AfterDawn: News

The ghost of Napster appears in court

Even though the former P2P service Napster has long been burried, and even resurrected in the format of a legal online music store, Bertelsmann AG (BMG) is still haunted by its investment in the company four years ago.

On April 27 BMG will return to court to face a lawsuits brought against the company by music labels and publishers. The lawsuits claim that by funding Napster BMG kept the peer-to-peer network running for an extra eight months which resulted in damages of $17 billion to the industry in lost sales. That's $71 million per day.



According to BMG the investments in Napster were made in hopes of turning the site into a legal, licensed service, and the claims made by the plaintiffs will prove difficult to win.

Many plaintiffs are accusing Bertelsmann of "tertiary infringement", which means that they see that by funding Napster Bertelsmann legitimized the service, and opened the Pandora's box that is still releasing new peer-to-peer services today.

Source: News.com

Written by: Jari Ketola @ 21 Apr 2004 12:22

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• 5 comments

• Ghostdog

  "Many plaintiffs are accusing Bertelsmann of "tertiary infringement", which means that they see that by funding Napster Bertelsmann legitimized the service, and opened the Pandora's box that is still releasing new peer-to-peer services today."
  
  Now that´s just bullshit.

  22.4.2004 06:36 #1

• lcarbutt

  $17 billion is nothing to the entertainment industry.
  I say napster is DEAD, you got what you want now just let it go.
  
  1.NAPSTER=DEAD
  2.KAZZAA=DYING
  3.SUPERNOVA= NEXT ON THE LIST I RECKON

  22.4.2004 06:52 #2

• Vular

  Anyone hear about this new p2p called MUTE?
  http://mute-net.sourceforge.net/
  I would say the futureof p2p looks somthing like this.

  This Is No Ice Cream Social!

  22.4.2004 07:21 #3

• Ghostdog

  Worth a try.

  22.4.2004 07:47 #4

• Ghostdog

  Off topic maybe, but this one´s real quick.
  
  Mute first impressions: A lack of search results and quite slow downloads. Though I guess this is because the app isn´t very known yet and because it´s only at a 0.3 state. I like the simplistic design. very easy to use.
  Hopefully this program will catch on as as strong alternative once it´s developed a bit further.

  25.4.2004 04:00 #5