MP3.com does a reverse against Napster...
June 15, 2000 - San Francisco

The walls are beginning to crack in the music industry's war against Napster, now that the labels have welcomed their first internet ally. The Recording Industry Association of America is asking a federal judge for an injunction against the popular Internet song-sharing service -- and it has recruited the help of the Motion Picture Association of America as well as MP3.com chairman, Michael Robertson.

Robertson has just fashioned a new licensing deal with two major record labels and is on his way to becoming a full member of the good old boys club. MP3 has had their share of legal battles and he feels that if he must play by the rules, so must everyone else. Jack Valenti of the Motion Picture Association of America, maintains that if Napster can encourage and facilitate the copying of sound recordings, then what's to prevent the same technology from copying movies, software, books, magazines, newspapers, television, photographs or video games. And of course the answer is absolutely nothing.

Books and magazines and photographs have always been traded freely after an initial purchase and libraries make these publications available at no charge. Not so with the video cassettes at the library. For some reason, there is a rental payment made to the library. Software giants have gone to extreme measures to encode their packages and this has been mostly successful. To be fair to Robertson, he has from the beginning tried to deal properly with this technology. MP3 was early to form a licensing agreement with ASCAP. They quickly put their MyMP3 project on hold at the request of legal representatives of the music industry and eventually hammered out a deal.

The RIAA filed its brief Monday asking U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel to grant the injunction and prevent Napster from "allowing or assisting users to copy, download, upload, transmit or distribute any copyrighted music" through its site. But if Judge Patel does grant the injunction (a ruling is expected July 26), shutting down Napster could still be difficult. Music files are traded from users' own hard drives, and none of the alleged copyright infringements actually exist on one server.

Napster CEO Hank Barry responded to the industry's latest request by saying that the labels are ignorant to the possibilities of Net music. "People are sharing through Napster, not selling. Napster is doing no harm to the record industry. By their own numbers, record sales are up, and file sharing has proven to be a great promotional tool." And the question all should be asking about this new technology, "If not Napster, then who?'

MP3.com has settled its legal battle with industry giants, BMG and Warner Bros. The agreement should allow MP3 to restore its MyMP3 service in a short time. There has been some decline in the sale of CD product near colleges. This leads analyst to conclude that e-music has cut into the profits of Major labels. There has, however, been a 12% increase overall in CD sales. Go figure.

From http://www.musicianscafe.com/