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As if to prove further that Napsters days are numbered, The European courts have decided that, "What Napster offers goes beyond the private sphere." According to 'socialist' Enrico Bosselli, the man who wrote the European Union's Napster law. "In the EU we are not envisaging that it will be legal to buy music in a shop, then put it on the internet without users paying for it."
With those words, the European Parliament swept in legislation a law that will ban peer to peer software that allows the trading of copyright material without compensation to the artists.
The law came days after a US court ruling that paved the way to shut down Napster in the states. It's meant to do the same for Napster among EU member countries. The music industry has lobbied hard to the legislative bodies in both continents to kill Peer to Peer trading.
The EU law actually sidesteps one dilemma by declaring that no copyright fees would be assessed for "streaming" content- in America, music companies are requesting 15% of web radio companies profits as payment for their copyright. The recording industry was -obviously- not happy with that part of the decision, since it should work in Web radio's favor in the states.
Another problem is that unlike the book industry, in the music industry the artist is frequently NOT the copyright owner's of their music, the company who puts out their records are. Because of the structure of some contracts, many artists will never see a dime of this compensation for digital rights because they didn't even exist when they signed those contracts. This has become a mantra for Napster fans all over the world, who want to see a whole new system of music production and delivery.
There are some good compromises that have come out of the law. The best one protects museums, libraries, and the education system who will be allowed to copy material for public use free of charge. "Copyright should be protected, but the right to study and do research should also be protected if it is not for commercial purposes," said Bosselli.
The law now goes to the governments of 15 EU members who are expected to approve the draft in a matter of weeks. The bill leaves it to each government to decide how to implement the law. Some countries like Germany have already endorsed fees on blank CDs and other recording media to cover payments to artists. Hard drives are seen as the next media to receive such tariffs.
Ironically, fees on recordable media could actually be used to save Napster. That's because once mass fees are assessed across the board, files traded on Napster can be considered already paid for. Remember, the goal of the law is to ban peer to peer software that allows the trading of copyright material WITHOUT compensation to the artists.
That is why the music industry, while happy overall with the law, felt it did not go far enough. If recording media fees are assessed universally across the European Union and if Napster fairs poorly in the US courts, we could see Bertelsmann move Napster to its native Germany where the law may actually protect it. With it could move US jobs and future revenues.