Petteri Pyyny
8 Mar 2001 12:02
Napster has been finally beaten by American justice system and of course other, much weaker opponents than RIAA, are willing to take their bucks out of Napster.
EMusic, almost-out-of-nasdaq pennystock Internet music retailer, filed a lawsuit against Napster today for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement and unfair competition.
"For over six months, Napster Inc. has flatly rejected our requests to filter out and effectively block EMusic tracks from being traded on their system without our permission," EMusic CEO whined in his statement.
"Napster's ability to quickly implement such a filtering system over this past weekend shows the company's true motive — to unfairly build a business upon the copyrighted works of others," he added.
Other vulture, called NARAS, company which helds annual Grammy awards, filed their own lawsuit against Napster because their much-hyped upcoming live recording of this year's Grammy gala "is threatened" by Napster because fans could download the audiotracks almost immediately after the gala from the service. Of course this is a big deal for them, because everybody's speaking about the Sir Elton John & Eminem performance.
Otherwise I wouldn't complain about these lawsuits that much, but their timing shows nothing but extreme calculation and need to benefit from other similiar lawsuits. Someone spills a coffee over himself and gets $1M from McDonald's, suddenly everybody are spilling their coffees at Mac... Weird, isn't it?