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Please
note that most dates on this page link to articles in the Boycott-RIAA
news archives or other publications.
The date shown is when the article was posted and not necessarily
the day the events described took place.
General
Notes
AOL
and Time Warner announce merger priced at $111 billion -- the
new largest media deal in U.S. history. Later reports say the
deal was actually worth $163 billion.
MP3.com
fights the RIAA, settles with BMG. EMusic struggles financially.
The
SDMI idea of a standard fragmented into way too many incompatible,
separate ideas, by now referred to as "copy protection"
and "digital rights management." Most of it required
Windows. But so did Napster. RealNetworks teamed up with Universal,
the Associated Press, and others, and tried very hard to find
some sort of copy protection, as did every major label. New "digital
protection specialists" began to appear.
RIAA
CEO Hilary Rosen comes into the public eye, fights Napster and
mp3.com. Metallica and Dr. Dre begin the war with music fans;
other artists begin to choose sides. And I'm only up to June.
Napster
dominated the music news throughout the year. Even after extensive
editing, it is necessary to put it on a separate page. Having
the benefit of hindsight, I already know it's time to do the
same for several other topics.
Napster -- mp3.com -- RealNetworks
-- DRM -- EMusic
Within
this Page
-- Quotes -- AOL/Time-Warner
-- RIAA -- Artists Choose
Sides -- Listen.com -- Other
2000 Stories
Quoteable
Quotes
January 4 -- "In January 1999, virtually no companies
were offering digital downloads," said Michael Robertson,
MP3.com's CEO. "Now, less than 12 months later, there's
a long list of companies offering digital downloads, and there
are a handful of publicly traded companies. It's a shocking turnaround
from a year ago, when the music establishment was discounting
the entire trend."
"Bottom line: The whole
security argument has never been about piracy, it's about control,"
said Steve Grady, EMusic's vice president of marketing. "The
big record labels are physical distributors, and the adoption
of downloadable music signals the end of their ability to dominate
the channel for delivering music to consumers."
February 5 -- BMG CEO Strauss Zelnick has long maintained
that digital downloading represents the future of music, and
he now predicts that "all spinning formats" such as
CDs will replaced by chip-based products, within "two or
three years, max."
"Security is really important,
however it's not the be-all and end-all," Zelnick said.
"The CD business is a totally unsecure business. There's
no copy protection on a CD, and a CD is indeed a perfect digital
master. So the horse has left the barn along with all the other
farm animals."
"You cannot stop progress.
You can stop being a participant in progress, but you can't stop
progress," he said.
February 22 -- "Technically speaking, ripping a song
from a CD and putting it on your hard drive may violate the law.
However, those are not situations that the RIAA will enforce,"
said Frank Creighton, senior vice president director of anti-piracy
at the RIAA. "We never target the individuals downloading
the files, even though they may be causing the reproduction and
distribution and violating the law," Creighton said. "It
doesn't mean we're not concerned about it. But we're focusing
on people that are posting the material."
May 27 -- "Anonymity... means being able to get
away with stealing, or hacking, or disseminating illegal material
on the Internet and presuming the right that nobody should
know who you are. There is no such right. This is nothing more
than the digital equivalent of putting on a ski mask when you
rob a bank." -- Edgar Bronfman, Jr., CEO Seagram
"Under our Constitution,
anonymous pamphleteering is not a pernicious, fraudulent practice,
but an honorable tradition of advocacy and of dissent. Anonymity
is a shield from the tyranny of the majority." -- Justice
Stevens
June 29 -- "Today I want to talk about piracy and
music. What is piracy? Piracy is the act of stealing an artist's
work without any intention of paying for it. I'm not talking
about Napster-type software. I'm talking about major label recording
contracts." -- Courtney Love
July 1, 2000 -- "The Web will never become a place where
undiscovered bands or established artists regularly bypass record
companies to reach consumers directly." Strauss Zelnick,
BMG
July 8, 2000 -- "I don't think anybody's goal is or
should be to eliminate the technological capability of Napster.
The goal is to find a way to have the technology work with creative
interests, not against them. I think that's possible," said
Hilary Rosen. "I think
we'll see some sort of dramatic business models emerge in the
next three to four months."
July 17 -- "What you'll see in the near future
is a million artists and about 500,000 labels, and many artists
becoming their own labels. The whole album paradigm will be redefined.
It will be a singles market place and it will be shared by a
million hands." - Chuck D.
"My opinion is that people
who rely on copyright probably need to change their business
model" - Ian Clarke, Designer and Coordinator, Freenet Project
"This debate over
music keeps coming back to the same thing.
Despite all of the
trappings and new ways to look at the issue,
the fact is that some people just don't like the music."
Hilary B. Rosen
before the Committee on the Judiciary
United States Senate
Sept. 20, 2000
AOL/Time-Warner -- 2000
January 10 -- Software and services giant Liquid Audio
and AOL's Nullsoft (producers of the Winamp audio system) announced
a strategic collaboration to integrate and co-promote their music-delivery
formats...
January 12 -- (Washington Post) America Online Inc.'s proposed
merger with Time Warner Inc. may vastly hasten the online music
revolution, say record industry specialists, and could transform
the race to find ways sell and distribute music over the Internet.
For the first time, a technology powerhouse and a record label
will share the goal of turning digital music into cash, an ambition
largely frustrated so far by consumers accustomed to downloading
their songs for free and record companies afraid of widespread
pirating.
January 25 -- The $163 billion marriage of America Online
Inc. and Time Warner Inc. has taken on added significance thanks
to the merger proposal between Time Warner and Britain's largest
recorded music company. Time Warner will pay stock worth $1.3
billion to shareholders of EMI Group PLC, to create a 50-50 joint
venture called Warner EMI Music. If regulators approve, the new
company will control about one-fifth of the recorded music market
worldwide, making it the largest of all record companies...
August 10 -- The Wall Street Journal reported that America
Online will take down their new search engine that allows users
to find music files in MP3 format. With the new AOL/Time Warner
merger, such a project would undoubtedly cause friction between
the two groups.
December 14, 2000
The Federal Trade Commission unanimously approved the proposed
$111 billion merger between America Online Inc. and Time Warner
Inc., with conditions set on "open access". In a 5-0
vote, FTC commissioners decided today that the marriage of AOL-Time
Warner was cleared through the FTC, creating one of the most
powerful media companies that ever existed.
The "open access"
conditions of the stated that Time Warner must allow at least
one competitive non-affiliated cable, high speed ISP (Internet
Service Provider) through the existing Time Warner cable system
before AOL offers service through the system also. Furthermore,
the company must offer at least two other service providers through
the service once AOL has its high speed access available through
Road Runner.
RIAA
-- 2000
February 13 -- The RIAA announced the appointment of Mitch
Glazier as its Senior Vice President of Government Relations
and Legislative Counsel. Glazier will oversee the association's
legislative work with federal and state governments. Glazier
will report to RIAA President and CEO Hilary Rosen
July
3 -- The long awaited
first round of the Napster Inc. -vs- RIAA legal battle was started
today.
July 11 -- Labels settle with FTC over Price Fixing
-- The FTC estimates that U.S. consumers may have paid as much
as $480 million more than they should have for CDs and other
music because of [recording industry price-fixing] policies over
the last three years, announcing settlements will eliminate these
policies and should help restore much-needed competition to the
retail music market, consisting of $15 billion in annual sales.
September 20 -- The U.S. House of Representatives passed
a bill aimed at offering musicians the ability to reclaim ownership
of their old recordings from the record labels.
Last year, Congress sneaked
in a provision, on a completely unrelated bill, that changed
a law regarding the ownership of old recordings. Pressured by
the ever-loving Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA),
Congress rewrote things so that, basically, all sound recordings
are considered "work for hire." What this essentially
meant is that the artist has absolutely no rights to reclaim
their works from their record label.
Prior to this, 35 years after
a song has debuted, the artist can reclaim ownership of the recording
from their record label and do what they want with it. If they
want to release the song on Scour Exchange or Napster, then they
would be free to do so. Not anymore, however.
The screwed up thing about
the addition of that statement was that Congress added it without
one public hearing on the subject. Congress, as well as the U.S.
Copyright Office, claim that they added it because they felt
that they simply enacted into law what was already considered
common practice.
"Hah," said artists,
who were highly upset and started a campaign to get this moronic
change to existing law overturned. Don Henley, for one, believed
that a huge potential loss in royalties would occur, and thus
became one of the more vocal artists against this provision.
"We said from the beginning
we did not intend to change the law and have worked diligently
to assure that the issue of work for hire is resolved without
prejudice to anyone's position," said Hilary Rosen, president
and CEO of the RIAA. "The book needs to be closed on this
issue so we can get back to a united industry on so many important
challenges of the day."
Artists Taking Sides
-- 2000
July 11 -- Artists Against Piracy -- "If
a Song Means a Lot to You, Imagine What it Means to Us".
These words are being spouted in advertisements found in the
Los Angeles Times, New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street
Journal, and Washington Post. The ad is a part of
a national campaign set forth by an artist driven coalition against
online music piracy, launched just as the Senate Judiciary Committee
held a hearing about online distribution's impact on intellectual
property.
Members of 'Artists Against
Piracy' (AAP), which includes Aimee Mann, Alanis Morissette,
Barenaked Ladies, Christina Aguilera and Faith Hill, have pledged
their support of the issues being campaigned by Metallica and
rapper Dr. Dre in the copyright infringement lawsuits against
Napster. Heading up AAP is Noah Stone, a recording artists and
internet label executive, who says AAP was created to advocate
artists' choice in determining how their music is presented,
distributed and marketed online.
Some of these artists mentioned,
especially Alanis Morissette, are not unwise to the ways of the
internet and online music distribution, which raises question
as to why they would be part of AAP. While many make light of
Lars Ulrich's supposed ignorance of mp3, Alanis Morissette has
been an investor in MP3.com for quite some time.
December 9 -- Rage Against the Machine fans are raging
mad. Earlier this week, Napster users who had copies of Rage's
new album, Renegades, on their hard drives were banned from the
popular file swapping service. This motion was supposedly given
the go ahead by the band and it's label, Sony Music.
But already, the tides are
changing. On Thursday, Rage guitarist Tom Morello said the action
to ban Napster users was a "horrible mistake" and the
band has already ordered it to stop. In a statement, Morello
said, "Rage Against the Machine would like to sincerely
apologize to all of our fans who were kicked off of Napster for
downloading Renegades."
The statement also gave new
information that Rage was unaware of their record label's actions.
"The move to take action against Rage fans was taken completely
unilaterally by our new management. In their zeal to keep the
record from getting out before the release date, they did not
consult the band before instructing Sony Music Corp. to institute
the Napster ban."
September 10 -- The Smashing Pumpkins announced earlier this
year their intent to break up. Now, with their last album completed,
the Net is buzzing with reports that it is already leaked on
the net. But the major
shocker is that people are saying that Pumpkin leader singer
Billy Corgan started the Internet leak himself.
Friends and Enemies Of Modern
Music (called FAEOMM
for short) is the name of the upcoming album and online fans
are saying that the newly found MP3s are the real deal. Alt.music.smash-pumpkins
is alive with fan talk about the early release of the new music.
The newsgroup also lists numerous FTP sites that already have
all of the complete tracks to FAEOMM.
According to fan accounts,
it was Corgan who sent the album to fans and friends and encouraged
them to convert the music into MP3s. The band's label, Virgin
Records, has made no comments on the matter.
September 12 -- The Smashing Pumpkins have launched their
final album group, "Machina II: The Friends and Enemies
of Modern Music" in strictly digital format, taking shots
directly at the label which they claim never supported them.
The band which has always seemed
to blaze a trail with their amazing music, leave the industry
as a group with a blatantly clear message of their frustration
with the industry and their strong acknowledgement of the Internet
a viable alternative method of distribution, utilizing Napster
for the delivery method of this free music.
The band was reported to have
produced only 25 copy of the album and handed them out only to
close friends of the band.
It appears that due to a non-compete
clause they are unable to release this album in CD format, and
the fact that Virgin Records apparently showed no interest in
a follow up to the Machina album, prompted the 'pumkins to set
their music free for fans online.
Listen.com -- 2000
January 5 -- The Internet Underground Music Archive (IUMA)
has partnered with music download directory Listen.com to provide
unsigned artists a way to create MP3 music Web sites while simultaneously
submitting music to Listen.com...
February 8 -- All five major music companies have invested
in a single Web start-up that operates a directory of downloadable
music from more than 50,000 artists. San Francisco-based Listen.com
said it had secured investments from BMG, EMI, Universal and
Warner Music, though terms of the deals were not released. Sony
invested an undisclosed amount in Listen.com in October.
July 21 -- Details have emerged about Sony's upcoming
plans for a branded Internet access service, which will also
feature a partnership with Listen.com to bring Sony Music Club
online through the ISP. Sony Music Club has about fifty tracks
available for download now through the Sony website, on a pay-per-download
system. The new deal will bring much more music content online.
Other
2000 Stories -- Chronological
January 9 -- A cover of the Fleetwood Mac song "Oh
Well" by Jimmy Page and the Black Crowes is available for
free download. The track was recorded live in Los Angeles during
the group's short U.S. tour...
January 11 -- Universal Music Group's planned external
trial of an online music selling system it is developing with
three other companies was cancelled amid glitches with the technology.
February 3 -- Now that there will likely be only four major
record labels, which are increasingly joining forces with companies
like America Online and embracing digital distribution, the potential
and incentive for spying on usage habits and abusing that information
is enormous.
February 9, -- Budweiser Beer and Tunes.com said yesterday
they will introduce a free downloadable Internet radio player
that consumers can get at www.budweiser.com. The player stays
on users' screen as they surf the Net and provides them with
five genres of music to choose from. The player is branded with
the Budweiser logo and contains links to Budweiser.com and the
Bud store but only runs if the Windows Media Player has been
downloaded. The company hopes this new marketing strategy will
increase hits to the site by exploiting the entertainment aspect
of the beer.
February 16 -- Universal Music Group launches of the FarmClub.com
record label, promising "a converged TV-Net soundstage that
cultivates artists for major-league careers."
Before artists can appear on
FarmClub's TV show to perform just one song, they have a small
window of time to sign an approximately 20-page contract. The
standard contract gives FarmClub an option to enter into a recording
agreement with the artist within 30 days; lays out a six-album
deal with advances ranging from $275,000 to $650,000 for each
record; and offers 14 to 17 percent in sales royalties. FarmClub
originally asked for an exclusive 60-day option to sign a band.
On the surface, terms such
as these are common for a first-draft recording contract. But
FarmClub also claims all rights to a musician's "official"
Web site and online distribution, a tactic that brought Sony
Music under fire when it decided to stake a claim to its artists'
Web properties.
February 22 -- EMI announces a major push into the digital
music market in partnership with online music specialist Supertracks.
The deal will provide EMI with a fourth format -- digital download
-- to offer alongside CDs, MiniDiscs and tapes. Music provided
in the new format will, at least initially, be sold through online
retailers. EMI will release singles first, in two months' time,
followed by albums at a later date
April 19 -- On the heels of Dr. Dre giving Napster, Inc.
an ultimatum to remove listings from their directory service
that refer to his songs, he was slapped with a lawsuit by Lucasfilm
LTD. for copyright infringement.
Lucasfilm has alleged that
Dr. Dre, who is using the THX "Deep Note" in his album
Chronic 2001, is infringing on the trademarked sound, which is
the first sound to have ever been trademarked. Dr. Dre had previously
asked for permission to use the sound and was subsequently denied
the right to use it. Even though he was not granted permission,
Dr. Dre went ahead and used the sound in the beginning of his
most recently released album.
June 4 -- A complaint has been filed against the RIAA
with the U.S. District Court in San Jose, on behalf of MP3Board
Inc. The lawsuit states that, "Copyright laws should not
apply to sites like MP3Board.com that simply offer links to other
sites, even if those sites offer pirated material." The
lawsuit comes on the heels of the RIAA threatening to shut down
the MP3 site.
"We're not Napster. We
don't have...MP3 files. We're a mere conduit, like Lycos or Hotbot.
What this lawsuit is about is whether a search engine or linking
service has an obligation to edit automated links. By going after
us, they are basically oppressing free speech for everybody,"
said attorney Ira Rothken, who represents MP3Board.
June 19 -- Rancid is offering two MP3 downloads from
the group's new album. The songs "Don Giovanni" and
"Disgruntled" are available to visitors as "samples"
of the upcoming tunes. These are just two of four songs that
Rancid has okayed for their fans to hear before the music has
actually gone public. The currently untitled album will hit stores
on August 1st.
June 29 -- Yahoo! Inc. launches the Yahoo! Player, which
requires Windows and Internet Explorer.
July 3 -- The long awaited first round of the Napster
Inc. -vs- RIAA legal battle was started today. David Boies, the
lawyer that successfully defeated Microsoft in the antitrust
battle of the century, has set forth a defense that may prove
to be the most harsh against the record labels. Citing internal
industry documents, the Napster legal team plans to show that
the labels have abused their market power to block alternative
methods of music distribution, and along with an obscure antitrust
law, says that the labels have lost their power to enforce their
copyrights.
"If you use a copyright
to achieve an anti-competitive purpose, you lose the rights to
them," Boies said.
July 11 -- Napster Hearings ...
Senator Orrin Hatch: "Is it fair use to give the copy to
my wife for her car? ''Is it fair use for me to rip a CD? Is
it fair use if (a computer network) decides for efficiency reasons
that one copy is sufficient to serve for storage, instead of
keeping 200 separate copies, is that fair use?" Hatch asked.
He even went on to ask if she thinks that making an audiocassette
of a CD to give to a spouse constitutes fair use.
Hilary Rosen: "None of
these is fair use."
July 16 -- Radio station, KADC, of Los Angeles packs
up their bags and moves everything, including DJs, music and
commercials, from FM radio to cyberspace. www.worldclassrock.com will become the new home
of this rock and roll radio station.
Update (Nov. 12, 2004) -- www.worldclassrock.com is now owned
by KBCO-FM in Boulder. CO. Their page currently says: "KBCO's
not currently streaming online... But we do have a number of
pages dedicated to World Class Rock artists."
July 19 -- Universal Music Group will start selling
single downloadable tracks on the web for $2.00 a pop.
July 22-- BMG has announced that they are purchasing
online music retailer CDNow.com, which will be assimilated into
the existing Bertelsmann e-Commerce Group (BeCG), but continue
doing business under the CDNow name. CDNow will start working
with GetMusic, to feature GetMusic's content. GetMusic is an
online music joint venture between BMG Entertainment and Universal
Music Group.
CDNow is reported to have around
700,000 users a day to its site.
July 24 -- Novelist Stephen King launched an experiment
by placing the first chapter of "The Plant" online,
in which readers are to use the honor system and pay $1 to read
it, and subsequent chapters.
So far it appears that the
majority of readers were abiding by the new system and paying
the $1 that King is asking for. According to statistics thus
far, it appears that about 75% of those that have taken this
opportunity have payed Mr. King for this one chapter, who said
that he will release two chapters under the experiment. However,
he has threatened to stop the experiment if there is not enough
participation in paying him for his time; he stated that if paying
customers drop below 75% then he will stop releasing chapters.
July 28 -- I keep hearing people ask, why can't Napster
just move to another country and continue operations? - The answer
is, it can. So the question
is, why don't they?
July 31 -- According to Nielsen Media Research, daily
use of Napster has increased 92 percent, to a amazing 849,000
unique home visitors last Friday, covering more then three percent
of all active users on the Internet. Not only is usage skyrocketing,
but downloads of the software have also doubled, reaching a estimated
22 percent of its audience online.
August 21 -- According to the RIAA and the National Music
Publishers Assn. (NMPA) - your computer's hard drive is not a
home recording device, so the Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA)
does not protect it! Also,
mp3 files that reside on another Napster user's hard drive are
also not "digital music recordings."
August 24 -- Stephen King and his rock band, the Rock
Bottom Remainders, are putting their music online. The group which also includes Amy Tan
and Dave Barry, plan to release their music through MP3.com.
So far only two songs are currently available, but more music
is soon scheduled to be released. "Tupperware Blues"
is a comical song written by Mr. Barry. It is described as, "Dave's
tribute to the mother of all kitchen storage containers...Tupperware!"
The band's other song, the classic "These Boots Are Made
For Walking" is performed by Ms. Tan.
August 28 -- Having settled with EMI, Warner Music, BMG,
and Sony, MP3.com and the Universal Music Group head to court.
August 28 -- Four little words -- By Eric Boehlert, Salon.com
-- How the record industry used
a tiny legislative amendment to try to steal recording copyrights
from artists -- forever.
August 30 -- Napster has been banned at 34% of the nation's
colleges and universities.
August 30 -- Shipments of CDs in the United States are
up six percent, to an all-time high of 420 million units during
the first half of this year. This puts CDs at 86% of the total
music purchasing market.
September 6 -- Mp3.com was found to have willfully infringed
on the Universal Music Group's copyrights.
September 6 -- RIAA and Yahoo! Inc. has announced that they
have agreed to set terms and conditions on music broadcasts across
Yahoo's network. Under
the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Internet companies have
been broadcasting music online since October 1998. "The
license we've entered into licenses only DMCA-compliant stuff.
All of the radio stations that Yahoo hosts or rebroadcasts are
DMCA-compliant so (the pact includes) all the streamed content
we are delivering,'' said Matt Rightmeir of Yahoo!.
The key to the Yahoo! and RIAA
deal is that it does not include downloadable music.
September 13 -- Earlier this week, the Warner Music Group
announced they would begin selling singles and "Internet
only" tracks later this November when the company plans
to launch their online service. Music from the Barenaked Ladies,
Matchbox Twenty, and Paul Simon are just a few artists who will
participate, but Warner plans on eventually expanding their music
catalog to over 1,000 tracks and albums.
"As the digital music
landscape continues to evolve, we remain dedicated to creating
a flexible system focused on our consumers, artists and retailers,"
said Paul Vidich for the Warner Music Group.
October 5 -- Sony is reported to be preparing to launch
a subscription digital distribution service in January 2001.
The service is called Unsurface,
and is speculated to be available in the future for a various
assortment entertainment mediums, including music, games, and
possibly even movies. Once obtained through the subscription
service, the digital content would be downloaded into "storage
lockers" which by it could be streamed later, on demand.
October 7 -- The RIAA announced the name of their upcoming
online webcasting royalties collection group, SoundExchange.
The group will be responsible for the collection of royalties
from web based radio stations, or "webcasters" and
dividing this newly found plunder to the correct copyright holders.
The group is the result of the
provisions within the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which
states that online webcasting is something which royalties can
be collected upon.
October 16 -- A recent study by the National Association
of Recording Merchandisers (NARM) concluded that consumers are
willing to pay to acquiring music digitally. The study, which was titled "Creating Industry
Value From Digital Music Distribution" concluded that the
birth of digital music distribution will cause some big ripples
in the industry, but not likely affect CD sales in the near future.
November 10 -- BMG looking to merge EMI -- EMI informed
the London Stock Exchange that the two companies were indeed
in discussion centering on the merger of EMI and Bertelsmann
Music Group. EMI formally contemplated a merger with Warner Music,
which fell through due to complications with the AOL Time Warner
Merger, and the European Commission fears that this would give
the new company too much control in this market.
November 14 -- While the complete details are not clear
yet, it is being reported that MP3.com has settled its copyright
lawsuit with Universal Music by paying $53.4 million in damages.
November 15 -- Universal announced that it will be sharing
$25 million of the recently awarded $53.4 million dollars in
damages from MP3.com with artists who had their works infringed
upon.
November 24 -- Spin magazine names the hard drive
as Album of the Year.
December 1 -- According to a consumer survey by Forrester
Research, TowerRecords.com is the top dog in the online music
sales game. TowerRecords.com recently was revamped and enhanced
in August, increasing the selection of music available through
the e-retailer to well over 600,000 items, and sporting a simplified
interface for the consumer to navigate through these items while
e-shopping.
December 8 -- A lawsuit from MPL Communications, along
with The Songwriters Guild of America, The Rodgers and Hammerstein
Organization, and songwriters Mike Stoller, and Jerry Leiber
states that Seagram's Universal Music Group has infringed on
the copyrights of hundreds of popular songs which MPL controls
the copyrights to, such as "Jailhouse Rock" and "Love
Me Tender".
The suit specifically targets
Farm Club Online as the main source of infringement, stating
they copied and transmitted works controlled by MPL and others
without permission from the publishers and songwriters. MPL stated
that Universal was well aware of the fact that Farm Club did
violate the law which they themselves sued over and won, and
that they proceeded in bringing on the new subsidiary regardless
of this knowledge.
December 8 -- In a recent copyright office ruling, radio
station using their signals online will be forced to pay to play
the same music they play for free over conventional radio airwaves.
With this ruling, radio stations
choosing to broadcast over the Internet could face millions of
dollars in cost to provide the same service on a global level
that they currently do with conventional radio.
December 21 -- Universal fires 40 percent of the FarmClub.com
staff, just in time for the holidays.
December 29 -- Tens
of millions of Web surfers have discovered that it is easier
to download a song free using the Napster service than it is
to buy it in a store. Despite their popularity, Napster and other
Web sites are struggling for survival in the face of lawsuits
from the major record companies, which claim the sites aid and
abet the theft of copyrighted material. MP3.com, another online
music site, has already agreed to pay $170 million to settle
lawsuits filed by the same major record companies. Senate Judiciary
Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) has described file-swapping
sites such as Napster as positive because they allow recording
artists to connect directly with their audiences without interference
of record labels. "I view the stakeholders as the people
on the two ends of the wires," Hatch said during an October
hearing that included testimony from Napster founder Shawn Fanning.
Hatch, a songwriter and performer who has recorded his own music,
expects to hold more hearings on copyright issues next year.
Napster and MP3.com are preparing for battle and have hired high-powered
lobbyists. Napster hired Hatch's former chief of staff, Manus
Cooney, and MP3.com hired Billy Pitts, a longtime Hill aide who
was most recently in Walt Disney Co.'s Washington office. They're
squared off against the Recording Industry Association of America
(RIAA), a trade organization that represents the major record
labels. Pitts said Congress faces a difficult task -- protecting
the rights of copyright holders while ensuring that copyright
does not get in the way of exciting new technologies. But there
must be changes, said Pitts. Despite current laws, consumers
are demanding easy access to music and other copyrighted material
on the Internet. "The current mechanisms are not working,"
he said.
December 29, 2000
Napster is suing online retailer Sport Service over a copyright
dispute. Napster alleges that Sport Service is selling t-shirts
and caps with Napster's cat-like logo. Sport Service is doing
their selling through napsterstore.com, which was purchased on
May 24th 2000.
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