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A federal judge considering an Internet copyright case said Monday he was inclined to allow U.S. record companies and movie studios to sue the Australia-based parent company of Kazaa, a popular online file-swapping service. Judge Stephen Wilson heard arguments on whether Sharman Networks, which is headquartered in Australia and incorporated in the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu, is subject to U.S. copyright laws. “It is a difficult question, but it has to be resolved,” Wilson said. “The court will do its best to resolve it promptly.” Although Wilson did not indicate when he plans to issue a ruling, he appeared… Read more »

American songwriters and music publishers have reached preliminary agreement with the on-line file sharing service Napster to settle the class-action lawsuit currently pending in federal court in California. The agreement includes terms under which the songwriters and music publishers will license their music to Napster’s new membership-based service. The announcement of the proposed settlement was made jointly by Edward P. Murphy, president and CEO of the National Music Publishers’ Association, Inc., Gary L. Churgin, president and CEO of The Harry Fox Agency, Inc., George David Weiss, president of The Songwriters’ Guild of America, Inc., and Napster president and CEO Konrad… Read more »

As the fight over digital musical copyrights moves into a new stage, song-swap service Napster said it is looking for a new ally – music publishers. “I’m spending a lot of time thinking about publishing,” Napster chief executive officer Hank Barry told Reuters. “We could get all the labels in the world on the service but we still couldn’t do anything without the publishing rights,” said Barry during a recent interview. Barry echoed what many big label executives are grappling with as a growing dispute over publishers’ royalty rates threatens to undermine recently announced plans to launch commercial services as… Read more »

Record companies face off against music publishers and songwriters like Lyle Lovett in Washington this week in a growing dispute over royalty payments that threatens industry plans to sell music online. The major recording labels and music publishers, who own music rights, are at odds over on-demand or interactive music streamed over the Internet, which allows consumers to listen to whatever song they want when they want. While the world’s big music labels argued successfully that free song-swap service Napster infringed their copyrights, songwriters and music publishers now claim that at least one major label, Vivendi Universal’s Universal Music Group,… Read more »

Napster’s legal troubles could be about to get a whole lot worse, as thousands of music publishers could enter into a class-action suit against the file-trading company. Independent musicians, however, are still shut out of the litigation. As part of a copyright infringement case against Napster in federal district court on Tuesday, Judge Marilyn Hall said that 27,000 music publishers would likely be allowed the opportunity to consolidate their cases into one class-action suit. While issuing no formal ruling, Patel said she expected to create a “limited class” of plaintiffs by determining a specific time frame during which publishers from… Read more »