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The ghost of Napster appears in court

Written by Jari Ketola @ 21 Apr 2004 12:22 User comments (5)

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

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5 user comments

122.4.2004 06:36

"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 thatīs just bullshit.

222.4.2004 06:52

$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

322.4.2004 07:21

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

This message has been edited since its posting. Latest edit was made on 22 Apr 2004 @ 7:29

422.4.2004 07:47

Worth a try.

525.4.2004 04:00

Off topic maybe, but this oneīs real quick. Mute first impressions: A lack of search results and quite slow downloads. Though I guess this is because the app isnīt very known yet and because itīs 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 itīs developed a bit further.

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