Tuesday: 10/31/00
Napster Dead! Long Live Napster!
From a press release received this morning: "Bertelsmann AG and Napster, Inc. today announced the formation of a strategic alliance to further develop the Napster person-to-person file sharing service. Bertelsmann AG's newly formed eCommerce Group, BeCG, and Napster have developed a new business model for a secure membership-based service that will provide Napster community members with high quality file sharing that preserves the Napster experience while at the same time providing payments to rightsholders, including recording artists, songwriters, recording companies and music publishers. Napster and Bertelsmann will seek support from others in the music industry to establish Napster as a widely accepted membership based service and invite them to participate actively in this process." Meaning what exactly? It seems like this deal would have to fundamentally change the way that Napster works.
Indeed, if Bertelsnap charges a subscription for its service but the service remains open (i.e., anyone can trade any song), then one record company will be making money off the intellectual property of another record company, if the latter record has no deal with Bertelsnap.
If they want to avoid that, they have to turn Napster into a closed system, with the only available songs coming from participating record companies.
Right? Or are we missing something?
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