Napster Set to Bow to Metallica
Demands
While Napster has bowed to Metallica's most
recent demands, it looks like the
music-swapping software company has
succeeded in pitting the metal men against
their fans. The San Mateo, Calif.-based
company agreed to review the more than
300,000 names presented to them by
Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich Wednesday
afternoon and block out any users guilty of
copyright infringement.
The company maintains, as it has all along,
that it is not guilty of actual copyright
infringement but that its site merely serves as
a conduit for users to trade music. Napster
claims that any copyright violations are done
against its policy and without its knowledge.
Its copyright policy states that upon
completing an account agreement, users
cannot "use the Napster service to infringe the
intellectual property rights of others in any
way"; threatening termination of accounts for
violators citing the Digital Millennium Copyright
Act as their cornerstone. The site,
www.napster.com, features an online copyright
infringement notification, through which one
can report copyright violators. As a result, the
company has deflected Metallica's offensives
to their users, Metallica fans.
"Napster intends to comply with the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act and it takes these
obligations seriously," says Napster attorney
Laurence Pulgram. "Napster will review the
over 300,000 fan names that Metallica turned
in as soon as possible. If the claims are
submitted properly, the company will take the
appropriate actions to disable the users
Metallica has identified."
The statement comes a day after Metallica
addressed the issue with fans in a Web chat.
Ulrich tried to sooth fan anxieties, claiming
that the band was not turning on their fans.
"Remember the reason we're giving these
names to Napster is because they dared us to
come and prove to them that people were
trading Metallica around through their vehicle,"
he said. "The issue is really between Napster
and Metallica. They're trying in a PR way to
make Metallica the bad guys in the eyes of
our fans, and that's what pisses us off even
more."
Napster's latest comments fuel an already
heated controversy between Metallica and
their fans. "It is important to understand that
Napster does not itself make available any
MP3 materials over the Internet," Pulgram
continued. "Napster merely provides computer
software that allows its users to choose which
files to make available to each other. As we
told Metallica's lawyer on April 20, Napster is
able to respond to claims of copyright
infringement by disabling the access of
identified users, not by excluding particular
songs or artists. So the upshot of Metallica's
notice may be to prevent its fans from using
Napster at all."
Napster's nineteen-year-old founder Shawn
Fanning also issued a statement on the
dispute: "I'm a huge Metallica fan and therefore
really sorry that they're going in this direction.
If we got the opportunity to explain to the band
why Napster exists and why fans enjoy
Napster, perhaps we could bring all of this to a
peaceful conclusion."
On another front, the Recording Industry
Association of America expects a ruling in the
near future on their suit against Napster. The
RIAA won a battle last week against music
file-compressor MP3.com that might set a
precedent for the Napster tangle. The RIAA is
allegedly seeking per-song damages that
range from a few hundred dollars to as much
as $100,000, with the potential for damages to
possibly reach billions of dollars.
ANDREW DANSBY
(May 5, 2000)
