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Napster: Services
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This article discusses the futility of the proposed filtering system that Napster was trying to implement. Robert Schwartz, a well versed lawyer in media copyright cases made the point that "what the well-intentioned mind can invent, the not-well-intentioned mind can destroy." In essence, even if Napster were to stop all illegal file sharing, new services would become available. There were already many alternatives to Napster: Newtella, BearShare, Gnocleus, LimeWire, Napigator, and Gnutella.
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Napster lost the case in the District Court and appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Although the Ninth Circuit found that Napster was capable of commercially significant non-infringing uses, it affirmed the District Court's decision. On remand, the District Court ordered Napster to monitor the activities of its network and to block access to infringing material when notified of that material's location. Napster was unable to do this, and so shut down its service in July 2001. Napster finally declared itself bankrupt in 2002 and sold its assets. It had already been offline since the previous year owing to the effect of the court rulings.
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Napster is pinning all of its hopes on something called a "safe harbor" -- a legal exemption created by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in 1998. The DMCA provided four separate safe harbors for Internet service providers, limiting their legal liability for copyright infringements that happen on their watch. Without a safe harbor, Napster is open to what's called contributory and vicarious copyright infringement charges. Because the DMCA is so new, the Napster suit is the highest profile case in determining the question of safe harbor status.
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Napster has since been reborn as a pay-per-download service. However, it has proven unpopular, partly due to the increasing popularity of serverless networks, but ... thanks to the influence of competing legal networks, including the omnipresent Itunes.
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After the initial launch, Dwango and Napster expect that consumers of most major carriers will be able to access the Napstertones service during summer 2005. The service ... has a planned rollout in Canada to Rogers Wireless and Fido this June.
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Originally, Napster planned to launch its subscription service by the end of summer. Hilbers said the service will be up by the end of the year, and hes convinced it will be a huge draw. "I envision that we will have a service that is going to have a million, 2 million members fast," he said in a conference call last week. "I would put that at 1 year to 18 months perspective."
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