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Record Labels Sue Napster's VC
zemkai writes "From the "wtf?!?" department... Universal Music Group and EMI are suing Hummer Winblad Ventures for contributing to copyright infringement due to that firm's investment in Napster... I'd like to put something witty here, but I'm just speechless."
Lemme verify my logic here...
1. Napster lets you share music while viewing banner ads. Napster gets sued for everything it has.
2. Napster VCs made money from banner ads. VCs get sued for everything they have.
3. I viewed banner ads that made money for VCs.
Holy crap, we're all next...
Well, it's not as simple as that... From the article: "In May 2000, Hummer Winblad invested about $13 million in Napster and took control of its business and legal liabilities , with Barry assuming an interim CEO role." I hate the record industry for all this shit, but they probably do have a pretty good case.
Napster is a tool that CAN violate copyrights. The program doesn't inherently do any of this though.
Unless of course you consider your car a tool for running people over, since that's but one of many options available to you...
Napster was a tool for violating copyrights.
In the same way FTP clients are a tool for violating copyrights.
So a CEO isn't liable for things that their company does, but investors can be held liable for actions of the users of their "investee's" products?
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
...they'll be suing the individual investors of tobacco companies for wrongful death due to an individuals cancer.
Asininity at its finest. But hey, the more they keep digging, the deeper they get.
The **AA are at war. They are going to use every trick, every tool in the box to sew fear and uncertainty in all those who would act against their survival. The idea of course, is to put the fear of god into anybody who might finance a startup venture that would break their business model.
My rights don't need management.
Modern capitalism is based very strongly on the concept of limited liability which means precisely that investors are not responsible for liabilities incurred by the companies they invest in. The companies are, and the investors can lose their investment, but they are not criminally liable for the company's actions (unless they participate directly in those actions) and they are liable only for the amount of their investment.
It's like investing in a local street gang.
No, it's like investing in Exxon before the Exxon Valdez or in Union Carbide before Bhopal. You can lose your investment. To suggest that it go any further undermines every principle upon which our economy is founded.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
At Napster's peak, the RIAA's sales were at their peak. There's no hard data that any amount of money was lost as a result of Napster.
So, in order to make the case work, they'll claim that they'd have made some imaginary number of money more (96 billion dollars?) because millions of people downloaded MP3s, therefore didn't buy albums as a result of it. So even though that money didn't materialize, they'll magically make money on it by claiming damages as a result of Napster.
That's pretty messed up. I worked for a company that made a product and sold a whopping $5,000 worth of it. (Gross, not net even.) A larger company came along and claimed we infringed on a patent. We didn't, but how do you convince a jury that? They used lawyer math to claim this company did one million dollars in damages. Uh right. Their revenue was consistent with both their predictions and on previous experience, and the company I worked for only made 5k.
Like I said, free money. I wish I had a suggestion as to how this whole system could be fixed to prevent this type of fraud.
"Derp de derp."
In an effort to fight rampant piracy, the RIAA announced that law enforcement officials will be arresting customers exiting music stores carrying product of any kind. "We've got to stem the flow of piracy at it's source" says Robbie Flack, the RIAA's cheif advisor to the Bush Administration. "These people are taking our intellectual property and playing it loud enough for other people to hear or showing it to their friends. Clearly this violates 'public performance' laws."
When asked whether this would discourage music sales, Flack responded that "those sheeple should just stay home and listen to appropriately licensed broadcasts of their favorite artists." RIAA officials stated that this is merely the first step in a long plan that they term the "War on Privac.... er Piracy" [ed note: this is how all RIAA staff pronounce it]. The next step according to the plan is to arrest executives from the very labels that the RIAA represents. "[the executives] are putting all of this copywritten material out there and giving consumers a sense that they own it. This is just wrong.", said Flack. The plan will culminate with the RIAA arresting themselves once Congress passes IMGOD-327, a controvercial new bill that would make RIAA staff federal law enforcement officers. The bill is expected become law in 2004 with very little resistance.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
...don't they understand?
The defining characteristic of a corporation, in America, is that its investors cannot be held liable for more than the amount of their investment.
In other words, suing the VCs for the actions of the company they invested in is SPECIFICALLY PROHIBITED. What's next? Someone finds a syringe in a Coke bottle, and lawyers sue every little old lady who owns shares in a mutual fund that invests in Coca-Cola stock?
What Would Jesus Do
(for a Klondike bar)?
Tim
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
... and the legal scholars I talked to found plenty for Hummer Winblad to worry about. Of course, this was before Bertelsmann became involved.
My article, from Upside.com:
Hummer Winblad could answer for Napster's sins
Legal experts say there is a good chance the flush venture capital firm Hummer Winblad stands to lose more than its $13 million investment in Napster Inc. if the music-swapping firm is fined for music piracy.
then the Economist did a story:
Hummer's Napster bummer: Napster's backers under attack
If we want to make corporate responsibility a real thing in the post-Enron days, this sort of thing is going to have to happen. Lots of people want laws to enable us to go after people who lie to shareholders or pollute the environment, but the sword cuts both ways. If you want to make it more difficult for someone (either a real person or another corporation) to hide behind a corporation after engaging in illegal activity, you're going to have to accept that these laws will be used by people we don't like (RIAA) to go after people we do like (Napster) breaking laws we don't like.
How is this such a wrong thing anyway? Hummer Winblad knew that Napster operated by exploiting copyrights they did not own, but they gave them money anyway. Giving money to a terrorist group that will commit crimes is illegal; why shouldn't it be illegal to give money to a company that will commit crimes also? Ignore whether the law is just; as it stands right now, Napster was illegal.
You have a choice: tax and spend Democrats, or borrow and spend Republicans. Choose wisely.
Sue the CDROM manufacturers that enabled music reading/playing for computers. Seriously. They could argue that the CDROM manufacturers should have only created them to read data CDs.
Maybe sound card manufacturers for having good quality line-in/mic jacks - they should have limited them to 22khz or something suitable for voice.
It probably won't go as far as suing the retailers for selling CDs to "pirates", however.
Look at what record companies are producing now: $17 or $18 CDs of bands that wouldn't have been allowed out of the garage in the 80s. Who is the best guitarist in alternative music? Who knows? Who cares? Alternative music doesn't require technical virtuosity to play. It's all about small acts. The record companies like this because it doesn't lock them in to paying prima donnas like Eddie Van Halen or David Lee Roth the big bucks, but it also means that alternative bands are far more interchangeable and can't demand as much of a premium over other bands.
Eventually, a record company will realize that it would be better off releasing a higher quality product at a lower price, its sales will go through the roof, and everyone else will follow. Until then, we will just have to listen to them whine about file sharing. File sharing is not the problem, price and quality are.
The people who really have something to lose are radio stations. They are a free music delivery mechanism, but why listen to a radio station that only plays music you like some of the time when you can download MP3s and listen to your favorites.
Perhaps the future weakness of the radio station is what really bothers the record companies. Radio stations are their promotion mechanism. Without them, they might have to actually produce a quality product to get people to buy it (instead of just playing it to the point that people feel vaguely uncomfortable when the radio is off because they are so accustomed to the sound of the song).
As part of the due-diligence, the major investors have publicly stated that they went to their lawyers, and the lawyers advised them to steer clear, because Napster was knowingly letting/encouraging people swap copyrighted material(this knowing/encouraging bit is important.)
They went ahead anyway, because they were greedy- the same reason people threw traditional rules-of-business out the window for countless dot-coms that(surprise) turned into dot-bombs.
Surprise surprise, people come knocking when they hear you funded a company which YOU KNEW(AND HAD BEEN ADVISED BY A LAWYER TO THE SAME EFFECT), WAS ENGAGING IN ILLEGAL ACTIVITY. It's called aiding and abetting, and in this case, the investors knew full well what was going on; it's not like someone was cooking the books and the investors honestly didn't know. EVERYONE at Napster knew they were doing something illegal.
If you want to be all "RIAA/MPAA sucks!", fine- but don't mix up centuries-old legitimate law. If you fund a business you know is a front for a drug operation, are you gonna be "speechless" when the DEA comes and arrests you? Actually, being speechless in such a case might be an excellent idea, particularly given your understanding of legal matters ;-)
Please help metamoderate.
In the artical at news.com it read that the record label was suing for 150,000 per infringment and that Napster was guilty of "billions" of acts?!
By the time of its close, Napster had contributed to billions of separate acts of copyright infringement, according to Monday's complaint. The record labels are seeking punitive damages of no less than $150,000 per violation of copyright, among other awards.
Assuming 1 billion violations * 150k$ = 150e12 bucks? Am I doing the math right here? Is this a Guiness World Record here or what...
and I thought that woman suing McDonalds was funny...
Right, wrong, irrelevent. What is, is.
"Worldwide sales of music CDs, records and cassettes fell for the third year in a row, hit largely by rising Internet piracy in the United States, according to figures for 2002 by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry" (emphasis added).
The sales figures I have seen only indicate that sales are less than in the past. The causal connection made by this and other articles indicating that this reduction is a result of piracy is not entirely established. Record companies have blamed the Internet for their poor performance so many times that it has been accepted by many in the media as established fact.
There are many other possibilities to explain the sales reduction. Reduced interest in current, big name artists, increased interest in a splintered set of independent artists, the failure of the industry to adapt to new market formats (much as occurred when cassette tapes became popular), and the alienation of large parts of their customer base all come to mind as possible alternative explanations.
Many "old steel" industries are becoming frustrated that customers are not more like cattle. Tastes tend to change suddenly in ways that large companies have a hard time dealing with and it is easier to blame outside forces that to fix a difficult problem.
Perhaps their numbers won't be off for a fourth year if the recording industry drops its defensive stance and instead recognizes that the market has changed and that they need to adapt. At some point shareholders have to begin asking what else the industry is doing to increase revenue besides suing everyone.
That's the key. The key to holding the VCs responsible is proving that they were aware that the activities Napster was promoting were illegal. Personally I'd argue that you'd have to be a complete fucking idiot not to have realized that, but I am not a lawyer.
That's not to say I particularly like the music companies, but I think they have a very good chance of winning this one (Again, my non-lawyerly opinion.)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Let me first acknowledge that the person you're replying to is probably a little more extreme than a lot of people. BUT...
Even though I disagree with the way he expresses his opinion (telling you to get a job was rather childish) he is correct. The conglomerates themselves have invalidated the entire concept of copyright by acting outside the boundaries (and spirit) of the original intent of copyright. To ensure innovators innovated, and to insure that useful ideas weren't kept out of the public's hands forever... One of many measures essentially enacted to prevent the formation of an ultra-wealthy aristocracy.
They didn't intend to allow conglomerates to keep culturally enriching materials out of the public domain forever, yet that is essentially where we're at, and essentially the point of view you're arguing.
I can't wait for somebody to become a big star by financing his own recordings, promoting himself with unencumbered p2p delivered mp3 (or oggs or whatever) of songs, perhaps embedding his web-site name in one of the ID3 fields so people who really liked it could logon and buy cds, t-shirts, and tickets to see him in concert.
It will eventually happen, and if your music is good enough, it could be you. The critical difference is that somebody who becomes huge this way gets to keep all the profits, keep ownership (for a time) of the rights to his songs, and not be a slave to some idiot in a suit's concerns about your record and whether there are any "singles" on it. Every artist who sides with the RIAA and their ilk only lengthen their time of servitude under an oppressive regime.
Hello Apples, meet Oranges. A house is physical property. It can be taken away. A song can't be taken away unless I take all your tapes and erase your memory of it. The law plainly intends for copyrights to eventually expire, why can't you (and the RIAA) accept that rather than trying to sue everybody into submission?
Using your logic, how is playing the radio loud any different than Napster? I'm allowing many people to "enjoy" "your" music but only paying for one copy. For that matter, why is Napster different than a radio station? Sure, radio stations pay for the right to broadcast music, but the per song breakdown is pretty small. The reason the labels had this arrangement in the first place was PROMOTIONS.
Why won't the labels license Napster-like services to provide unlimited downloads? It would be the same as radio--better really because the user would hear exactly as much of what they are interested in as they want--lose interest fast? Decide the artist sucks? Erase file.
Every "starving musician" I've ever met who is vehemently anti-Napster invariably has some pie-in-the-sky dream of living the life of a rock star--fame, fortune, big money, and chicks everwhere. All of them desperately want to believe that those three things are achieved on merit, but they aren't. They're based on promotional budget, production budget, and access to good drugs.
Who did what now?