. After the purchase by Vivendi, Michael Robertson cashed in with an estimated $103 million^[5]. In hindsight, after Messier departed Vivendi, the new Vivendi management determined the corporate acquisitions spree to be reckless ^[6] 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.

The year 2000 also produced another type of serious legal issue for Michael Robertson and MP3.com in that San Diego law firm Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach LLP filed a class action complaint charging MP3.com and certain of its officers, including Robertson, and directors with violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The complaint alleged that the various defendants made false and misleading statements about strong sales and the growth of MP3.com's Internet services. ^[7]

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. ^[8]

[edit] 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 $24 million payment to Lindows and certain licenses with Lindows agreeing to change their name worldwide to Linspire.

Linspire has championed an easy to use system for desktops and laptop computers and has signed on popular retailers both offline and online including Walmart.com, TigerDirect, Frys and MicroCenter. Linspire is based on Debian with a KDE interface. Linspire is most distinguished by CNR, a one click software download and installation system which also provides updates. In 2005, Robertson stepped down as CEO in favor of Kevin Carmony, who would later leave the company and accuse Robertson of various acts of malfeasance and would claim that Linspire's future is in doubt (see related entry below.) Robertson remains Chairman of Linspire's board.

On April 11, 2008, former Linspire CEO Kevin Carmony issued a collection of serious accusations against Michael Robertson via Carmony's personal blog. ^[9] Carmony's public accusations specify allegations that Michael Robertson/Linspire "has attempted to defraud a federally-insured bank, filed false documents with the IRS, knowingly filed a false report with the San Diego Police Department, and perpetrated deceit upon other federal and state government agencies." In the course of the blog, Carmony hints that he will be releasing a "Fact Sheet" containing further allegations and additional details in a manner similar to a previous fact sheet issued by Michael Robertson as an attack on Bill Gates. Months have passed without any fact sheet or official documents which calls into question the validity of the claims.

Carmony's position regarding a copyright infringement action filed in 2007 by major record label EMI against Robertson and his MP3 Tunes company, which operates mp3tunes.com and sideload.com, remains unannounced. Later he was deposed in regard to the MP3tunes case after he volunteered to help the major record label EMI. He then asked for large portions of his testimony to be hidden from public scrutiny which raises suspicion of his claims.

[edit] SIPphone

In 2003 Robertson founded SIPphone, which itself has seen legal action, filing suit against Vonage for false and misleading advertising including 'not disclosing the lock the company places on certain pieces of hardware'. Many view this latest suit as a publicity stunt, although Vonage later settled by altering their packaging and advertising to address the issues in the lawsuit. In addition to selling phone adapters and routers, SIPphone develops free VOIP software to compete with Skype based on the SIP standard called Gizmo, which is available on a variety of platforms.

[edit] MP3tunes

In February 2005, Robertson launched MP3tunes.com, which sells downloadable music. Robertson boasts that, unlike Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store and most other competitors, MP3tunes does not use digital rights management technology to limit the use of songs its customers purchase. MP3tunes also provides Oboe, a digital music back-up service.

Like MP3.com, Robertson's first online music company, MP3tunes.com finds itself struggling against a significant copyright infringement lawsuit issued by a major recording label. ^[10]

[edit] Ajax 13

Founded in early 2006 by Michael Robertson (CEO) and Hisham El-Emam (CTO), Ajax 13 Inc. is a software development company that provides web-based applications written using XUL. It was started to pursue the software-as-a-service vision that is gaining momentum in both the enterprise and small business / home office marketplaces. Among the Ajax 13 products is ajaxWrite, a web-based word processor.

[edit] Education and personal life

He earned a bachelor's degree in Cognitive Science from the University of California, San Diego, where he studied under Donald Norman and interned at the nearby San Diego Supercomputer Center.

Michael lives in San Diego, California. His reported wealth has varied widely, but he has been on the Forbes 400 list once and twice on the Fortune 40 under 40, most recently in 2004. However, given that he has been personally named as a defendant in an ongoing copyright infringement lawsuit filed by major label EMI, and given the amounts of damages may equal or surpass the amounts paid by MP3.com for a previous and similar lawsuit, his personal wealth may be in jeopardy. In the previous copyright litigation that MP3.com faced, Robertson was not personally named as a defendant, however, the current EMI lawsuit clearly shows Robertson personally named. ^[11]

In April of 2008, Robertson pleaded with the MP3tunes user group to help fund the legal defense regarding the EMI lawsuit.^[12]

Robertson self-identifies as a libertarian.^[13]