Slashdot Mirror
Judge Kills Napster Sale Over Conflict of Interest
MaxVlast writes "The New York Times is reporting that 'A bankruptcy judge blocked the sale of Napster Inc. to Bertelsmann AG on Tuesday, killing a deal that might have revived the idled Internet music pioneer.' The Napster CEO used to work for Berteslsmann, and the judge suspects a conflict of interest. The CEO says that Napster will probably go from Chapter 11 to a Chapter 7 liquidation." Reader VinceK adds a link to the same AP story (with no login needed) carried at Biz Report, and more reports at the SJ Mercury News, CBS Marketwatch and InfoWorld.
So Long, and Thanks For All The MP3!
Just like the first Greek to leave ship at Troy was bound to fall, the first big MP3-sharing service was bound to be taken down by the RIAA.
Still however, the Greek took Troy nontheless, it just took 'em a couple of years...
I wonder if I can download it off P2P....
only here can a service that was started up for fun, and used to trade items with no money changing hands, end up being bought and sold to put it out of business....
Have a look on their website
www.napster.com
Yuioup
Nerfster, the name of Napster's next incarnation, is a P2P network specializing in the trading of Nerf and Nerf-related materials
On a related note, Nerf has declared that it will be installing chips in its toys that allow only the registered user to use them... all copyright violaters will be assimilated, er, prosecuted.
Stupidity should be as painful as Windows...
-- "We're only gonna die from our own arrogance, that's why we might as well take our time..." -Bad Religion
At least they won't now be coming back as a pay service, which would just bastardize everything Napster stood for when it first came out. Odd how things work, Napster got sued and is now dead for all intents and purposes, and its fuel, mp3's, look like they may have started their down turn thanks to the change in licensing terms and some companies beginning to remove encoding and decoding of mp3s from their software as a result.
Request: ECM unit, 1000 km fullerene cable, 1 tactical nuclear weapon. Reason: Birthday party for foreign dignitary.
Kind souls? I think you mean karma whores!
...
... I feel so dirty......
Chapter 11
The part of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code describing how a company or creditor can file for court protection. In the case of a corporation, reorganization occurs under the existing management.
Chapter 7
The part of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code describing the liquidation of a company after bankruptcy.
Somebody had to be the sponge, the magnet, whatever - to suck in all the legal battles from the RIAA and allow Gnutella to be born in the background. No matter how many TRL Appearances Shawn Fanning had, how many teens rallied against the RIAA, nothing could stop the impending demise of Napster.
Napster really did pave the way for P2P File Sharing, and they deserve some respect. I mean, who here didn't use Napster?
'Bertlesmann Pulls Plug On Napster' - Well our Judicial system poured cold water on that Idea....
Still I do like the way that the laid off staff all posed for a group photo for the photographers who turned up to cover teh story - Rock on!
Great Bunch of ppl
Now - has anyone got a job for an ex-napster employee?
Shawn Fanning has begun work on a NEW Killer App! It's called Awakester and it uses PDQ technology! Let's see Hillary get her skanky hands on this!
How many times has Napster died now? 6? 7?
:)
SIGFEH
Sadly, the only thing that's possible to liquidate in Napster "Headquarters" are few 2U servers and a copy of MS Visual Studio 6.0 where Shawn actually wrote the damn thing.
Sucks to be him. One day you're the most popular pseudo-celebrity, next day you're just an MS Paint artist.
If a musician can promote to the general public online and sell CDs online, just what does an RIAA label have to sell a musician other than the chance to get really expensive outside investment that if things don't work out, may put him out of business, i.e. the record doesn't sell, the label stops promoting, and he's bound not to make new records for anybody until the contract expires?
Under current circumstances, a musician who has a sound that even a small niche market likes who's willing to work has a very good chance of making a decent living. A musician who sells 5K records via major label makes nothing and will be dropped by the label. A musician who sells 5K CDs off his own Website and at gigs in a year makes $50K or more, i.e. what 1M records would make him with a major label.
The only other thing the RIAA labels can do for an artist is get him into the record stores, which only matters if the musician reasonably believes he's the next multi-platinum superstar.
A musician has same chances of making money off a conventional label contract as he does of winning the lottery, especially since multiplatinum artists are going out of style.
Unless RIAA labels can make it impossible to effectively promote a band without FM radio access, there is no reason for a musician to sign with one.
Where's the room for compromise? They either stop P2P (remember Internet Radio?) or die.
Tech Public Policy stuff
The funny thing is that it would be so easy for the RIAA corps to add more value. The only value they have to add is legitimacy, availability and merchandising.
If they could cobble together a site where pretty much any and all material people were interested in was available, on a legitimate basis, with lyrics, CD covers, previews, and a reasonable (50c-$1) price per track, easy payment and encoding available in ogg/mp3 in various bitrates, I'd buy it in a second.
Who cares if you can copy it? If I can get what I want faster and easier off a pay-per (permanent, reasonably priced) download site, I'd love to use it.
Either the RIAA corps will eventually figure that out, or some artists whose contracts expire will get together and do it for themselves, cutting the RIAA out of the loop.
If I were a Napster creditor (the only financial stakeholders left), I'd try to sue whomever is responsible for this colossal blunder.
I've seen this comment before re:napster, but it's just a appropriate as ever:
Napster is like some poor 4-legged woodland creature that's been hit by a truck - it's crippled, howling in pain, and just a shell of what it used to be. There's blood all over the ground. Someone please put it out of its misery.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Did hew finish his degree?
My take on the legal maneuvering was this:
1. Bertelsmann said they would buy the company for $9 million plus forgiveness of debt (of some $83 million)
2. Bertelsmann claimed their bid was worth the sum of the two (clearly not true since Bertelsmann would never have received 100 cents on the dollar for the debt - the bid was worth closer to $9.2 - $9.3 million by my reckoning)
3. The RIAA claimed that Bertelsmann's mischaracterization of the bid dissuaded other bidders and thus made the process unfair
4. The judge agreed and threw out the only existing bid (!)
5. Napster had to shut down - the RIAA got exactly what it wanted.
It seems that the judge didn't understand the purpose of the bankruptcy code: to save businesses that could be saved by allowing them to restructure their obligations. Instead he had the company forsake their only bid and shut down; this outcome was so predictable that I have to wonder what the judge was thinking. It would be easy to believe he deliberately misinterpreted the law to favor of the RIAA, but that can't be it because he is a Delaware judge, not a California one.
Of course, the point is moot because Bertelsmann post-Middlehoff probably would have abandoned the assets once purchased anyway.
Milo
No cause of action against the other creditors since they have no duty of care towards you. The court has immunity.
When a company goes into Chapter 11 with huge debts creditors will often prefer a total loss to allowing the company to be sold to an original investor for a few cents on the dollar. This is a prisoner dillema type paradox, the optimal strategy is paradoxical if you only consider one case.
The reason why I will force a company into chapter 7 rather than allow a buyout is that I would prefer to get 0 cents on the dollar than allow the company insiders to get control of $100 million worth of assets for $5 million and pay me 5 cents on the dollar. I would rather lose $5K or so than encourage VCs to start doing this type of thing deliberately.
In this case Bertelseman jetissoned the idiot CEO who entered the deal in the first place only after the original objections were made.
In the excite at home case however, the creditors were complete idiots. AT&T bid way over the value of the assets they were acquiring and the creditors were essentially trying to blackmail AT&T into paying for continuity of service. Then despite having rejected the bid the creditors went to the court after AT&T had suffered the disruption and tried to get the original deal!!!
Another reason for forcing a company into Chapter 7 is that rather than get paid 5cents on the dollar on the debt I might prefer to buy certain assets of the company at firesale prices.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Looks like the party is over.
Just out of curiosity, what would one tell their next employer? Something like, "I worked for, and actively supported a company that specialized in the trafficking of intellectual property belonging primarily to (but certainly not limited to) the music and movie industries."
That should make someone a real hot prospect.
Next....
Oh yeah, and why do you assume that RIAA can only do FM radio and multi-platinum artists? MTV? Product placement in movies? Sports? Major websites? Streaming servers? They have a lot of cash, experience, and they specialize in this stuff. They can and will adapt...even if it's not RIAA as we know them, there will always be a need for some major backing of this kind. The reason is simple: it is impossible for everyone to have everyones ear. Unless our media fractures into such small niche groups (which it has not and we have no reason to believe it will) there will be a market for the finite mindshare of consumers. That market is necessarily expensive because the demand is so great and the supply is so little.
I hear tell that's important.
The cake is a pie
"But Palladium will ensure our safety," said those of Troy.
Do you like German cars?
"If you can get it for free, why pay for it?"
Translation: If you can steal it without getting caught, why pay for it?
A slashdot poster recently (and rather artfully) pointed out what a farce this whole thing is by mentioning the options open to someone in the U.S. when they disagree with something (of course, this only applies to people with a shred of integrity):
- Withhold money: don't buy the product, and refuse to procure it in any way.
- Do something constructive- write letters, promote boycotts, etc.
- Civil disobedience (a key point of which involves getting caught and subsequently arrested).
This whole "steal it until they submit" mentality is for wusses. Save for the short-term high (much like a hit of crack), it does nothing to solve the problem.
-
This was removed from the front page, in case anybody's wondering what people are talking about here.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Napster was a big name, and the headphone-wearing-cat icon was well recognized. The name could still have served as a political force. Say that someone could go to Napster.com to read editorials on the state of intellectual property today, find links to all sorts of alternative file sharing systems and even to buy Napster merchandise, such as T-Shirts and coffee mugs. There's still life in the old cat yet, even if it isn't for sharing music. Shawn F. should take note.
Perhaps Napster will become a martyr for the file sharing community?
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
For the RIAA labels, P2P is a way that independent musicians can get around the FM radio monopoly to reach the general public....Where's the room for compromise? They either stop P2P (remember Internet Radio?) or die
All of this rests, a priori, on your presumption that P2P is such an effective alternative to RIAA's marketing and financial backing that it fundamentally threatens RIAA.
No, P2P alone isn't, but P2P and Internet Radio and other Net enabled methods of communication with a low cost of entry *are*.
Merely putting your wares out on a file server is not equivalent to marketing.
I'm glad you've learned something from my posts.
How many albums have been sold by artists using P2P and non-RIAA means exclusively to market? It exists, but it is still very much of a fringe thing.
You state as fact things that can't be any more than opinions from a dubious source which you seem to be going to a good deal of trouble to render more so.
The central US record-keeping organization of the industry that certifies "gold" and "platinum" is the RIAA. Soundscan primarily tracks brick and mortar retail channel (every record sold via POS in the US is tracked on the Soundscan central databass) and is just beginning to track Internet sales including CD-on-demand. The sales charts for records in Billboard and in mass media and RIAA's numbers all are based on SoundScan. Look it up at Google. If this is news to you, you should become informed before expecting anyone to take your opinions seriously.
You cannot even show that these independent artists are any more numerous
Never said that they were. Perhaps in the America you'd like to see, no garage band could exist without registering with the Department of Homeland Security or getting permission from the RIAA to exist. We don't live there yet.
or more successful than they were pre-P2P or internet.
Define success!.
For a record label, an artist who only sold 200K records in a year is a mid-list artist, they'll probably keep her and hope she makes real money someday.
An individual who sold 200K records without the industry has made $1-2M on $3-4M gross saled. Tell that new millionaire that she isn't a success.
For a label, an artist who sold 10K records in a year is getting dropped, and she won't be seeing a dime in royalties, and the A&R man who signed her is getting yelled at by his boss.
That artist selling 10K records on her own has made $50-100K... which is a very decent living.
Here are examples of two bands that have done very well out of MP3 file swapping.
Wilco defies experts as `Foxtrot' gallops
By Greg Kot
Tribune rock critic
Published May 2, 2002
article here
Fair usage quotes:
Though the album was rejected by one major label as uncommercial, Wilco's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" defied record-industry expectations by selling 55,573 copies in its first week and debuting at No. 13 on the Billboard album chart--by far exceeding the band's past sales achievements.
The numbers released Wednesday by Soundscan, which monitors retail sales, flew in the face of mainstream record-industry thinking, which held that Wilco could not significantly expand its audience without commercial radio airplay and that it would hurt its sales by making its music widely available on the Internet.
[snip]
A similar strategy worked for Radiohead in 2000 and 2001, when experimental records such as "Kid A" and "Amnesiac" circulated on MP3 files months before the albums' release, yet the albums debuted listeners time to live with the music for a while and appreciate at No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, when released. "It gave our what we were up to," said Radiohead guitarist Ed O'Brien.
Tower Records on Clark Street reported first-week "Foxtrot" sales of 299, double the best first-week sales of any album this year. "People have the record because they downloaded it, but that didn't affect sales whatsoever," said product manager Von Medler. "It's been a couple of years since we've had a first week of sales like this."
*end quote*
This is the cutting edge of band marketing, and by definition, only a few are going to be on the cutting edge.
The musician I am personally working with will be releasing some of her songs as MP3s for the same reason. She knows what the product is. Just like Wilco does and Radiohead does.
Sad that YOU don't quite get it yet, isn't it? Don't worry. Hilary Rosen of RIAA also does. You may assume like everyone else that any public statements she makes at variance with this are fabrications.
Where is the evidence that RIAA's services are any less in demand? Why isn't there any real decline in the # of artists to signing with RIAA?
Strike one. RIAA is a record label industry association. Artists are neither invited nor welcome to join, though if they own their own record labels qualifying according to RIAA criteria, their labels might be welcome to join. They don't provide services to individual artists any more than the BSA provides end-user support. If you don't know this, why should anything else you say be taken seriously?
Why should anyone believe that RIAA's real agenda for attacking P2P is killing alternative distribution/marketing (given how irrelevant it is today)
Care to tell Radiohead and Wilco how irrelevant it is?
Perhaps the RIAA/MPAA, like your pets, look ahead a bit further than you do. Movie piracy in the US via download isn't especially significant. It can't be, the last mile bandwidth to the home isn't in place yet, even broadband DSL/cablemodem isn't really fast enough. MPAA is also helping leading the effort to lock down the Net and personal computers. Perhaps you should tell Jack Valenti that the Internet is irrelevant to movie piracy.
and not for the fact that 99% of the services' traffic is their goods being pirated,
I won't blame you for getting this one wrong, most name musicians believe the same disinformation, and they got it where you did. CDs are the product. 128K MP3s are promotional items used to sell CDs. They are not the same thing. The ones who figure this out, like Wilco and Radiohead have a much better chance of making money in the modern music environment. Any stupid enough to listen to you will be whining about PIRATES.
The reason for this is that as is known to everyone in and out of the industry except you, free MP3 distribution boosts record sales. Record sales dropped immediately after Napster was shut down.
Major labels pay to get their product onto FM radio. The quality is comparable. Why? While you might buy an album you've never heard based on the idea that if an RIAA label makes it, it must be good, nobody else will. The quality of a 128K MP3 is sufficiently different from that of an album that if someone grabs a 128K MP3 for something that the person really likes, he'll buy the actual uncompressed CD. Maybe not on the 1st or the 4th or the 100th listening, but sooner or later, he's going to want to hear every nuance through his multichannel sound system which is telling him there are things on it he wants to hear and can't.
especially when services that do NOT serve piracy so effectively are left alone by and large (e.g., mp3.com et. al)?
Strike two. Which world do you live in? Try googling mp3.com and lawsuit and see how many hits you get. I got 11,600 .
Do you know who owns MP3.com now?
MP3.com isn't an adequate promotional channel for new musicians, and with rare exceptions, anyone who thinks this will find out differently the hard way. In my plans to promote an actual artist I'm working with, MP3.com is fairly low on the list of priorities. I'm going P2P and non-US Internet Radio first.
Why? Too crowded for one, and most important, it doesn't fit the way most people look for new music. Unless one is a self-defined member of a musical subculture, in which case one knows who the bands are and goes directly to their sites and knows where to go to hear the latest buzz about cool new bands, one finds new music by finding music that one likes that's familiar and waiting for similar music from new bands. On a place like mp3.com , for the new user, all the new content is unfamiliar.
I like Internet Radio for this because it offers defined genres. But to some extent, so does the search feature on an MP3 file sharing site.
Internet Radio wasn't serving pirates at all and the RIAA got it closed down, too. They were paying radio-type royalties to ASCAP and BMI (do you know who ASCAP and BMI are? If you don't, just what are you doing in this discussion?) and were trying to make a deal with RIAA labels to allow them to pay reasonable (i.e. ones that would allow them to stay in business) royalties to them. RIAA wouldn't allow them to stay in business even if they paid royalties to labels.
In fact, one of the people who was involved in negotiating the Yahoo music contract that the CARP copyright deal that got Internet Radio closed down was based on explicitly stated that the yahoo intent was to make sure that only major label music got played on Yahoo, and that the industry wanted to make sure that Yahoo wouldn't let "just anybody" have a chance to get music played there.
If legitimate promotion and distribution of independent artists is really the goal of P2P,
The goal of P2P is file distribution. The content of the files is the business of the users. Why should a file sharing network have any other goals?
then Napster and all of its followers could have served that end, and simultaneously avoid RIAA's harrasment, by only allowing enumerated artists on its network after they sign an agreement stating that they are willing to have their goods traded in such a fashion. That could have been done very easily,
Explain how. Not that it matters, but I want to see you make a fool of yourself in public.
yet it was not and has not yet been done.
If the primary 128K MP3 value is to provide an advance sample of the CD listening experience, just why is this important? People are NOT trading almost CD-quality 256K MP3s to any significant extent. Just let the "Jolly Roger" flag recede into your hallucinations now.
Oh yeah, and why do you assume that RIAA can only do FM radio and multi-platinum artists?
You conflate two entirely different questions. You don't know why RIAA labels can only effectively service artists capable of selling 1M records and above? AND YOU ARE EXPLAINING THE MUSIC INDUSTRY TO US?
Strike 3. You're out!
But for my amusement, I'm going to kick the props out from under the rest of this part of your world view anyway. More to the point, refuting your mistakes are giving me a very few useful and potentially profitable ideas, the most important of which I won't discuss here.
You obviously haven't read Janis Ian's articles, have you? She demonstrated based on her experience that they don't serve their mid-list. As to why they can't, you yourself are providing part of the explanation right here. Don't you read your own posts before hitting "Send"? Why should anybody else read them?
MTV? Product placement in movies? Sports? Major websites? Streaming servers?
Yes, and all of these channels have a limited number of useful slots and the majority are targeted towards certain kinds of music. Pushing Metallica on urban black FM radio stations is a waste of money.
The only artists who can be marketed cost-effectively through those channels are either the ones who are multi-platinum or in the judgement of the label, can become multi-platinum. There really isn't any good economic reason to do otherwise. The other major expense with respect to a marketing model based on brick-and-mortar sales is manufacturing and shipping the physical product to tens of thousands of record stores. If you've shipped a dozen CDs to each of 10K record stores and only 10K CDs sell total, the record label is deep in the hole.
They have a lot of cash, experience, and they specialize in this stuff. They can and will adapt...
All it is going to take is one artist breaking 1M unit CD sales without the aid of a major record label (who cares if the RIAA blesses it via "platinum"? All who know anything about the industry know the numbers come from SoundScan) through the use of Internet promotion and in-person + Internet sales and the word getting around that he made $5-10M off those 1M sales instead of $50K and artists start bailing from their record labels. You obviously haven't read Courtney Love's explanation of a major label record contract and you certainly have never seen one yourself... meaning you've got no business discussing the music business in a public forum. But you may already have figured this out.
ALL the big 5 RIAA labels are in trouble. Due to "piracy"? Only in the imaginations of RIAA publicists and those naive enough to believe them. Care to look in a mirror before you continue to read this?Music sales as a whole dropped right after Napster closed. The difference appears to be lack of promotion via a mass-market P2P channel... say, the equivalent of several Clear Channel FM radio stations in major markets getting blown up.
There are two reasons for the decline in record sales after the impact of Napster's shutdown finally rippled out. "It's the economy, stupid!" is one.
By and large, the labels are owned by very large multinationals. If the label artists start bailing, the stock value of the parent companies suddenly takes a hit grossly disproportionate to the actual impact on asset value. Watch most of the big 5 go on the block at fire sale prices, i.e. for far less than the values of their catalogues and physical assets. Remember the dot.bomb? Many good companies went down with the bad. This will happen sooner than even most of RIAA's worst enemies will believe possible. Most labels won't have time to adapt before they go on the block.
Not to say that all labels will go down, and I'm certain that in the post-RIAA landscape, the competent music specialists currently employed by the labels will make more money than ever before. I think most will work directly for musicians as contractors, but some will work for surviving labels and new ones. The new labels that start out with and the old ones who adapt to to a "everybody has access to Net promotion - WE know what we're doing" based business by drastically cutting expenses, concentrating on artist support, creating fair contracts, publishing them on the Web, and boasting about how good they are in every venue they can buy ads in, spending far less money per new artist by using Internet channels only for promo and distribution unless an artist proves real mass market potential will make more money than anyone believes possible.
The surviving and new labels will be able to make money with an artist that sells 5-10K records... as will the artist. The new successful label model will be hundreds or thousands of 10K-50K selling artists, and a few breakout artists who it'll be worth the trouble to go to traditional brick and mortar distribution for.
From an artist viewpoint, the point behind having a label is to make more money with less non-music hassle than one can without one. If one's worldwide sales potential is 10K records a year with what an individual can do about promo, one has the chance to make a decent living without a label. To make a label contract worthwhile, an artist needs to be convinced that the record label can make life easier for him and increase his income. In the new world, the record labels will have to make that case to a musician inclined to believe otherwise.
even if it's not RIAA as we know them,
Again. YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW WHO THE MUSIC INDUSTRY PLAYERS ARE AND YOU ARE LECTURING US ABOUT THE INDUSTRY?
there will always be a need for some major backing of this kind. The
reason is simple: it is impossible for everyone to have everyones ear.
Anybody who's selling music and bought access to "everyone's ear" paid way the hell too much.
Your "simple" reason is simply wrong. You really don't know what a record label does for musicians, do you?
Most simply put, it's an interface; a broker between the musician and the part of the public most likely to buy that musician's music. It's gatekeeper function is imposed by economics, if an organization is going to use the mass media as the primary tool to promote a record and brick and mortar distribution as the primary sales channel, very substantial resources must be devoted per musician. Add this to the legendary drastically inflated overhead, and this means extremely substantial resources. With the full knowledge that on the average, most of these investments will be lost. Other label resources are used to help the musician make the record, i.e. studio time, experienced in-house or external music and video producers and directors, etc. Labels constrained this way must make what appear to be the "safest" choices, not the best or most artistically appealing ones.
People are getting bored by the safe choices. That's the other big reason why the major labels and Clear Channel is in big trouble. While you presumably are content with Clear Channel, and I'd guess you to be a 60s-80s "album-oriented-rock" type, listenership is dropping. Are you going to tell us that P2P "piracy" is hitting FM radio as well? Same price and one doesn't have to tie up one's BW downloading, similar quality, and if your assumptions are true (they aren't), same music.
Unless our media fractures into such small niche groups (which it has not and we have no reason to believe it will) there will be a market for the finite mindshare of consumers. That market is necessarily expensive because the demand is so great and the supply is so little.
With respect to the media shattering into small niche groups, the media hasn't. the AUDIENCE has. This ain't "The Summer of Love" anymore. Times have changed since "The San Francisco Sound" or "The English Beat" was what everybody was listening to. There isn't one big sound everyone is listening to anymore, even within music categories like metal or hiphop or "alternative music".
Let's take metal as an example. It has shattered into at least a dozen different niches, some as different as chalk and cheeze. You know the difference between "heavy" metal and "doom" metal? The audience for the less important niches isn't big enough to support a million-selling audience even if EVERYBODY who listened to it bought a particular album. This is happening across the big music categories. I don't know if this will ever get to the point where 1M album sales are simply impossible, but I wouldn't be surprised to see this happen.
I'm probably going to let you have the last word on this, there's a limit on the amount of pro bono time I can spend educating one blockhead, though I hope and believe others have benefited. Not that I expect the last word to do you any good, unless you count further exposure of your ignorance as a good.
I find it hard to believe that you are really as ignorant as your public post indicates. Are you grassroots or astroturf?
Tech Public Policy stuff
Possibly. I like short taglines though. :)
My journal has hot
Bertelsmann actually offered good hard cash for the Napster assets. This cash - at least - would have been "the money left" and could have been used to pay a part of Napster's debt.
Due to the decision of that bankruntcy court now the creditors will not see that money. The question is now: will the court be able to get a better - or at least comparable - offer for the napster assets. If it doesn't, it has harmed the creditors and should duly compensate them. The court, after all, is the trustee of the creditor's interest and should act according to these duties.
Somebody else has suggested - and I share that sentiment - that some of the creditors might rather see Napster go down in flames but see its assets in Bertelsmann hands. The only legitimate way to acchieve that of course would be presenting a better offer. But that costs money. So the court has indirectly done, say, Disneys bidding here - by killing of the Bertelsmann offer the court has made it cheaper for them to get the whole Napster destroyed forever, to the strategic advantage of a few companies and to the detriment of the other Napster creditors.
Now add to that that the nasty suspicion that the benificaries are probably US companies (Disney, Time/Warner etc), while one of the victims is a Euroopean Company (Bertelsmann is with ~ US$ 100 Mill. one of Napster's larger creditors as well) you come to conclude that a judge may have bent the law and acted against his duties to give an advantage to some US companies over their European competitor.
As a funny sidenote, some of the articles suggest that Bertelsmann's Napster credits are 'secured' - if I understand that correctly Bertelsmann will get a better share or even the lions share of any payout from Napster. So this takeover bid might even have been a close-to-zero-sum-game - Betelsmann pays the money for the assets and gets most of it back as debt repayment. This means they were more or less entitled to Napster's assets as result of their credit contracts anyway. So we have a judge tricking a foreign company out of leagl entitlements to the advantage of an ameriacn competitor.
If this were in fact the case, they indeed should take a hard look at the judge and initiate legal action against him.