The Knack last month filed a lawsuit against Apple, Amazon.com, Yahoo!, and other companies, claiming that their distribution of the Run DMC song "It's Tricky" constitutes copyright infringement because it uses an unauthorized sample from their 1978 hit "My Sharona." Despite the fact that "It's Tricky" came out in 1986, the band said that they hadn't heard the song until August 2005.

RealNetworks and Napster are also named in the lawsuit, which is seeking US$150,000 for each infringement, according to Steve Bryant's Google Watch column at eWeek. In addition, The Knack is suing the members of Run DMC, its producers, and some music publishers and record labels.

However, the band isn't suing Wal-Mart and other brick-and-mortar retailers. Jason Schultz, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Mr. Bryant: "This is a good example of how copyright law is outdated for the Internet." He noted that online retailers were sued because they make a copy of a song each time they sell it, unlike traditional stores, which he thinks opened them to liability.

He added: "But distribution has never been addressed clearly online. Apple and Amazon and Yahoo had no idea anything was wrong -- if anything was wrong -- with what they were selling." While he doesn't see the lawsuit succeeding because there's a three-year statute of limitations on copyright infringement claims, he did note that "companies like Apple and Yahoo will be in a bind" if it's able to proceed, because they have no protections under the law as it exists right now.