Quantcast

HATCH WANTS IN
ON NAPSTER DEBATE

Senator Proposes An Old-Fashioned Band Contest To Decide The Issue Once And For All
When will it end? It's been a few days and Napster hasn't been in the news. So, here we go.

The legal brouhaha over online music-swapper Napster has now split Capitol Hill, pitting at least one powerful legislator against the administration's claims, multiple reports said.

Two weeks ago, the Department of Justice and the U.S. Copyright Office filed legal briefs with the U.S. Court of Appeals, blasting a key part of Napster's defense against the record industry's claims of massive copyright infringement (hitsdailydouble.com, 9/11).

But that action has upset some in government, including influential Sen. Orrin Hatch, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which helps make copyright law.

Hatch sent a terse letter to the court saying that the DOJ and the Copyright Office did not represent the opinion of the full U.S. government, CNET reports.

"Given the importance of the issues to be decided, I thought it important that the court be under no misapprehension that the (DOJ) brief necessarily expresses the view of Congress in this matter," Hatch wrote. "Indeed, Congress has recently held hearings into the matter and is engaged in ongoing deliberations about its merits as the events unfold in the emerging online music and entertainment market."

Worriers worry that Hatch's letter, while lacking the weight of an official "amicus," or "friend of the court," legal brief, could undermine some of the weight of the agencies' involvement, according to CNET.

The agencies previously wrote that if Napster were allowed to exist in its current form, "Napster's users would be permitted to engage in digital copying and public distribution of copyrighted works on a scale beggaring anything Congress could have imagined when it enacted the (Digital Millennium Copyright Act). Yet the music industry would receive nothing in return."

Hatch, a part-time songwriter known to be informed of music industry moves, has been one of the most consistently sympathetic ears in Washington for the file-trading companies under fire by the record industry.

"The only way anyone will hear anything I've written and recorded is through Napster," he was overheard saying. "Live and let live man!"

NEAR TRUTHS: KINGDOMS
File under: The enemy of my enemy is my friend. (3/26a)
ONE SHINING HITS LIST
She shoots, she scores! (3/26a)
YTD MARKET SHARE
Zeroing in on the elite teams (3/27a)
BEST IN THE WEST:
STEVE BERMAN
High time for another Eminem skit (3/26a)
MUSIC REVENUE TOPPED $17B IN 2023: RIAA
Streaming subscriptions lead the charge. (3/27a)
THE NEW UMG
Gosh, we hope there are more press releases.
TIKTOK BANNED!
Unless the Senate manages to make this whole thing go away, that is.
THE NEW HUGE COUNTRY ACT
No, not that one.
TRUMP'S CAMPAIGN PLAYLIST
Now 100% unlicensed!
 Email

 First Name

 Last Name

 Company

 Country
CAPTCHA code
Captcha: (type the characters above)