Napster Developing Member-Based Business Model
Reuters
REDWOOD CITY, Calif., (Feb. 16) - Napster, the online music service embroiled in a legal battle over copyright issues, is developing a membership-based business with a unit of Bertelsmann AG to address record company concerns over artist royalties, the company said Friday.
''Today's announcement underscores one key fact: the real questions about Napster's future are economic, not technical or legal,'' Napster Interim Chief Executive Hank Barry said in a statement.
''This solution is further evidence of the seriousness of our effort to reach an agreement with the record companies that will keep Napster running, reliable, and enjoyable,'' he said.
On Monday, a federal appeals court ordered Napster to stop its millions of users from trading copyrighted material, a decision that industry officials and legal experts said could shut the operation down as a free service.
The new business model and technology enables digital music files to be transferred from computer user to computer user -- so-called peer-to-peer sharing -- but restrictions such as limiting the ability to copy files onto a CD will be placed on the transferred files, Napster said.
Napster and Bertelsmann unit Digital World Services plan to put a membership-based system into place ''as soon as possible,'' Napster said, adding that they've been working on the technology ''for several months.''
Bertelsmann AG became a major Napster stakeholder as part of a deal last year that also saw it drop its lawsuit against the site.
Reut13:46 02-16-01 |
