Napster Closes Service For "Upgrade"

The Once Mighty Napster Now a Glorious Memory

...Meanwhile AIMSTER is Under Full Assault

"File transfers have been temporarily suspended while Napster upgrades the databases that support our new file identification technology. Keep checking this space for updates."                quoted directly from Napster Website

Napster's legendary file sharing network slipped into history Monday, July 2, 2001, a day that will be remembered throughout cyberspace as the Day the Music Revolutionary Died.

First Napster forced all users to download the newest "beta" version of it's software, version 10.3. However, it quickly became apparent that this new software blocked virtually all files. Of the 460 mp3's in the WIZARD, fkap test files, used for the past year to monitor Napster, only two were allowed to be traded. The WIZARD files contain over 100 non-copyrighted mp3s, including simple announcer id's for WIZARD RADIO. Every file is correctly labled as to content.

The digital music research firm Webnoize confirmed the WIZARD, fkap findings in a report last week showing that users had an average of only 1.5 songs available to trade on their PC, down from an average of 220 in February.

Monday Napster simply gave up and pulled the file trading portion of it's system off line. Users have been able to access Napster's chat and search functions, but few people remained.

Napster officials would not speculate on how long it would be before users could resume their song swapping.

"We're working to bring it back up as soon as possible," according to a Napster spokesman, "We're not speculating on a time frame."

Napster sems to also be delaying it's plans to launch a new, fee-based version of its service in the next few months. The company said Monday it remains "on track" to launch the new subscription service in the third quarter. The servioce had originally been promied in July.

Aimster is the target of an avalanche of lawsuits

Aimster saw its legal battles grow as music publishers, songwriters and major movie studios sued the file-swapping service, which piggybacks on AOL's popular instant-messaging software, in two courts last week.

The lawsuits did not come to light until Tuesday, when the National Music Publishers' Association announced its legal challenge in a press release. Songwriters and music publishers filed a class-action suit Thursday in Manhattan federal court, the same exact court that had ruled favorably in a similar suit they filed against Napster.

Part of the purpose of these multiple lawsuits is "forum shopping." The RIAA will keep filing lawsuits until it finds a sympathetic judge.

To add insult to injury, Columbia, Disney, MGM, Paramount, Sony, 20th Century Fox and Universal City Studios sued Aimster in a Los Angeles federal court Wednesday, according to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).

And just to be certain that legal fees would kill any chance of the upstart's success, Warner Bros. sued Aimster in a separate action.

Aimster also is being sued by the RIAA and AOL Time Warner, which charges Aimster is illegally using AOL's registered AIM trademark for its instant-messenger service. AImster continues to insist that it's actually named after founder Johnny Deep's daughter.

Aimster did fire the first shot in a strategy developed by the brilliant lawyer, David C. Boyles. The company sued the RIAA first, requesting a declaratory judgment on its legality from a court in Albany, N.Y.

Johnny Deep maintains that Aimster does not have the right or responsibility to monitor or control the files or information exchanged among its users.

Back on June 22, Aimster won it's first victory when U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence Kahn denied the record labels' request to transfer the case to Manhattan, the RIAA's initail attempt at forum shopping.

"Defendants include some of the largest corporations in the country while plaintiff is a recently formed computer software company, the very existence of which is endangered by this lawsuit," Judge Kahn noted in his order.

The RIAA and the music companies are so absolutely pathetic at developing any on-line service that offers consumers access to music, that the WIZARD wonders if it wouldn't be more efficient to turn the entire problem over to the lawyers. Let the legal team code the software and develop the websites. The lawyers would undoubtly do a better and faster job. After all, the only people we've seen actually complete any work are the law firms.