Posted on: Wednesday, February 14, 2001
Fans flock to alternative song services
By Jefferson Graham
USA Today
Even as the future of Napster grows more cloudy, fans and operators of similar online file-swapping services vow that the free-music movement will roll on.
Monday’s court decision paves the way for an injunction that could shut down Napster. But the ruling “isn’t going to change anything,” says Johnny Deep, CEO of Aimster, a similar service that’s built around America Online’s AIM instant message program.
“You can’t stop consumers from exercising their choice,” says Deep, adding that Aimster was downloaded five times a second Monday, “increasing greatly in response to the ruling.” Aimster has 3 million users.
Another Napster clone, Imesh.com, based in Israel, found demand so high Monday that it apologized for being inaccessible. Imesh says it has 4 million users, and that 300,000 people are online at any given moment. Imesh execs weren’t available for comment.
Nonetheless, the appeals court ruling Monday adds greatly to the legal ammunition available to copyright holders fighting Net piracy. The movie and music industries have yet to lose a major copyright case.
Phil Leigh, an analyst with the Raymond James market research firm, predicts that in the wake of the decision, operations like online gambling sites will leave the United States. “Napster and its 57 million users have demonstrated a huge latent demand for downloading music,” he says. “Someone will figure a way to access the market in a way that doesn’t leave them vulnerable to legal attacks, which will lead them offshore.”
Even as other free sites draw new users, Napster continues to pursue its goal of turning into a legal, paid subscription service. CEO Hank Barry says he still hopes to get the cooperation of major record companies, and promises that Napster will appeal the ruling. “We need to keep working with (record labels), while also pursuing remedies in court and Congress.”
German entertainment giant Bertelsmann AG, which aligned itself with Napster in October — lending the company $50 million — says it still supports Napster’s move to a fee system, expected to begin this summer. Barry declined to say how Monday’s ruling will affect his timetable with Bertelsmann.
“File-sharing is here to stay, and we will continue working to build a membership-based Napster service that will be supported by the music industry,” Bertelsmann e-commerce group chief executive Andreas Schmidt said in a statement.
Many Napster alternatives, such as Bearshare.com and Limewire.com, are built on the Gnutella system, an “open source” format developed collaboratively on the Net. It connects computers directly to other computers without relying on a central server.
That distributed structure, as well as the fact that the systems can be used to share other data files besides music, makes Gnutella services less susceptible to legal challenges, say its proponents.
People may trade pirated material, but “we have no way of monitoring what’s on the network,” says Mark Gorton, CEO of Lime Peers, parent of Limewire.
But attorney Howard King, who joined the lawsuit against Napster on behalf of clients Metallica and Dr. Dre, says Gnutella services “would fall squarely within this ruling, because the court said the users are knowingly infringing. So it’s just an enforcement problem.”
[back to top] |
