Napster Calls MusicNet Monopolistic; Judge Agrees

MattW writes "Yahoo is carrying an article from the AP about a development in ongoing Napster litigation. Several major labels and RealNetworks formed MusicNet. Napster complained about an anti-competitive clause in the contract they signed with MusicNet, and Marilyn Hall Patel, best known to this community for her stern condemnation of Napster, agreed, stating that MusicNet had all the hallmarks of an anticompetitive business. The article goes on to state that, "If the recording industry was found to have misused its copyrighted material, it might not be able to successfully pursue an infringement claim on those works.""

Comments

Re:Here we go again

[Bonker]

Well it looks like we will never be able to download music on the internet.

Hmm... I'm downloading music from the internet *right now* from a P2P filesharing service called USENET.

Steve Vai rocks, BTW...

Despite the best efforts of the RIAA to stamp out filesharing services, they have yet to seriously move against Usenet or convince any of the major ISP's to not carry the alt.binaries hierarchy. (I beleive Earthnet caved into the BSA and stopped carrying a lot of the alt.binaries.warez groups)

Moreover, many ISP's have started to refuse requests from entertainment companies to TOS users because they share copyrighted material. They cite issues such as DHCP IP addresses and non-provability, but what it really boils down to is the fact that the ISPs realized that they'll start losing customers if the becoming known for TOS'ing their users.

Sharing is alive and well, neighbor, and as long as its easier to share than it is to buy music, then the RIAA will just be spinning their wheels.

"The more you tighten your grip,
the more star systems will
slip through your fingers."

Re:Now they're on to something

[fishbowl]

> This is good because IIRC RICO is a CRIMINAL
> action, and leaves the companies open to
> everything from fines to revocation of charters.

It allows for something else that I find delicious: Prison time for executives.
And the best part? You can end up in prison
because you are the highest level of authority
that "knew or should have known" about the violation.

That means you don't even have to have your manicured hands dirty to be escorted out of your
ivory tower in handcuffs. Even if you "don't know" about the corruption in your organization,
if the FBI can prove that you "should have known",
you're responsible.

I love RICO. OSHA is pretty good like this as well...

Finally Caught Out

[nellardo]

When I worked at Sony a few years back, pre-SDMI, one of the things I worked on was the technology for electronic content distribution. I was the tech liaison between Sony Corporation of America (SCA), Sony Music (SMEI), Warner Music Group (WMG), IBM (tech and business groups), and Sony research labs in Japan (aka "Tokyo").

Aside from the (questionable) joy of explaining cryptography to suits and explaining licensing requirements to geeks (Harry Fox helps throw a real monkey wrench in there, administering rights for song-writers), one of the things that came up time and time again was anti-trust issues.

SMEI and WMG were well-aware that together they represented about 30% of the market (they split that up, flip-flopping every year over who has the most based on who had bigger hits). Their expectation was that a joint venture between them would attract BMG, Universal, EMI and whoever was number six at the time. Then independents would simply have to fish or cut bait and join up as well.

Everyone was very careful to avoid using words and phrases like "controlling", "domination", etc. at least in written materials. People would verbally joke that they needed to make sure those words weren't written down, in case they ever got subpoena'ed for anti-trust, but everyone knew that the objective was making the HBO of electronic music distribution. You see, they recognized that HBO had the movie companies by the short and curlies as far as cable distribution of films went, and didn't want the same to happen to them in a new media distribution - the film companies have been worrying about this for themselves for electronic distribution for a couple of years now.

Of course, Napster beat them to it, so they beat on Napster legally. One of the funniest things about the timing of these things for me was SDMI being announced just after MP3 hit the cover of Time Magazine, when I'd been working on it for years prior. And of course they got the DMCA passed in the meantime, making cracking even the stupidest of copy control schemes illegal. Of course, every crypto expert they talked to at the time (myself included) emphasized that no scheme was foolproof and you should be sure to design the system to minimize damage in the case of a crack. Being powerful executives with lobbyists on retainer, a legal solution was obvious.

So, all in all, I'm pleasantly amused that the music companies got just a bit too eager and slipped in one phrase too many.....