By Dan Satherley

An online music store caught selling Beatles mp3s without permission has removed the band's music from its services, but denies it was breaking the law.

Record label EMI won a court injunction against Bluebeat.com on Friday, preventing Bluebeat.com from continuing to sell music by EMI artists.

Bluebeat.com had been selling the Beatles' music for US$0.25 a song, a quarter the price most online music stores charge for mp3s. The Beatles are yet to licence their music to any online music store, including iTunes.

In a strange twist however, Bluebeat.com owner Hank Risan said the songs being sold were exempt from copyright as they had been re-recorded, but made to sound exactly like the original Beatles recordings thanks a new technology called 'psycho-acoustic simulation'.

Technology website Techradar.com called it the "world's worst legal defence".

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