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Technology Stocks : e.Digital Corporation(EDIG) - Embedded Digital Technology -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Pamela Murray who wrote (14056)	8/15/2000 12:11:50 AM
From: bob	Respond to of 18366

Thought I'd post something relating to the music industry which indirectly affects EDIG. Found on RB posted by FGATOR. By: FGATOR $$$$ Reply To: None Monday, 14 Aug 2000 at 11:29 PM EDT Post # of 429072 Extra : Napster Declared Illegal - Thoroughly Industry News August 14, 2000 3:02 pm Although an oral ruling was presented on July 26, Judge Marilyn Hall Patel delivered a 45-page ruling this Friday that details the bulk of Napster's arguments invalid or infeasible, essentially declaring that the service must be shut down. Napster's main argument, (that non-commercial sharing of sound recordings was a legal activity as per the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992,) was a minor consideration in Judge Patel's ruling, dismissed in a footnote declaring that the law did not extend to the use of computer hard drives. The other arguments offered by Napster suffered a similar fate, although Judge Patel allocated more space to explain their failure. The bulwark of Napster's evidence was a survey that claimed that Napster had indeed aided the sales of the plaintiffs' records rather than diminishing them. According to Judge Patel, the survey was gravely flawed and in her eyes not even admissible. However, Patel similarly dismissed the RIAA's expert study's contention that over a third of Napster users were buying fewer CDs on the grounds that the survey only polled college students. Judge Patel added that although the survey was limited, if CD sales were only being affected in the college market, that still amounted to significant damage. Napster also attempted to take asylum in the Supreme Court ruling of Sony Corporation of America v. Universal City Studios, in which the VCR was declared a legal product, even though it would undoubtedly be used in ways that would infringe copyrights, since the VCR was capable of substantial non-infringing uses. However, the present ruling hardly acknowledged Napster's purported non-infringing uses as legitimate, let alone substantial. The new artist program, which promotes unknown musical acts, only represents a minimal amount of Napster's consumer usage and could easily be separated from other services, Patel ruled. Further, Napster's claim that their services provided users a method to space-shift, (enabling the consumer to access their music on whatever computer they happened to be using), came under some of the most derisive criticism of the entire report. Patel reasoned that in order to take advantage of Napster in this way from one's office, that person ''would have to log-on to the system from her home computer, leave that computer online, commute to work, and log on to Napster from her office computer to access the desired file....Common sense dictates that this use does not draw users to the system.'' Additionally, this benefit of Napster had never been mentioned in any promotional or advertising material and therefore was susceptible to criticism of being an argument constructed for the court case rather than an actual tangible aspect of Napster's business model. Napster was recently granted reprieve from a shut-down pending the outcome of their appeal to Patel's oral ruling, but the length and relentless detail of the ruling does all but stamp an expiration date on the service.