Digital Music/Copyright stories for 2001

• NOT SO FREE: After a year of legal battles, MP3 is back online with two new levels of service. "For no charge, members can store up to 25 CDs. That service will be supported by advertising. For an annual fee of $49.95, members will be able to store up to 500 CDs and enjoy more features and less advertising." Orange County Register (AP) 12/06/00
• JUDGMENT AND A DEAL: "MP3.com announced a distribution agreement with the Universal Music Group on Tuesday, shortly after a federal court awarded the world's largest record company $53.4 million in attorney fees and statutory damages stemming from one of the Web site's streaming audio services." Sonicnet 11/15/00
• DAVID GROWS UP: What has 40 employees and no income, has 13 million more users than America Online - a 15-year-old internet giant with a $108 billion market capitalisation - attracts one million new users a week and its software is on 10 percent of internet-connected computers in the United States? Napster, of course. Can it survive its deal with Bertelsman, made last week? The Age (Melbourne) 11/08/00
• INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION DEMAND APOLOGY FROM NAPSTER: "A private e-mail that the head of the Recording Industry Association of America sent to Napster boss Hank Barry demanding an apology to the band Metallica has been copied and put on the Internet. Rosen asked Barry, or his colleague Shawn Fanning, to make an apology to the heavy-metal band that protested Napster's alleged encouragement of the abuse of copyright law." New York Post 11/08/00
• FREE TO BE ME? Is the free dissemination of music on the Web ultimately helpful or harmful to the economics of new music? Four prominent composers - Richard Danielpour, Amy Knoles, Jeff Harrington, Amy Scurria - and intellectual properties attorney Mark A. Fischer discuss the future for serious music. NewMusicBox.com 11/02/00
• NAPSTER SELLOUT? "The Internet brimmed yesterday with the anguish of Napster fans, thousands of whom vented about what they consider an unforgivable sellout. On Tuesday, Napster, the website that enables its 38 million users to swap songs without charge, announced that it was abandoning its free-music ethos and will partner with the music conglomerate Bertelsmann AG. Napster will get a cash infusion and Bertelsmann will take a financial stake in the company, once it begins to charge users a monthly subscription fee." Washington Post 11/02/00
• THE NEW REALITIES: "Despite a year of legal action by the major labels, and despite the revolutionary fervor of some of Napster's users, Napster's success has more to do with the economics of digital music than with copyright law, and the BMG deal is merely a recognition of those economic realities." Feed 11/02/00
• ON BREAKING RANKS: "The fact that Bertelsmann, owner of BMG Music (i.e. Dave Matthews, Christina Aguilera, etc.), would strike a deal with Napster at the same time the music giant was part of an aggressive industry lawsuit to shut the music file-swapping company down for copyright infringement, must have especially stunned and angered some major label chiefs. Is that any way for a 'cartel' to operate?" Salon 11/02/00
• FIRST STEPS TO A NEW STANDARD? "The new file-trading service that Napster and Bertelsmann are developing will need digital-rights-management technology and could be the key to resuscitating the recording industry's initiative. Napster's yet-to-be-developed service might be just the place for the largely theoretical Secure Digital Music Initiative to get its test run." Wired 11/02/00
• DO THE MATH: "Music, you would think, is manufactured in the Old Economy, and the distributed free of charge as common property by the New. Yet in that case, is the New Economy an economy at all any longer? Who would go on providing music if buyers want to purchase at one price only, namely that of zero, getting it for free? The Net's great promise – that every ware should preferably be shareware – does it not overlook that this 'everything' has to be produced before it can be distributed?" Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 11/01/00
• FROM PLAINTIFF TO PARTNER: German media giant Bertelsmann, parent company of major music label BMG, has teamed up with Napster in a surprising alliance to jointly develop a subscription-based service for music-file sharing that will still guarantee payments to artists. The proposed service will give users access to BMG’s complete catalog. In exchange, Bertelsmann has agreed to drop its portion of the ongoing industry copyright-violations lawsuit against Napster once the system is up and running. Variety 10/31/00
  • DISTURBING DEVELOPMENT? Napster’s founding ethos was based on freeing music from its traditional sources of distribution, so why is the company now cozying up to a major label? "Many in the industry claim that the five major labels have used lobbying, lawsuits and intimidation to put a stranglehold on the growth of digital music so that the struggling distributors have no choice but to partner with the labels." Wired 10/31/00
• THE NET'S KILLER-APP: Just how popular has the music-sharing company become? "At peak times, Napster CEO Hank Barry says, the company has 'about a million' simultaneous users - a staggering number. America Online, by comparison, has about 1.6 million users at peak hour, according to SEC documents filed last month. In other words, during peak hours, a startup with a few dozen employees, beta software and no income stream accounts for two-thirds as many Internet connections as a 15-year-old Net behemoth with 15,000 employees and a pre-merger market capitalization of $108.5 billion." Inside.com 10/31/00
• WRITERS - WHO OWNS YOUR WORK? "The press would have you believe that the worst copyright infringement occurring on the Internet is by lone hackers sitting at their computers. However, corporate owned and controlled newspapers and television news organizations are hardly disinterested parties in this story. It may turn out that individual writers (which, potentially, could be anybody) have more to fear from people in suits trailing phalanxes of lawyers." *spark-online 10/00
• ONLINE MUSIC BIZ SLOW: Sales of digital music are r-e-a-l-l-y s-l-o-w, forcing layoffs at several music sites. But digi-music companies hold on, hoping for investor patience. Wired 10/12/00
• DIGITAL MUSIC COPYING HERE TO STAY: In September, 1.4 billion songs were downloaded on the internet using Napster. Yet the recording companies still haven't figured out that the genie is out of the bottle for good. To try to cut down advance downloads, some of the major labels have been restricting music critics' access to advance copies (but the music slips ouit anyway). The Globe and Mail (Toronto) 10/11/00
• NAPSTER IN COURT: Napster lawyers argue an appeal in US court trying to "copy the defense strategy successfully used by Sony that showed its Betamax VCR was primarily used for legitimate purposes. 'The Supreme Court said in the Sony case that as long as there is a substantial, non-infringing use for the technology, that technology is protected.' The judge didn't buy it. Wired 10/03/00
  • DAY IN COURT: Surprisingly, the judges, who were picked at random, seemed to be more open to a pro-Napster decision than many had expected. Salon 10/02/00
• SORTING OUT THE LAWSUITS: There is a score of current lawsuits around issues of copyright and digital copying. "The rules of intellectual property are being redefined for the digital age - and much is at stake for publishers. Which cases should you pay closest attention to?" Here's a handy rundown. Publishers Weekly 10/02/00
• WE NEED RULES FOR DIGITAL COPYING: Photocopiers and VCRs were once seen as a threat to books and video. Now digital copying of music has to be worked out. Says Napster's CEO: "We need to not panic and look at the principles that got us here and look at the balance between the interests of the artists and the people who make copyrightable works versus the interest of the public having access to those works and do a new formulation that applies to this area." Wired 10/02/00
• VIRTUAL DEMONSTRATION: The digital music company MP3.com launched its "million e-mail march" Thursday - a lobbying effort to get online-music users to support a recently introduced House bill that proposes changing copyright law to allow CD buyers to store their music (for personal use) on the internet. Inside.com 09/28/00
• THE BETTER MOUSETRAP: Shawn Fanning is the very model of the at-home innovator. "Fanning figured out that if he combined a music-search function with a file-sharing system and, to facilitate communication, instant messaging, he could bypass the rats' nest of legal and technical problems that kept great music from busting out all over the World Wide Web." Time Magazine 09/25/00
• MAJOR PARALYSIS: The major music labels are so busy suing the Napsters of the world they've forgotten to get in the business themselves. The musicians are ready, the public is ready, but fear is paralyzing what ought to be a great business. Wired 09/25/00
• HARD PAYS FOR SOFT: The German government proposes to initiate a fee on computer hardware makers that would be used to pay those whose intellectual property is distributed digitally. IDG.net 09/24/00
• TAKING CONTROL: New report says that music and book publishers could lose billions of dollars over the next few years because of the internet and digital copying. On the other hand, "it predicted that musicians will gain $1 billion, authors $1.3 billion, and third party service companies $2.8 billion by 2005 in 'a historic transfer of revenues'," due to artists choosing to distribute their own work. The Age (Melbourne) 09/21/00
• NON-INTERNET PIRACY BOOMING TOO: The recording industry say that "the number of counterfeit, pirated and bootlegged CDs seized in the first part of this year rose by 350 per cent over figures from this time last year. In all, more than 539,000 CDs were confiscated." CBC 09/20/00
• A PARADIGM SHIFT YOU CAN DANCE TO: Now that digital downloadable options like Napster have transformed the ways we can acquire and listen to new music, will consumers ever be content again with the old recording industry model of expensive, pre-packaged albums? “Never again will we think of music, or eventually any cultural creation, as produced by a label, network or imprint, packaged, purchased and sitting on a shelf in our homes.” Inside.com 09/19/00
• KEEPING BOOTLEGGERS AT BAY: To combat piracy and the possibility of their songs being downloaded on Napster, music labels and recording artists are experimenting with adding grating noises, lapses in volume, and spoken-word interruptions to their pre-release CDs. New York Magazine 09/25/00
• DIGITAL VIDEO WATERMARKS: The entertainment industry wins FCC permission for a "new device to be implanted in all digital television equipment that works like a digital watermark. That imprint could allow broadcasters to control whether a given TV show or movie can be copied or to place limits on the number of copies that a viewer can make." Some free-speech advocates protest. Inside.com 09/15/00
• IF ONLY IF IT WEREN'T ILLEGAL... A judge may have thrown Napster out of the game, but the site's traffic has quadrupled in the past six months. "The shocking translation: the freeware created by Shawn Fanning while he was a college freshman in January 1999 is now being used by more than 6 percent of the approximately 80 million at-home PC users with online access in the U.S." Inside.com 09/11/00
• THE GANG'S ALL HERE: The US government has weighed in on issues Napster in a brief to the federal court, joining a gang of others lining up against the digital music-trading software company: "It's illegal." The Age (AFP) 09/11/00 
• WHEN EVERYBODY HATES YOU: "Twenty 'friend-of-the-court' briefs accompanied the one filed by the United States Copyright Office. The Recording Industry Association of America, which is suing Napster, also was expected to file briefs by midnight Friday with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals backing the government's position." Wired 09/09/00
• LOSING THE WAR: It seems like recording companies and the entertainment industry are winning their battles with the new digital cowboys. But it's not so: "What's happening to the entertainment industry is the same thing that happened to the brokerage business when on-line stock trading appeared: An industry built on one business model feels fear when something new appears that threatens that way of doing business. The New Economy word for this kind of thing is 'disintermediation', and it's breaking out all over thanks to the Internet." The Globe and Mail (Toronto) 09/10/00
• FUTURE RULES: Recording companies might have won a few battles in the digital music downloading wars. But make no mistake - music-file sharing isn't going to go away.  "The point is that, whatever their legal muscle, Universal and its competitors will at some point have to realize that swapping digital music and other content is already here - they can either find a way of catching a ride on that wave and making it part of their business model, perhaps in concert with someone like MP3.com or Napster, or they can watch it gradually eat away at their business until there is nothing left." The Globe and Mail (Toronto) 09/08/00
• MP3.COM GUILTY: Saying it was necessary to send a strong deterrent to the Internet community, a federal judge found MP3.com guilty Wednesday of “willfully violating” the copyrights of Universal Music Group, whose CDs it offered in its online catalog. The court ordered MP3.com to pay Universal $25,000 in damages per CD (which could amount to between $118 and $250 million). ABC News 09/06/00
  • ABOUT WHO'S GOT THE MONEY: $118 million for Universal but nothing for the artists. Wired 09/07/00
  • AND READY TO APPEAL: “MP3.com plans to challenge the copyright validity of every single Universal CD with a variety of legal gambits. But it's not only Universal's forthcoming jackpot that concerns the digital music company: Rakoff's verdict opens the floodgates for smaller music labels and publishers to file their own suits.” Inside.com 09/06/00
• RECORD RIGHTS: A New York Judge rules today on Universal's lawsuit against MP3.com. "Universal is asking the court to award as much as $450 million US in damages. MP3.com says that would put the company out of business." CBC 09/06/00
• FIGURING THE DIGITAL EDGE: Does music downloading hurt or help sales of recordings? "A study of college students by Greenfield Online and YouthStream Media Networks found that two-thirds of the people who admitted to downloading songs said they did it to preview music before purchasing it. Nearly 80 percent of the people who use Napster said they still plan to buy CDs. Music sales in general are up this year: 355 million albums sold in the first six months of 2000, vs. 332 million in the same period last year. Orange County Register 09/03/00
• DOWNLOAD BLOCK: College students are the biggest downloaders of music over the internet, and college campuses, with their high-bandwidth connections, are where most of the downloads happen. But this fall some students are finding their access to sites such as Napster blocked by the universities. Wired 08/31/00 
• EVERYTHING IS CHANGE: "History thus suggests that online file-trading won’t kill the music industry. But it does have the potential to alter it radically, redistributing power to listeners and, perhaps, to artists. When the smoke clears, the music business will be stronger, in the sense that there will be more people making music, and making money from music, than ever before. The hierarchies that now dominate that business, however, will be shaken, flattened, chopped, and stewed." Reason 08/28/00
• HOW WE GET MUSIC: "Whatever happens to Napster and other free sites, there's no question that the Internet will continue to revolutionize the ways we obtain and listen to music. Among other things, this could mean far greater input from fans into what they want to hear, new payment systems for musicians, a vast new array of portable music devices from cell phones to wrist-watches, and the end of the long-playing album's nearly four-decade reign as the dominant music form." Newsday 08/28/00
• A NAIL IN THE COFFIN? In a brutal 45-page opinion, the judge who ruled against Napster in court last month wholly dismissed the site’s claim that file-sharing should be legal. She “dispensed with the centerpiece of Napster’s argument with a footnote, the judicial equivalent of scraping something off your shoe.” Inside.com 08/14/00
• CONSOLIDATION FALLOUT? AOL removed the search engine from its site on Thursday that has allowed users to locate MP3 music files on the Internet. “We're taking it down because we don't have an efficient process in distinguishing between legal and illegal MP3s."  CNET 08/10/00
• ANOTHER REASON THEY COST TOO MUCH: Twenty-eight US states have filed a price-fixing suit against five big manufacturers of compact disks. The suit contends that because of  the manufacturers collusion, consumers have paid $480 million more than they should have for recordings over the past five years." Variety 08/08/00
• CONSUMERS WEB: "But a general malaise appears to have gripped consumers; in part due to what many consider unfairly priced CDs. Consumers have flocked to file trading networks such as Napster, Scour, and the nearly 100 other applications that allow users to trade and sample music for free. Even as a federal court prepared to shut down Napster for violating copyrights, 3 percent of the entire Internet home population logged on to the application in search of free music." Wired 08/09/00
• ANY PUBLICITY IS GOOD PUBLICITY: The publicity buzzing around Napster's legal debacles has sent hundreds of thousands of netizens to the site. Last week, more people went to the Napster download site than visited e-tail giant Amazon. The site ranked as one of the most-visited spots on the web. Inside.com 08/06/00
• BUT I WANT TO PAY: A reporter decides to go legal and try to purchase downloadable music through the internet. "Even if Napster and Scour were shut down tomorrow, nobody in their right mind would spend this much time and frustration trying to buy digital music online. Lawsuits and copyright issues aside, the music industry isn't anywhere near creating a system that customers will embrace; heck, it's hard enough trying to get them to take your money." Boston Globe 08/06/00
• ONE KILLER APP AFTER ANOTHER: Amid the current copyright controversy surrounding Napster and the future of downloadable music, it’s easy to forget that copyright laws have been struggling to keep up with each new advance in recording technology for the last 100 years - from player-piano rolls to tape recordings, albums, VCRs, CDs, and now computers. Times of India (AP) 08/02/00
• WHAT’S THE REAL STORY? While the Napster controversy has enjoyed an avalanche of media attention, how much of it can be considered “good journalism”? “Too often the complicated dispute between the online start-up and the music industry has been painted in the most simplistic terms - a reductive tale of forward-thinking entrepreneurs outsmarting head-in-the-sand label executives. From the get-go, disturbing signs suggested the press was more interested in advancing Napster's story as a David-vs.-Goliath tale than in seriously addressing the intricate issues at hand.” Salon 08/01/00
• YOU ALWAYS WANT WHAT THEY SAY YOU CAN'T HAVE: Suing Napster could backfire on the recording industry. "A failure to negotiate with Napster may come back to haunt the industry because working with the Silicon Valley firm may be the best way to grab a piece of the online music pie, analysts add." Times of India (Reuters) 07/31/00
• MAYBE WATERMARKS? Maybe "people are copying music because they feel somewhat disenfranchised with the options they have at their disposal in the digital space. It's up to the content industry to create value in the digital arena and they've made phenomenal steps in that direction." Salon 07/31/00
• GET THAT MOJO WORKING: MojoNation software - it's said to be a cross between Napster and eBay to trade music files over the internet.It plans to beat Gnutella and Napster by creating "the first file-sharing economy of agents, servers, and search engines in which senders and receivers can agree on prices for each transaction and use micropayments to get paid." Wired 07/31/00
• NAPSTER STAYS: The music-sharing site was granted a reprieve at the last minute as a US judge stays the order to shut down. Toronto Globe and Mail 07/29/00
• DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD (depending on your perspective): Australia's music recording industry is rejoicing over a US judge's ruling shutting down the Napster website. "All this does is confirm the bleeding obvious, whether you do it offline or online, if you do a wrong you will be recognised by the court." The Age (Melbourne) 07/28/00
  • NAPSTER SEEKS STAY: Company contends that the judge "overstepped her authority by seeking to extend copyright law to a new technology. The brief also argued that Judge Patel, in the 90-minute hearing, did not consider all of the evidence, including studies that contend that Napster helps, rather than hinders, record sales." New York Times 07/28/00 (one-time registration required for entry)
  • CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC: Okay, so Napster's down for the count. But that's not going to stop music fans from downloading. "Shutting Napster down won't stop file exchanges. But what it may do is drive people to the many open-source alternatives that are out there. Wired 07/27/00  
  • NOT NO HOW: "The cultural phenomenon of widespread copying of music shows no signs of abating, as Internet users swarmed to other services that are not designed to make money. And since many of the alternatives are decentralized and noncommercial, they are likely to be much harder for the recording industry to attack." New York Times 07/28/00 (one-time registration required for entry)
  • THE DEFINITION OF FREE: It all comes down to a simple verb. Napster defenders insist that music needs to be free, while record-label execs contend that music just needs to feel free. And therein lies the crux of the debate. Boston Globe 07/28/00
  • ANOTHER WAY: MP3. COM, in its own legal hot water, has been settling with recording companies, agreeing to make payments for downloaded tunes. Maybe this is the way of the digital future. Variety 07/28/00 
  • MAYBE MOOT ANYWAY: "But there's another side fighting in this online arms race. Companies all over the Internet are working on systems designed to thwart rampant piracy. Using the same kinds of high-tech codes that protect your credit-card numbers from prying eyes on the Net, these companies are developing ways to lock up digital content so that only paying customers have the key to open a movie or song file." Minneapolis Star-Tribune (Wall Street Journal 07/28/00
  • LAST MINUTE DOWNLOADING: Traffic on Napster was noticeably heavy yesterday as users tried to grab as many music files as possible before a U.S. judge's injunction shuts Napster down tonight. Toronto Globe and Mail 07/28/00
• NAPSTER ORDERED PUT TO SLEEP: "In a scathing decision Wednesday afternoon, U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Patel granted the recording industry a temporary injunction to pull the service, effective Friday at 12 a.m. PDT." Wired 07/26/00
  • NEXT VICTIM: "On Friday, Robertson and MP3.com will go back to court to face their own legal fight with Sony Music and the Universal Music Group. The hearing will determine the amount of damages that MP3.com will have to pay because its my.mp3.com streaming service was found to have infringed on the labels' copyrights." Wired 07/26/00
  • BACKLASH? Napster CEO suggests there could be one: ""I can imagine there being some boycotts. Because I think a lot of people are outraged at Metallica for being so petty about this. Their sales have gone down, they've angered a lot of people. So I imagine that could happen with other record companies and other artists." CBC 07/27/00
• NAPSTER TO TAKE A NAP? A judge today will hear arguments about whether the popular digital music sharing program company should be shut down immediately Most observers expect the company to lose. Boston Globe 07/26/00 
• GOING LEGIT?  One day before Napster heads back to court in San Francisco for the next round of its legal battle against the record labels, its CEO announced that the company is trying to move toward a business model that respects intellectual property. “The key thing is we want to make sure that the artists get compensated,” he said to an audience at an online-music conference in New York. Billboard 07/25/00
• WORLD WIDE WAIT: A reporter tries out EMI’s new download scheme (the record company began selling its music over the internet Tuesday) and comes away wringing his hands. “The results of this sampling of the new, legitimate download frontier aren't really surprising. Although EMI took steps to work out the kinks ahead of time, it's clear that the kinks, especially on the backend, are substantial.” Inside.com 07/19/00
• WILL OF THE PEOPLE? Just days after Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on digital music piracy, download providers Napster and MP3.com urged their users to show their support - and they did just that, flooding two senators with 70,000 e-mails urging tolerance. Billboard 07/19/00 
• NAH-UH - THAT'D NEVER HAPPEN: Lawyers for eight movie companies tell US federal judge the movie industry never would have begun issuing movies on DVD if they had known they could be copied on computers. The Age (AP) 07/19/00
• A TAX FOR ART: The Canadian Copyright Board has proposed leyying a 50-cent tax on blank recordable CDs. The money would be distributed to Canadian authors, performers and recording companies, to help compensate them for unauthorized recording of their music. The software industry is fuming over the plan. Toronto Globe and Mail 07/18/00  
• THE MAN WITH FREE MOVIES ON THE WEB: "Ed Corley, who now goes by the name Emmanuel Goldstein, after the hero of the George Orwell novel 1984, has been targeted by the movie industry for publicizing the existence of a software utility known as Decode Content Scrambling System (DeCSS)." The software decodes DVD disks and allows them to be copied on the web. His trial opens in New York. The Times of India 07/18/00
  • HOW MUCH OF A THREAT? It turns out that copying and trading dvd's over the web is a much more arduous and cumbersome process than the movie companies portray. Rather than show how easy it is, a test conducted by the industry proves the current impracticality of doing it. Wired 07/18/00  
• IMPENDING DOOM FOR NAPSTER? "For those who have read the reply brief filed by the Recording Industry Association of America on Thursday, in which the association renews its demand for a court order shutting down the bulk of Napster's business, there can only be an eerie sense of impending doom. The RIAA brief reads less like an advocate's debate with a worthy adversary than a professor's terse, dismissive comments in a failing student's bluebook." Inside.com 07/16/00
• MEET VORBIS: "Vorbis is going to continue what MP3 was all about, which is opening things up for everybody. Getting your music out in the world now is going to be absolutely free. It has to be open from both sides, it can't just be the free distribution, the technology itself has to be free or it will never realize what the whole MP3 movement is about." Wired 07/17/00
• PAY-PER LISTEN: This week EMI begins selling music over the internet. As battles over copyright rage, the giant recording company decides to try offering its recordings in downloadable format. BBC 07/16/00 
• DON'T CRY FOR THE RECORD COMPANIES: Roger McGuinn has made 25 recordings in his career as a musician. But aside from modest advances, he told a US Senate committee holding hearings on the digital recording business, he's never made money off his albums. ''They [the recording companies] are not the poor victim in all this; they've made a killing. For years, the labels had all the power, and the artists were pawns. The artists were cattle." Boston Globe 07/14/00
• MY BROTHER THE PIRATE: "We were both heavy users of cassettes, the Napster of their day, and it turned us, not into habitual music thieves, but into devoted collectors of hundreds of LPs and then CDs. He [my brother] would have gladly paid a reasonable fee - $1, say - to download a song like 'Summer Breeze,' but he would never spend $15 on a full Seals & Crofts CD. And having Napster would not stop him from buying a CD by an artist he was more passionate about." Chicago Tribune 07/14/00
• THE "FUTURE OF DIGITAL MUSIC" HEARING: The debate over downloadable music moved to the US Senate for a contentious round of testimony from recording company execs, Napster CEO Hank Barry, and Metallica's Lars Ulrich before the Judiciary Committee. "The Senators were more interested in learning how music and technology can peacefully converge than in allowing the combative and often litigious companies to escalate and air their grievances." Wired 07/11/00
  • AND IN THIS CORNER...: Napster and Metallica went head to head. Napster - which has attracted 20 million users - says it is helping, not hurting, the recording industry by promoting more listening and thus more music buying. But Metallica accuses Napster of "hijacking" Metallica's music. "Like a carpenter who crafts a table gets to decide whether to keep it, sell it or give away, shouldn't we have the same options?" New York Times 07/11/00 (one-time registration required for entry)
  • "Both controversial and courageous, Metallica's stance has attracted wide ridicule. The online index Yahoo even added a subcategory: Rock and Pop > Metal > Anti-Metallica." Orange County Register 07/12/00
• GOING PUBLIC: The musicians' coalition Artists Against Piracy kicked off its national campaign against copyright infringement with full-page ads in five major U.S. newspapers. "If A Song Means A Lot To You, Imagine What It Means To Us" read the headline, above a list of 68 musicians in favor of protecting their music through stricter copyright-law enforcement. Billboard 07/11/00
• SCREW YOU: That pretty much sums up Napster's legal response to the recording industry companies trying to sue the software company out of existence. Nothing sinister about Napster - "The use of the Napster service to sample a song is analogous to visiting a listening station or borrowing a CD from a friend, in order to decide whether to make a purchase," the company claims. Wired 07/07/00
  • BIG-TIME RESPONSE: Napster, which was rebutting a RIAA request that the music-swapping company be shut down for rampant copyright infringements, has proved, among other things, that the once-tiny concern has become Big Business." Salon 07/07/00
• COMPETING RIGHTS: The hottest issue in the music business right now is how to protect recordings from being pirated. Music rights organization BMI announces a new international pact to track royalties, but ASCAP has its own international deal. Why don't they work together? Wired 07/06/00
• NAPSTER COMES OUT SWINGING: The music sharing company says that "the Recording Industry Association of America sees Napster as a threat, not because it is going to reduce record sales or music sales but because it is going to reduce the RIAA's control over music sales." The company says sales of recorded music are up because of the internet, not down. Boston Globe 07/04/00
• PROFIT MOTIVE: Since the internet is rapidly transforming the music industry, and some estimates have us downloading our music rather than buying CDs by the year 2010, how will musicians continue to get paid for their songs? “Currently, there are four different ways: when listeners pay to download songs; subscription-only sites; advertising revenue from running banner ads; and cashing in on the musician's identity by selling tee-shirts or fan club memberships. The most important thing artists can do is remind their listeners that music is worth paying for.”  NPR 06/28/00 [Real Audio file] (Part 1 of a series)
• NATIONAL MUSIC PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION sues Napster over piracy issues. Inside.com 06/28/00
• DIGITAL REALITIES: "For all the record companies’ bleating about lost sales, nobody is about to starve. But in highlighting how hard it is to control digital content once it is let loose on the Internet, Napster and its sort are merely the tip of a far bigger iceberg. As books, videos and other digitisable works go online, the same problems over copying and distribution are likely to arise. And the biggest difficulty is that, even if Napster, say, were shut down by the courts, many other, more powerful, systems are waiting to take its place that have been designed to be still harder to control." The Economist 06/22/00
• DOESN'T WORK IF EVERYONE GETS IT FREE: Musicians debate the future of their business in a Napster-driven universe. Most conclude it isn't pretty. "If it comes to its full conclusion, it'll turn the music industry into a place where musicians can no longer actually earn a living." Dallas Morning News 06/22/00
• WEB OF OPPORTUNITY: Despite the current music industry panic over online piracy, the Web is starting to look to some in the business like a multibillion-dollar opportunity cleverly disguised as a mortal threat. Washington Post 06/22/00
• CARROT BEATS STICK: The recording industry isn't going to win the digital music wars by suing everyone in sight. The companies need to figure out how to entice consumers. "Music as a service holds an incredible opportunity for the recording industry, but the industry isn't going to grow by selling CDs, it will grow when the labels begin to think about this business as a service." Wired 06/21/00
• NAPSTER DEFENDERS AND THEIR STUDY: A new study of 16,000 Americans between the ages of 13 and 39 who say they listen to more than 10 hours of music a week and have spent at least $25 on music in the past six months says that 59 percent of those who said they heard a certain piece of music for the first time while online ended up purchasing that music as a CD. Wired 06/16/00
• HELP OR HURT? Critics charge that Napster is killing the recorded music business. But the company says it actually promotes sales of recorded music. So who's right? Wired 06/14/00
• BUSTED: Recording industry has filed briefs in court to shut down Napster. The industry will use internal Napster e-mail and memos "in which Napster executives, primarily co-principals Shawn Fanning, 19, and Sean Parker, 20, openly discuss the use of their service as a tool facilitating the exchange of copyrighted material by established recording artists, statements the RIAA says are proof that the service represents a haven for music piracy and should be closed immediately." Inside.com 06/14/00
• TRUCE? Napster CEO wants to negotiate. "We are all trying to find ways to work with all of the constituencies that are part of the Napster community, including the major record companies." Variety 06/14/00
• MORE DOWNLOAD SUITS: Recording execs file suit against Napster.com, citing research that shows that college students using Napster decrease the number of CD's they buy. Wired 06/14/00 
• DOWNLOADING DETENTE: Two of the five recording companies suing MP3.com for copyright violation of music downloaded over the internet have settled with the company. The labels will license their music to the site. Variety 06/12/00
• SETTLEMENT NEAR IN MP3.COM SUIT: "The proposed settlement calls for San Diego-based MP3.com to pay $75 million to $100 million to the Recording Industry Association of America, the trade group representing the labels, in exchange for the right to use the labels' songs as part of the My.MP3.com service." Boston Globe 06/08/00
• MONEY FOR THEIR MUSIC: Free downloads of indie band music has been one of the marks of the internet digital download music revolution. But now many of the indies want to get paid for their work, and there are (predictably) some websites to help them. Wired 06/07/00
• PINING FOR VINYL?: Despite doomsayers who claim programs like Napster and the rise of teen pop bands spell looming losses for the recording industry, the past few months have been the most successful the music business has seen, with three albums selling more than $1.3 million in their first week. So why aren’t the execs overjoyed? “Imagine if this summer three Hollywood movies shattered the opening week box-office record, boom, boom, boom, one after the other. The town's top executives would be bruised from so much backslapping. The music industry, though, gnashes its teeth and pines for simpler times.” Inside.com 06/05/00
• LINKIN’ LOGS: The latest development in the digital music wars: MP3Board.com (an online music-search site) has filed a lawsuit against the Recording Industry Association of America (which has been trying to shut the web site down) on the grounds that providing hyperlinks does not constitute copyright infringement. Wired 06/05/00
• RECORD SALES IN THE LAND OF THE FREE: With all the complaining and suing going on about who controls music on the internet, you might think that sales of recordings would have dried up. Surprise - despite the wide availability of free music on the internet, sales of recorded music have smashed records in recent months. And the internet is getting the credit. Wired 06/02/00
• PLANS TO WRECK THE MUSIC INDUSTRY AS WE KNOW IT: Some computer programmers in the UK plan an all-out assault on the music industry, trying to build on the success of Napster only making music recording exchanges untraceable. The Independent 06/02/00
• THE WRATH OF SEAGRAM: Seagram's CEO vows a holy war on copiers of music over the internet, invoking "God, the cold war, and the deadly hantavirus in a lengthy warning to would-be copiers that he would be coming after them. 'Technology exists that can trace every Internet download and tag every file.' " Inside.com 05/28/00
  • WHAT PRICE SUCCESS? Under legal pressure from almost everyone, Napster.com's web traffic doubles. Inside.com 05/28/00
• MORE LAWSUITS over copyright issues on the way for MP3.com. Wired 05/26/00
• THE NUMBERS ARE IN: College students are downloading music from the internet rather than buying it. A new study shows that "sales of recorded music near college campuses declined by 4 percent between the first three months of 1998 and the same period this year. Sales at all stores went up 12 percent during the same time. "This demonstrates the importance of protecting artists' rights on the Internet." Washington Post (AP) 05/25/00
• THE DEBATE RAGES ON: A four-line amendment to the copyright law inserted into a Congressional bill last year has incited a passionate debate between musicians and recording companies over ownership of recordings. The amendment added sound recordings as a category of copyrighted materials that can be considered "work made for hire," a term usually reserved for collective works, like movies, that are commissioned by studios. "U.S. recording artists are the most unprotected segment of the entire world of copyright." New York Times 05/25/00 (one-time registration required for entry)
• AND FAIRNESS FOR ALL: One of the big promises of the internet is that it will allow fairer better deals for recording artists. Says a record exec: "Cathartic as it is to vent at record companies and carry the banner for artist empowerment, it seems to me that many of the attacks on the inequitable sharing of the pie have been overstated. The problems most artists have with record companies (and there are many legitimate problems, don't get me wrong) have nothing to do with how the money is divided up, so long as we are talking about acts that actually sell enough records." Inside.com 05/24/00
• BIG MONEY SUPPORT: Embattled Napster.com reinvents, raising $15 million in venture capital and getting a new CEO. Wired 05/23/00
• SHAWN FANNING: Never heard of him? Six months ago the 19-year-old invented Napster, the digital music download software that has turned the music recording world upside down. Now he finds himself at the middle of the music upheaval and he's being sued by his favorite band. The Observer 05/21/00
• THE GREAT BRAIN ROBBERY: A wave of new file-swapping technologies (Napster is just one of 15 released in the last several months) are striking fear into the hearts of copyright holders worldwide. As consumers get accustomed to getting things for free over the internet, what’s to become of intellectual property? “There is certainly a body of opinion among some Internet users that all info should be free.” Sydney Morning Herald 05/19/00
• NO DIGGITY, NO DOUBT: Following in Metallica’s well-publicized footsteps, rapper Dr. Dre has delivered to Napster a list of more than 200,000 users he says illegally downloaded his music using Napster’s software. “Dr. Dre said he informed Napster he would prefer the company just delete his songs from its service, in which case no user need be denied access to Napster.” But Napster has said it will look into the cases and delete users, not artists. Wired 05/17/00 
• NAPSTER KILLS THE RADIO STAR: Mega music star Kid Rock recently starved to death after Napster's MP3-sharing software caused him to go bankrupt.

“According to post-autopsy analysis of Kid Rock's stomach contents by the L.A. County coroner's office, his last meal consisted of newspapers, cigar butts, and old CD liner notes." The Onion 05/17/00

• LICENSE TO PLAY: The recording rights organization BMI announces a plan to license internet companies to be able to play music over the net. "The licenses give Internet companies the right to perform publicly all of BMI's 4.5 million copyrighted works from its 250,000 songwriters, composers, and music publishers." Wired 05/17/00
• THE ACCUSED STRIKE BACK: A quick recap: Metallica presents Napster with a list of 300,000 users who were pirating their music off the internet; Napster blocks all the accused users from accessing their service; now 30,000 of the condemned have slapped a counter-accusation on Metallica, claiming they were falsely accused and misidentified. But the Metallica gang is sticking to their guns. "[The Napster users] are perjuring themselves. They're not misidentified. We did a survey and we have proof that at such-and-such a date, they were offering Metallica songs. Could there be 10 mistakes? Sure. 15? Maybe. But there are not 17,000 mistakes. There's no way." Salon 05/16/00
• THE REAL MUSIC VILLAINS: The FTC estimates consumers may have paid as much as $480 million more than they should have for CDs the last three years because of what is known as the Minimum Advertised Price program. Last fall, compact disc prices hit an all-time high of $18.98. Yet artists usually make less than $2 for every CD sold, once they've repaid the record label for recording and promotional expenses. That's why Metallica's decision to go after their own fans for downloading Metallica music off the Internet is so absurd. Musicians moan about fans ripping them off via the Internet, but the true villains are the record companies who shortchange artists and overcharge record buyers. Chicago Tribune 05/17/00
• RIGHT OF COPY: Copyright laws have been out of date for years. "The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 was supposed to clear up copyright issues in the Internet era. That hasn't exactly happened. Instead, there have been a series of lawsuits between the recording and motion picture industries, private companies and individual users, seeking clarification on how intellectual property is protected as music and video moves to the digital world." Wired 05/16/00
• TRYING TOO HARD TO GET ALONG: Is Napster going too far in trying to avoid legal troubles? A backlash against the company is developing among its fans. "Napster is fighting against censorship, but they are trying to censor everybody else." Wired 05/15/00
• LOOKING OUT FROM THE INSIDE: Last week Napster capitulated to heavy-metallers Metallica by yanking the accounts of its users accused of downloading Metallica music illegally. But if the outsider music downloader gives up too much, it'll lose its rebel outsider status - and its fans. Wired 05/15/00
• CANARY IN THE COAL MINE: There's evidence that the internet music revolution will affect classical music sooner than it does more mainstream genres. The little stores specializing in particular genres are having a hard time. "A master track can be held in a central store; copies made only as required. Libraries no longer need specialist retailers: they can e-mail their orders to record companies directly and get a disc (copied to whatever digital format required) by return. No more need to search for out-of-print back-catalogue. Everything can be held as digital information, ready for duplication, at a record company's own central store." The Scotsman 05/15/00
• DIGITAL RETREAT: In the face of court challenges over copyright, Napster and MP3.com take a step back. The battle's just beginning over the future of selling recorded music. Philadelphia Inquirer (Bloomberg) 05/14/00
• BIG BROTHER IS LISTENING: Remember last week when Metallica presented the names of some 300,000 people it says had illegally downloaded the band's music? Yesterday Napster terminated the accounts of all those on the list. Look for the lawsuits to start flying. Wired 05/11/00
• GOOD FAITH GESTURE: After losing its copyright case over music downloading last month, MP3.com says it will remove major-label music from its site. The company is said to be negotiating with recording companies over a million-dollar settlement. Boston Globe 05/11/00
• CD PRICES will likely begin to fall now that the FTC has banned minimum-pricing laws. Minimum pricing rules were enacted several years ago because "mammoth discount chains such as Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy and Circuit City were selling CDs at prices lower than those found at music-specialty retail chains such as Music-land and Tower Records." Independents say doing away with the rules will hurt them. Variety 05/11/00
• MUSIC SANS FRONTIERES: While the recording industry struggles over the issue of digital music swapping, a 23-year-old Irish programmer has written a program called "Freenet" which purportedly makes it impossible to control music, video, text or any other digital information. "Clarke and his group of programmers have deliberately set themselves on a collision course with the world's copyright laws. They express the hope that the clash over copyright enforcement in cyberspace will produce a world in which all information is freely shared.” New York Times 05/10/00 (one-time registration required for entry)
• THE GREAT DIGITAL DEBATE: Want a front row seat to the debate on downloadable music?  Visit the Pho online discussion, where "record label sorts, new-media brass, music lawyers, reporters, artists, and interested onlookers - nearly 700 members - hash out everything from copyright reform to music-related IPO offerings and the latest antipiracy chip.” Village Voice 05/16/00
• NAPSTER LOSES A ROUND IN COURT: The judge rejects a claim by the music download company that it is just a "conduit" for music and isn't responsible for music illegally downloaded over the internet. ''This hearing was Napster's attempt to escape responsibility for aiding and abetting wide-scale piracy - and not surprisingly - they lost.'' Boston Globe 05/09/00
• BEGINNING OF THE END? The popular downloader faces the very real prospect of being strangled to death in court. Salon 05/09/00
• BITING THE HAND... Metallica built its success on the underground tape-trading market. Now it's suing Napster for making the process efficient? Salon 05/09/00
• BOTCHED STRATEGY: Last year there were some 1 billion illegal music downloads on the net and hardly any legal ones. Recording companies ought to have found a way to work with the net rather than fight the inevitable. "The major record companies' response to piracy wasn't to establish alternative legitimate sites where fans could pay for their music. Instead, they unleashed their lawyers." BBC 05/09/00
• SO IT'S THE PRINCIPLE OF THE THING: Metallica's fans are plenty mad that the band has sued Napster and is going after those who download music for free over the internet. But the band is unrepentant:  "This is very different. This is clearly illegal. The most ridiculous thing I've heard yet about this is that all music should be free. That goes against everything Western capitalism is based on. Why shouldn't musicians be paid for their work like everyone else?" San Francisco Examiner 05/05/00
• MAD ABOUT MUSIC: Heavy-metal group Metallica demanded yesterday that Napster cut off 317,000 users who have illegally traded the band's songs. ''If they want to steal Metallica's music, instead of hiding behind their computers in their bedrooms and dorm rooms, then just go down to Tower Records and grab them off the shelves.'' Boston Globe (AP) 05/04/00
• HOW MUCH DO I EARN: Monday MP3.com began posting how much the artists on its website earn from downloads. Clicking on the total reveals how many plays the songs received, how many CDs were sold by artists who've used the service's CD publishing program, and how much "payback" was earned. Any artist who gets 15 plays per day qualifies for the Payback program. The company said it will distribute $1 million to artists based on user download activity on MP3.com. So why are artists angry over release of the information?
• GUILT-FREE TUNES: The debate over downloadable music rages on, but college students seem to have few qualms about online music piracy. “By embracing digital music, the generation that grew up with the Internet is helping to define the way music and other content will be distributed online.” New York Times 05/02/00 (one-time registration required for entry)
• RECONCILIATION: Recording companies in settlement talks with MP3 after judge's ruling against the company. "We absolutely do not want to see MP3.com shut down," a source with one of the labels said. "Settlement talks were going on before the case went into the court and they are continuing. We would be happy to see this thing settled." Wired 05/01/00
• FREE TO BE FREE? MP3.com vows to fight judge's ruling against it Friday over free downloads of music on the internet. "The success of MP3.com, with an estimated 400,000 customers, has prompted the recording industry to launch an aggressive anti-piracy crusade." BBC 05/01/00
• HOLES IN THE DYKE: The Recording industry is suing purveyors of new technology that make downloading music illegally possible over the internet. But isn't such technology inevitable? Can it be stopped? Industry spokesperson says wrong is wrong. "Does a company have a right to create a system that is so deliberately designed to take other people's work?" Salon 05/01/00
• BIG WIN? Judge rules big against illegal distribution of music over the internet with judgment against MP3. Salon 04/30/00
• BEAUTY CONTEST: Napster and piracy issues aside, on-line music companies are trying to doll themselves up to make themselves attractive to music fans. Wired 04/30/00
• HOLLOW VICTORY: The recording industry wins a suit against MP3.COM for compiling a database of music that can be downloaded. But the company says that compared to Napster, it's one of the good guys. Wired 04/30/00
• RECORD BOOTY: China has seized 200,000 pirated DVD's and CD's in a raid in Guangzhou, its largest haul yet of stolen music and movies. Variety 04/28/00
• KILLER (N)AP: Napster, the music-share program is considered by the music industry the greatest threat its ever faced. "In recent weeks, piracy using his Napster software program has reached such an unprecedented scale that many industry analysts believe that it marks the beginning of the end of paying for recorded music. To virtually every American under the age of 25, Napster is rapidly becoming synonymous with a bottomless free supply of music from their favourite bands." The Age (Melbourne) 04/24/00
• List of high-profile musicians suing over Napster expected to increase in next few weeks. The Register 04/23/00
• A WAY TO EASE YOUR GUILT FOR STEALING: Metal band Metallica has been suing universities (for $10 million) for allowing students to pirate the band's music off the internet with the Napster program. Now a website has been set up that allows fans to donate money to Metallica to compensate the band for its monetary losses from digital piracy. Just in case you were feeling sorry for the poor lads. Wired 04/20/00
• BIG GUYS FOLLOW: Finally the major recording labels are getting into the music download business. But is there any sign they've learned lessons from the independent labels already on the web and making money at it? Wired 04/19/00
• GOT A RIGHT TO STREAM? A lawsuit being heard in New York this week could determine how consumers can access their personal music files over the internet. Paul McCartney and two other plaintiffs claim that "MP3.com created an illegal database by purchasing CDs and uploading that music onto MP3.com's servers. Users who signed up for the service and who called my.mp3.com were then able to stream music from that database to any device that can access the Internet." Wired 04/17/00
• JUST DIFFERENT: New technologies are changing the music business. Musicians can play along, or they can fight it. But just because the economics are changing doesn't mean it's a catastrophe. "Rather than insist that the way the music world does business today is the only way imaginable, it behooves artists to take a longer and more imaginative view. It's not as if the status quo has served them so well." Salon 03/30/00
• IN-STORE E-MUSIC: Traditional music stores have turned to e-tech tactics to try to fend off extinction. Wired 02/29/00
• THE END OF CD's and good times ahead. Digital downloading of music and film isn't to be feared, says the president of the recording label BMG. Instead, it will create a new boom in the entertainment business. Variety 02/04/00
• THE ART OF NAPPING: A new MP3 music-sharing software program called Napster enables listeners to download music files from one another. Is this what the recording companies fear? Salon 02/04/00
• MP3 SMACKDOWN: Copyright Control Services is in the business of stamping out the pirating of music on the internet. In a year, the group says, it has closed down 5,000 internet sites. Wired 01/31/00 
• RECORDING INDUSTRY estimates it is losing $4.5 billion this year in lost sales because of counterfeit CDs and music downloaded over the internet. Wired 01/27/00
• BETWEEN PRODUCT AND CONTENT: Trying to understand the future of the recorded music business in the age of Dotcoms. New York Times 01/26/00 (One-time registration required for access)

Digital Music/Copyright stories for 2001

 

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