Napster Lawsuit

Newer info is on the bottom of the page...

On 4/13/200, Metallica became the first band to sue the popular mp3 trading program, Napster. The lawsuit seeks an injunction against Napster as well as $100,000 per illegally traded song.

Yale University, the University of Southern California, and Indiana University have been named in the lawsuit in addition to Napster and several John & Jane Doe's (yet to be identified mp3 traders). These Napster users and additional schools will be named in an ammendment to the lawsuit. In response, Yale and Indiana University have banned/blocked Napster and their networks; in return, Metallica has agreed to drop these 2 schools from the lawsuit. They have also dropped USC from the suit.

On May 3rd, Metallica submitted 335,435 user ID's of people who had been trading Metallica mp3's so that Napster could ban them from the service. Lars hand-delivered the list to Napster. It is important to note that Metallica is going after Napster for piracy and copyright infringment and are not suing fans. Furthermore, Metallica is only concerned about the trading of studio recordings as they appear on studio records and not the trading of bootlegs.

Initially, Metallica requested only that their songs be removed from Napster's directory of available mp3 files. However, Napster refused to remove the songs but offered to terminate the accounts of users who traded Metallica songs. Thus, the band turned in the list of users.

Recently, over 30,000 banned users were reinstated. This is easily accomplished due to Napster's policies: all you have to do is go to the Napster website and fill out a form swearing that you were wrongfully banned. Your name is then given to Metallica and if Metallica does not take any action against you, your account will be reinstated. Since Metallica is not interested in going after individuals, you should have no trouble getting your account back.

On Monday, 6/12/00, the RIAA asked a Federal Judge Marilyn Hall Patel for a preliminary injunction to shut down Napster.

The Offspring turned the tables on Napster by selling without permissionon on the Offspring webpage shirts, hats, and stickers with the Napster logo on them. In response Napster filed a cease-and-desist order to make them stop selling the merchandise. Finally, the 2 parties have agreed to sell the Napster merchandise and donate the profits to charity.

Here's a quote from Metallica's attorny, Howard King, that Napster users may be interested in:

"The way we got the names is we surveyed the contents of the hard drives ... It is scary, but whether they know it or not, anybody who downloads the Napster software has created an opening into their hard drive ... if they think it is limited to MP3s Ñ as Napster says it is Ñ they ought to do more research."

Georgia Tech decided in September to not ban Napster as was requested by the RIAA. They based their decision on the facts that it would be impossible to implement without interfering with other uses of the internet.

Recently, Napster came to an agreement with Bertelsmann, the owner of BMG. Under this agreement/partnership, Napster will be modified possible becoming a paid for service. Under the new system, bands and record labels will receive monetary compensation from Napster. The new system has not been finalized and will not go into effect for some time. Also, the RIAA lawsuit against Napster has not been dropped. You can get more info on the Bertelsmann/Napster agreement from this statement and this FAQ.

Also, the file-sharing service Scour Exchange was unexpectedly shut down by its owners on November 16, 2000. The reason given was that the company had gone bankrupt. Scour was much better than Napster in that users could share mp3's, wav's, mpg's, avi's, mov's, rm's, asf's, gif's, jpg's, and any other type of media file that you can think of.

Well after everybody imaginable sued Napster, the courts finally ordered Napster to start blocking access to certain files. Well they have done this; you can no longer search for certain bands. Go ahead, try it - nothing will show up. Try looking for Metallica, Dr. Dre, Rolling Stones and you will not find anything. Some bands still allow their music to be downloaded so the service isn't completely useless.

Napster has some new filtering software that is supposed to block out songs by actually looking at the file contents and not the file name. This would completely block out all copyrighted songs. Until Napster can prove that the filter is 100% effective, the servers have been court-ordered to remain offline.

Metallica and Dr. Dre have both settled with Napster. This really doesn't help Napster any so don't expect to see more songs available anytime soon.

Cartoons - 2 cartoons making fun of Metallica.

Fans' opinions about the lawsuit