AfterDawn: News

Universal sues Bertelsmann

World's largest record company, Universal Music Group (part of French media giant Vivendi) has sued other media giant, German Bertelsmann, claiming that Bertelsmann aided Napster in copyright infringements by funding the start-up.

Universal joins in the case with group of music publishers who originally sued Bertelsmann for the same reason in February, this year. Universal Music Group is seeking for $150,000 per illegally distributed song -- the maximum amount the controversial DMCA law allows.



Well, for consumer point of view, it is finally nice to see equal-sized opponents in the ring, instead of the usual scenario during the last couple of year: in one corner, a poor student in his worn jeans and in one corner, a multi-billion dollar media giant. But as usual, the only ones winning in this case, however it ends up, are American lawyers..

Source: AtNewYork.com

Written by: Petteri Pyyny @ 13 May 2003 13:43

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• 4 comments

• Ghostdog

  That´s an insane amount of money per song.
  Let´s say 2 million songs were downloaded (is this a fair estimate?). That amounts to 300000000000 dollars. What is that? 300 billion? I´m not very good when it comes to big numbers.

  14.5.2003 02:00 #1

• martin

  IIRC, napster had over 10 million users at one point. If every user downloaded one song that's at least $1,500,000,000,000 !
  
  True, it's insane!

  15.5.2003 01:36 #2

• Ghostdog

  And think it´s fair to say that mosty dowenloaded more than one song. No one with a healthy mind can actually beleive Universal will get that amount of money.

  15.5.2003 03:25 #3

• martin

  Agreed. It is pointless for Universal to go ahead with this. Even if they were to win something, it would probably be lost again on appeal.

  15.5.2003 06:55 #4