Move over RIAA, ASCAP, Harry Fox, and recording industry fat cats. The dot-com world has decided to police its own.

EMusic.com Inc. Tuesday announced that it and several of its independent record label partners have filed a copyright infringement complaint against MP3.com Inc. and its My.MP3.com streaming service. The complaint was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

"Although MP3.com has entered into settlement agreements with the five major record labels, they have chosen to ignore their infringing actions with respect to independent record labels," said Gene Hoffman, EMusic president and CEO. "EMusic strongly supports the rights of music fans to have access to convenient, inexpensive digital music -- as well as the rights of all labels and artists to choose how and where their music is used."

EMusic has the exclusive digital rights to approximately 13,000 albums from over 600 record labels. At this time, EMusic says it is unable to determine how many of these albums have been infringed upon in the MP3.com service. The complaint was initially filed by EMusic and six of its partner-labels: Fearless Records, Fuel 2000 Records, Gig Records, Invisible Records, SpinART Records and Victory Records. EMusic anticipates that more of its partner-labels will join in the action or settlement discussions, as applicable, as this matter progresses.

Recording biz fans take note: this is more than a suit against MP3.com. It is a move from independents to take back cyberground lost to the majors. What began as a promotional fest for indies has turned into a proprietary playing field for the biggies, thanks to their massive and successful lawsuits. You can expect that the indies' own champion, NAIRD (National Association of Independent Record Distributors Manufacturers), will not be far behind.