shadowchaser Posted January 31 Report Share Posted January 31 (U-WIRE) LOS ANGELES -- Napster will begin charging users a subscription fee for its MP3 song-swapping service this summer, various news sources reported Monday. The University of Southern Callifornia, which banned virtually all uses of Napster on its servers in the wake of a lawsuit last year, will maintain its ban at least for the moment, said Kris Dotto, a secretary at the office of general counsel. "Our office is keeping tabs on what's going on," but there will be no change in the university's policy until all of the legal actions and controversies surrounding Napster are settled, Dotto said. That could take a while, judging by the present state of affairs. Of the record labels that joined in the Recording Industry Association of America's 1999 lawsuit, one dropped the suit last week, one struck a deal with Napster late last year but is still suing the company, and the rest continue to battle the controversial file-sharing start-up company. The latest development Monday was an announcement by Bertels-mann, the record label that is still suing Napster despite striking a deal with the company in October. According to Yahoo News, Bertels-mann CEO Thomas Middelhoff told the World Economic Forum conference in Switzerland that he is "convinced we can introduce in June or July of this year a subscription model, with a real digital rights management system." Napster CEO Hank Barry denied that a specific timeline had been worked out, but agreed that the model holds much promise. Some reports indicated that the subscription-based service would co-exist, at least for a time, with the free Napster service that has rocked the music world since it was introduced in 1999. Despite skepticism that a pay-per-month Napster would succeed, given that services like Gnutella would still be offering free downloads, Bertelsmann e-commerce group CEO Andreas Schmidt said the company is getting a very positive response from consumers. USC banned all private use of Napster on its network in April 2000, proclaiming that the application could be used "only for demonstrably legal purposes from designated university personal computers and under university supervision." The decision, which was a reversal of the university's decision in February to allow Napster despite bandwidth problems and legal concerns, was made in response to a lawsuit filed by heavy-metal band Metallica against Napster, Inc. and three universities that allowed students to access it: USC, Indiana University and Yale University. All three universities banned Napster in response and were subsequently dropped from the lawsuit.------------------yo knock yourself a pro slick, gray matter live performas down now take TCB'in man... shadowchaser076@aol.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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