Napster awaits rebirth as paid-subscription service
( 2001-07-12 12:26) (7)
Napster remained off-line Wednesday as the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann announced a new management scheme to bring order to a music swapping web site that has become a symbol of the Internet's transformation from a free worldwide swap meet to a commercial enterprise.
The Redwood, California-based site has been shut down since earlier this month, ostensibly to fix database problems.
The company said on its website it has shut down to implement technology to screen an estimated 800,000 copyrighted songs from the network. Napster has been successfully sued in US courts by record companies who charged it allows users to engage in wholesale copyright infringement through the free and unrestricted sharing of music files.
Napster said in a statement that the shutdown will continue to "get (the filtering technology) right for both legal and business reasons."
"The Napster we know and love is pretty much gone," said Lee Black, an analyst with Webnoize, a Cambridge, Massachusetts, online media consultancy. "It will start up again, but this time you'll have to pay for the files, if you can get them through Napster."
Napster has been furiously negotiating with its record company accusers to obtain licenses for music files, but only Bertlesmann has agreed to a licensing deal.
Meanwhile, Napster and record company officials continued their negotiations Wednesday over filtering efforts in a closed hearing before US District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel.
Patel was the judge who first ruled Napster was illegally enabling copyright violators, forcing the company to take measures that drove many users away.
Bertelsmann's e-commerce division chief executive officer, Andreas Schmidt, was appointed as acting leader of BeMusic Digital, which will oversee Bertlemann's online music intiatives, including the adminstration of a new, for-pay Napster site due out by the end of the summer.
BeMusic will also gather together other Bertlesmann music efforts, including the CDNow online music sales site and Myplay, a Web site that allows users to store their digital music files.
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