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Strategies & Market Trends : VOLTAIRE'S PORCH-MODERATED -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dealer who wrote (279)	9/11/2000 9:50:32 AM
From: Dealer	Respond to of 65232

QCOMMP3.com still hopes for settlement By Ben Charney, ZDNet News CEO Michael Robertson thinks his company can avoid paying a $118 million settlement to Universal Studios. MP3.com CEO Michael Robertson believes he can still settle out of court his legal differences with Universal Studios, which last week edged closer to a landmark piracy ruling against the digital music company. The two sides, Robertson revealed Saturday, are still in negotiations to end the ongoing legal war over whether MP3.com has been a vehicle for pirated music. But at the same time, Robertson concedes that Universal is a tougher foe than the four other record companies that originally were part of the copyright lawsuit filed against MP3.com. The other four have settled with MP3.com and, as part of the agreements, reached licensing deals with MP3.com. In just the past two weeks, MP3.com linked up to help market music from Warner Brothers, one of the four plaintiffs that settled with MP3.com. Universal was offered the same settlement package, Robertson said Saturday. But for a reason that mystifies him, the company rejected it. Striking out "We've hit four grand slams," Robertson said following an address to a group of digital music industry executives gathered in Emeryville, Calif. "But we struck out with a fifth." Striking out may be a bit of an understatement. The judge in the case ruled that MP3.com owes $25,000 for every song that Universal claims MP3.com doesn't have the rights to help distribute. Universal has submitted a list of 4,700 songs, which could bring damages to $118 million. Robertson said that in November the company will attack "most of that list" and, if successful, could reduce the potential damages. During the interview, Robertson also said he didn't expect the legal problems when he launched MP3.com several years ago. In fact, he said he thought the recording industry would be eager to work with him. "We thought the industry would be excited about this because it encourages people to buy more CDs," he said. "I'm really disappointed when the industry reacted the way they did." MP3.com in the driver's seat For a man who may have just lost $118 million, Robertson was upbeat about MP3.com's future. The company will be reopening its My.MP3.com service in the next two weeks as a result of the record company settlements, Robertson said. The service lets customers access their music from anywhere in the world. He also is enthusiastic about an experiment being done with Qualcomm Inc. (Nasdaq:QCOM - news) to bring the MP3.com service to cars. The two San Diego companies are working to get over what Robertson calls the "fast mile problem," a play on the term used for delivering broadband from an Internet service provider to a home. Using Qualcomm's high data rate technology, Robertson said the companies tried to access music stored at the My.MP3.com music locker service from a van driving around San Diego. While he didn't say whether it was successful, he said to "watch out for that to come." Robertson also expects to see by Christmas a device in stores, priced at about $200 or so, that will allow MP3.com users to circumvent their home PCs and plug directly into their online music storage lockers. --