Napster

[thewho rocks <leb905@yahoo.com>]

Here's excerpts from another interesting article on Napster.  The part
about MP3.com mentions a massive licensing deal, which likely means the
mp3s there will soon have a fee attached.


COPYRIGHT WOES DOG NAPSTER, MP3.COM

Heavy metal band Metallica, which is suing online music swapping
company Napster for what it says are massive copyright violations,
claims to have identified more than 335,000 Internet addresses and user
IDs of people who allegedly shared the band's songs illegally.  The
band's attorneys will deliver about 60,000 pages of documents to the
San Mateo, CA based software company this afternoon, asking Napster to
block all of those individuals from the service.  It's the first time
Napster and users of the file-swapping software have been indentified
in bulk as potential copyright pirates.

"I don't know if it's going to put a chill on the user end," said
Howard King, the Los Angeles attorney who represents Metallica and rap
artist Dr. Dre, who also is suing Napster, "But it certainly is going
to show other artists what they can do to get their work out of
Napster."  The massive number of user identities to be dropped on
Napster's front door could send shock waves through the online music
community.  Many individuals using the software or rival products
believed they were operating anonymously or that individual actions
would go unnoticed among the massive quantity of files being traded at
any given time.

Napster and a handful of similar programs have allowed hundereds of
thousands of computer users to open their hard drives and share music
files with others online.  While Web surfers' actual names remain
hidden, their computers are identified on the internet through a
number.  Network administrators say enough information is transmitted
by the Napster service to link users' online identities with specific
computers.  Attorneys for Metallica say they hired NetPD, an online
consulting firm, to monitor the Napster service this past weekend. The
firm came up with more than 335,000 individual users who had made the
band's content available online, the lawyers said.

Napster consistently has refused to remove specific artists' content
from its service, noting that it is only a directory for the
individuals who are trading the files.  But the company has said it
would eject users specifically identified as copyright violators.

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