9th Circuit Court of Appeals Rules Against Napster

Turn Out the Lights, The Party's Over

Downloading to Cease in Days.... Hours

Napster won't be shut down immediately. However notices posted on both the web site and the service bulletin board were ominous. Napster is asking users to assist in the fight by writing to members of Congress.

Napster must prevent its users from swapping files of songs that have been identified as copyrighted material according to the ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. Napster bears the full burden of policing its system and is responsible for preventing the transmission of any files that the recording industry has listed as copyright-protected.

Napster has indicated that this is an impossible task.

As the 9th Circuit showdown was looming Monday, Webnoize Research issued a report showing that music fans are spending more money on music in all formats. In addition, the mp3 revolution is fueling an explosion in the sales of hardware devices that allow music fans to listen to digital music files from any location. It appears that Napster is actually causing a major boom in music interest and sales despite the ready access to free music files. Consumers are continuing to purchase compact disks and the industry actually grew by nearly 5 percent last year.

Hank Berry, Napster's CEO stated, "We are disappointed in today's ruling. Under this decision Napster could be shut down - even before a trial on the merits. The Court today ruled on the basis of what it recognized was an incomplete record before it. We look forward to getting more facts into the record. While we respect the Court's decision, we believe, contrary to the Court's ruling today, that Napster users are not copyright infringers and we will pursue every legal avenue to keep Napster operating."

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) immediately hailed the ruling.

On the surface the music industry's fight against Napster seems incredibly stupid. Beneath the surface it actually is stupid. Can you imagine a radio or television network coming to the RIAA and offering them a loyal and dedicated audience of 50 million people. That's an audience the size of the super bowl. The music industry, and every other major sponsor would be falling all over themselves to tap into this audience. But not the RIAA. They would rather kill it and receive no money, no exposer and no benefit.

The real victim is the consumer who is going to absolutely lose any rights to the "fair use" of intellectual products (books, music, movies, etc.) they buy. The future where you'll only be able to rent music, not buy it is just around the corner. The 9th Circuit Court has seen to that. And Congress, in spite of Napster's pleas, won't raise even a finger to help.

Please read The Coming Extinction of "Fair Use" and "Free Speech". The WIZARD predicted this attack on individuals and the death of the concept of "Fair Use" back in October of last year. This ruling is tragic for all internet users and all consumers nationwide.