A U.S. District Judge has ordered a website to pay a number of record companies nearly $1 million for selling Beatles songs online for 25 cents per downloaded song.

Judge Josephine Staton Tucker signed off the settlement for the federal lawsuit between BlueBeat.com and record companies, EMI Group PLC, Capitol Records and Virgin Records America on Friday.

According to the Associated Press, the district judge had ruled in December that the site ‘violated the music label’s copyrights and presented unfair competition’. The Beatles hits were sold by BlueBeat.com even before they were legally available.

Judge Staton set a trial at Santa Ana, California. beginning Tuesday to determine the total amount BlueBeat owed the companies.

Aside from Beatles, the website had reportedly streamed and sold music by other individual and group artists. Some of the names that came up in the court documents, that are believed to have been victimized of the unfair competition included Fab Four, Coldplay, Lily Allen and some more.

The BlueBeat website is believed to have raked in sales before the music companies successfully had it shut down following a law suit filed in November 2009. The AP noted that the website had already sold 67,000 copies of Beatles song by the time the law suit came in.

Court documents showed that the posting of Beatles song came shortly after the re-mastered albums and a pricey box set were released. Then these Beatles hits were sold through Apple, Inc., iTunes at $1.29 apiece. The AP estiamted that more than 2 million Beatles songs were sold within the first week alone.

BlueBeat argued in court that there was no wrongdoing on its part since the owner employed what they called ‘psycho-acoustic stimulation’ of the songs that paved the way for unique versions of copyrighted music - - thus allowing them to think that they are selling a version they can call their own.

But the judge dismiss the argumentation raised by BlueBeat saying that ‘Risan’s recordings were based on copies of his purchased CDs’.

The settlement of the filed federal lawsuit meant that Risan and the BlueBeat website are permanently banned ‘infringing any music copyrights’.

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