Sue Zeidler
LOS ANGELES: The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) will argue
on Thursday that song-swap company Napster Inc.'s defence that its users are not
infringing on copyrights has no basis in law.
"We plan to explain to the court that the law is clearly not as they
claim it to be," said Steve Fabrizio, a lawyer for the RIAA, who worked on
the brief to be filed to the US District Court in San Francisco late Thursday.
The trade group represents big record companies like Seagram Co. Ltd.'s
Universal Music, Bertelsmann AG BMG, Sony Corp.'s Sony Music and Time Warner
Inc.'s Warner Music Group, which is merging with EMI Group Plc .
EMI first sued Napster for copyright infringement in December 1999. It is now
seeking a preliminary injunction against the popular service, which it says is a
haven for piracy.
San Mateo, Calif.-based Napster's software lets fans swap songs by trading
MP3 files, a compression format that turns music on compact discs into small
computer files.
The company recently hired David Boies, who was the lead attorney for the
Justice Department in the Microsoft anti-trust case. Last week, Napster had
contended in documents that its users were not violating copyrights by sharing
files for noncommercial use, citing the Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA) of 1992.
"The AHRA has no applicability to the Napster service and doesn't apply
to general purpose computers," Fabrizio said.
"All of the copying and distributing being done by Napster users is on
general purpose computers," he said. "Napster turns each of its users
into public servers making the files available worldwide. That's not personal
use, its worldwide publishing."
A hearing for the Napster case is set for July 26 in US District Court in San
Francisco.
In a separate but related case, the RIAA this week also delivered two motions
for summary judgment to online music provider MP3.com Inc., one contending
copyright infringement and the other requesting statutory damages.
MP3.com last month reached a settlement with two labels, BMG and Warner
Music, and is negotiating settlements with three other plaintiffs in the case.
The RIAA said it had filed the motion only on behalf of Universal, EMI and Sony.
(C) Reuters Limited 2000.