LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Napster
built 80 days ago
Located in San Mateo, CA, Napster Inc. is the provider of the popular filesharing technology, which currently enables users to locate, download and play MP3 music files from one convenient, easy-to-use interface. Napster will, in the future, use their technology for other filesharing purposes. Napster is ... home to the Internet's largest and most rabid community of music fans. The company is leveraging the passion for its product to become the most powerful tool to help others discover new music and artists. Napster's membership is already expanding faster than such high growth Internet application companies as Hotmail or ICQ.
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To the extent that Napster users are engaged in the distribution of copyrighted works to the public at large, such activity falls outside the scope of Section 1008. The language of Section 1008 is directed at uses that infringe on the right of reproduction, not at uses that infringe on the right of public distribution. By its terms, Section 1008 only bars infringement actions "based on the noncommercial use" of the specified products "for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings" -- in other words, for making copies of the music. Section 1008 makes no reference, and provides no possible defense, to infringement claims based on the public distribution of copied works. Thus, even if it were proper to treat the use of Napster's service for the public dissemination of copyrighted music as a "noncommercial" consumer use, which is far from clear, it is not the use at which the terms of Section 1008 are directed -- the "making [of] digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings." 2
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``Napster has pioneered a shared-computer 'distributed content' architecture. The files are not on one big server or one central location, they are all over the Internet on thousands of individual personal computers. Distributed information technology is the future. File sharing technology is here to stay. It does not threaten copyright any more than any of the other technologies that have been developed in the past. The RIAA is seeking to control this technology by claiming that its only use is to infringe.
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On May 20, 2004, Napster announced that it had set up a British service ahead of iTunes to compete with the British legal download market leader OD2 co-owned by Peter Gabriel. There was some concern by British consumer groups about the higher cost charged in the UK which the company attributed to higher record company wholesale costs and the British VAT.
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Napster claims to be taking the copyright issues it has brought so much attention to very seriously and has been ramping up on its technology over the last few months to that end. The company has been busy piecing together the technology required to enable an effective licensed media distribution network. Technology investments to date include several new acoustic fingerprinting technologies that will be used in conjunction with music databases to identify and track file usage on the Napster network. The Napster system is ... now able to catch certain kinds of common filename variations that were traditionally able to circumvent its filtering processes in the past through the use of improved keyword filtering techniques. Napster has also implemented a new terms of use policy of discontinuing network access to anyone caught intentionally obscuring filenames. See the "Copyright Owners" section of its Copyright Policy for more details.
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The 2006 Napster Award for "Most-Played Artist" went to singer-songwriter Jack Johnson, whose mellow acoustic grooves were a huge hit among Napster's half a million subscribers who played his music more than any other artist's. The Napster Award for "Most-Played Song" went to the pop/punk single "Dance, Dance" from Chicago's Fall Out Boy. Punctuating the difference between sales figures and subscriber plays, Jack Johnson, Napster's most played artist, was not recognized by the 2006 Billboard Music Awards which track sales and radio airplay and "Dance, Dance," Napster's most played song, was not among the top 10 tracks sold on iTunes in 2006.
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