Grammy now gives legal headache to Napster

SAN FRANCISCO: Napster Inc., already reeling under a federal judge's

injunction, faced a new legal challenge with the producers of last month's

Grammy Awards suing it for facilitating illegal trading of music files from the

show, including rap star Eminem's duet with Elton John.

Michael Greene, president and chief executive of the National Academy of

Recording Arts and Sciences said the suit filed in San Francisco Federal court

sought monetary damages for millions of dollars lost because of online trading

activity on Napster.

"The day following the Grammy Awards we were in the recording studio

remixing all of this stuff with the intention of putting it out (as a

recording), only to find that all of the audio was already up on Napster, and

there had been millions of downloads," Greene told Reuters.

He added that the show's centerpiece, a controversial duet pairing veteran

rocker Elton John with Eminem in a rendition of the rapper's hit

"Stan", might never now be commercially released. "We are

reevaluating in light of Napster giving it away to hundreds of thousands of

people," Greene said.

Napster users said that Grammy Award show performances ranging from Madonna's

"Music" to U2's "Beautiful Day" were available through the

service within hours of the show's Feb. 21 broadcast. The Grammy suit came on

the same day that a judge in San Francisco filed an injunction against the

popular song swap service, ordering it to comply with recording industry

requests to halt trade in copyrighted material.

Greene said the Recording Academy had filed an amicus brief with the original

suit against Napster, brought by the Recording Industry Association of America,

and now felt it necessary to seek compensation on its own behalf. "Every

single day that goes in terms of costs from songwriters, musicians the singers,

the labels and the publishers, has a chilling effect on this industry," he

said.

(C) Reuters Limited 2001.