Metallica Target Napster Users
Metallica upped the ante in the Napster battle over
the weekend, taking aim at the music-swapping
software maker's users. The band hired NetPD, an
online consulting firm, to monitor the use of its
tracks on Napster over the past weekend. The
results: a list of more than 330,000 names of users
(who thought themselves anonymous) who made
Metallica tracks available online. The band plans to
deliver the list of names to Napster and demand
that those users be denied access. While Napster
has previously refused to remove artists' catalogs
from their files, it has claimed that users who
violate copyright laws will be purged from their
system.
Drummer Lars Ulrich plans to hand-deliver the list of
names (and subsequent one million plus copyright
violations) in a 60,000 page document to Napster at
the site's San Mateo, Calif. headquarters on May 3,
and Napster is expected to comply with the band's
request to terminate the accounts of users who
have committed copyright infringement. Metallica
left spaces for then-unnamed students and
universities to be added to the list of defendants
charged with copyright infringement in their April
suit against Napster.
Metallica's latest action has caused an even bigger
backlash than their lawsuit. The Mass Mic Web
Site (www.ultranet.com/~crowleyn/mmic.html), a
site "preserving free expression in music," called for
a Metallica boycott on Tuesday, claiming that the
group "spied on their fans."
ANDREW DANSBY
(May 3, 2000)
