Napster, the US company behind the internet song-swapping
service that is being sued by the Recording Industry Association of
America (RIAA), has filed in court a response to a recent filing by
its adversaries. It is the final filing before the next oral
arguments in the case, scheduled for 2nd October.
The Napster brief stated:
“This case is not about any diminution in
the value of [the RIAA’s] copyrights; none has occurred or is
reasonably foreseeable as the result of Napster. This case is about
whether [the RIAA] can use their control over music copyrights to
achieve control over Napster's decentralised technology and prevent
it from transforming the internet in ways that might undermine
their present chokehold on music promotion and distribution.”
Napster lawyer David Boies commented:
“The recording industry is attempting in
this case to try to maintain control over music distribution. By
repeatedly refusing Napster's offers of a reasonable license and
opposing a compulsory license, they have demonstrated that they are
not seeking to be appropriately compensated, but rather to kill or
control a technology they view as competition.”
The brief reinforced Napster's key defences to the RIAA lawsuit,
specifically the Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA). It was Napster’s
reliance on the AHRA which led the Clinton administration to file a
so-called “friend of the court” brief in support of the RIAA,
saying the AHRA was never intended for the purposes Napster
described. Napster's brief says that the RIAA ignored the very
purpose of the Act's immunity provisions. The brief continued:
“There is no suggestion in the legislative
history [of the AHRA] that the intent was to include only some
primarily musical audio recordings… and to exclude other primarily
musical audio works.”
