Napster has been trying to convert its song-swapping service to
a subscription model instead of its original free model, which
sparked the lawsuits by copyright owners. Napster's original
service shut down in July 2001 following an order by the court that
it must block the transfer of copyright-protected songs.
The company has to date been unable to negotiate fee sharing
terms with the record labels. Napster has publicly criticised the
record labels for making unreasonable demands in these
negotiations; in turn, the labels called Napster unreasonable.
Capitol Records and Virgin Records America declined to join the
request by Napster, AOL Time Warner, BMG, Vivendi Universal and
Sony to suspend the case.
Napster claimed 70 million users at its peak. Many of these
users have since migrated to similar free services. It remains to
be seen if these users will accept services that charge for
content.
