Napster Deal Fails, Employees Fired

nbc3 ^

[chance33_98]

Napster Deal Fails, Employees Fired
Judge Ends Hopes For Revival

POSTED: 6:26 p.m. PDT September 3, 2002

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. -- All of Napster's employees were handed pink slips Tuesday evening, following a judge's decision to block the sale of the company.

According to a Napster spokeswoman, just before 5 p.m. Tuesday, 42 employees -- including founder Shawn Fanning -- were laid off.

Tuesday morning a Delaware bankruptcy judge ruled Bertelsmann A-G could not purchase the remains of the defunct music-swapping network.

The decision was the death of a deal that could have revived Redwood City-based Napster as a legitimate service. The decision will likely force the company into Chapter 7 liquidation.

Bertelsmann was Napster's chief financial investor. It had already sunk $85 million into the network. The German company wanted to purchase the rest of Napster for an additional $8 million.

Napster has been off line for more than a year.

Suits by major record labels destroyed Napster. Those companies also filed motions in the bankruptcy case objecting to the Bertelsmann sale.

[isthisnickcool]

RIP Napster.

[ecurbh]

I guess the RIAA can rest easy now that file-sharing is dead. </sarcasm>

[PianoMan]

RIP the recording industry's last chance to save their skins in a deal. No one will be able to stop the sharing & dissemination of public domain digital information. Eminem's last album was released weeks early, with its promotional campaign still in low gear, because so many bootleg copies were already on the market.

All judgments about the ethics of this practice aside, the big corps should have tried to co-opt it. They will never stop it. Or even slow it down. And as you may have guessed, I'm not sympathetic.

[FormerLurker]

And I see a accompaning fall of the music industry, as Napster provided a means to sample what many would otherwise have never heard and would have totally ignored.

With MTV, and radio, there really isn't a big desire these days to actually BUY music. Napster could have been modified to allow a certain sampling off of a CD, and then allowed an interested person to "burn" a CD if they liked what they heard.

As always, short sighted greed overcomes long range common sense...

[AAABEST]

Yep, the buggy whip makers killed Napster only to find 50 more heads of the hydra popping up.

Now they want to go after all of your computers and electronics so they can continue their empire. I hope they go bankrupt.

[chnsmok]

http://www.kazaalite.com/

[Sarah]

Just a small detail....How do you propose artists, producers and promoters be remunerated for their efforts?

[chnsmok]

Wondering that myself. What is a Free Republican stance on this.

[July 4th]

Wondering that myself. What is a Free Republican stance on this.

Here are a few ideas:

1) It's stealing. Conservatives like the rule-of-law. File swapping is bad.
2) The internet is 500,000,000 of your closest friends. You're allowed to trade with them.
3) The record companies should be punished for not keeping up with the market. The free market has taken a viable form of distribution and run with it. The record companies didn't care less until it was too late.
4) The record companies were hiring crappy new artists anyhow, so file sharing is getting back at them for poor music.
5) Everyone does it, but not everyone will admit to it.

[wallcrawlr]

I pick #3

[chnsmok]

It is just easier to get the the music for the MP3 player off the internet. I remember Rush during the NAFTA debate saying the CDs (made overseas) was nothing to the US economy and what was ON the CDs was of value. As my dad would say, "How now brown cow?" Is there any value to what is on a CD? Still up in the air on this.

[j271]

One thing the music industry should consider is whether its product is the music or the artist. One of these two is tending towards zero value, while the other can be a huge source of revenue.

Its up to them whether they take advantage of new opportunities.

[cynwoody]

Napigator lives!

[Timesink]

Just a small detail....How do you propose artists, producers and promoters be remunerated for their efforts?

People hear their music online, and then go and buy their CDs. This has been pretty much established wisdom by everyone on the planet except for the RIAA.

There is an excellent editorial on this subject in the current issue of Rolling Stone. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to be available on their web site.

[chance33_98]

My take on it is this: The market is driven by what people want, and they want easier access to music so they can carry it with them via mp3's, burn copies to their own cd's as a backup to their investment, etc and so on. The market refused to keep up and offer something that people wanted. Most people would glady pay a few pennies per song swapped, which would add up very quickly for the recording companies. They chose to ignore the market, right or wrong they cannot stop the market.

There are people who simply want it all for free, but there are many out there who would rather 'shop' via swap. Pay a yearly fee, monthly, whatever, and everyone comes out a winner. There would still be, as there now as anyway, people who go the free route. I think what will happen is that the industry will realize it is biting it's own nose off and change the way they do things. Either give people what they want, or they will cease to do business with you. Had they gone this route then people might say 'ok, there is a legal way to continue what I am doing, only a small fee, so I will go that route and do the right thing' - now they will say 'Screw you'.

I don't file swap myself, though I have had a few copies of CD's fall into my hands so I could guard them as emergency backups for friends. I was able to see spiderman without going to the theaters, I liked it and will now buy the DVD when it comes out. I like the ability to preview an entire movie and then decide on whether or not to purchase it (I own about 70 dvd's, and I paid for all of them). If I could pay a small fee on a yearly basis to download a movie and watch it I would, and if nothing else it would drive me to buy the dvd's which have tons of extras not in the download.

The market is trying to drive us. Looks like they are about to hit a brick wall and crash.

[chnsmok]

This may be simplistic.

[July 4th]

I saw this the other day - thought it was hilarious! (especially since I saw it the say RIAA's website was hacked for the 1st time.)

[Tony in Hawaii]

Notice he's using an IMac to download communism...

[July 4th]

they want easier access to music so they can carry it with them via mp3's

That's how I see it as well. Many of the mp3's I have are encoded from my own CD collection or are songs that I downloaded and already had on CD. Why? So I could play 2 hours of music on a player the size of my two thumbs put together. Nothing sinister.