Providers, Sites Told To Work It Out

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March 06, 2001 (6:05 PM EST)

By Mary Mosquera,

WASHINGTON—If file-sharing sites and the music and film industries can't negotiate copyright agreements, then courts and Congress will have to step in to fill the void, a copyright professor and activist said Tuesday.

His warning comes in the wake of an injunction issued late Monday, ordering song-swapping service Napster to eliminate all copyrighted material from its site.

"Technology providers and content holders will have to come together around a model of blanket-use licenses to ensure song makers get paid," said Peter Jaszi, law professor at American University, Washington, D.C. Otherwise, whatever a court orders will be a form of compulsory licensing that the players cannot negotiate, he said.

Jaszi and other activists met with industry executives, attorneys, and legislators to discuss the Napster decision and copyright issues at the Consumer Electronics Association meeting in Washington, D.C. Friday.

Napster vice president Manus Cooney said Napster plans to comply with the injunction, but that in the end, "technology is not going to be controlled. Copyright is becoming a tool of control [and] the vagaries of copyright law are being used to stifle innovation."

Nevertheless, the record companies clearly proved that Napster was financially benefiting from someone else's copyright materials, said House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Billy Tauzin (R-La.) "I don't think the court had any choice in the Napster case," he said.

"Now I think it's up to the music industry to examine whether they can't somehow come to terms with Napster-like appliances and set up relationships with Napster or organizations like it," he said.

Tauzin said he hoped the technology industry would find solutions to copyright problems instead of legislating changes.

"We can sit down and write new copyright laws that the courts can enforce and we can watch lawsuits unfold. Or geniuses such as [Napster founder] Shawn Fanning can create technologies that allow us not to have to rewrite our laws," Tauzin said.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Utah Republican Orrin Hatch, has set hearings on Napster and copyright for April 3.

Under a fair use provision in copyright law, consumers are permitted to share music and other copyrighted materials. But until recently, sharing occurred on a small scale. The Internet has given sharing scalability.

"Napster has simply taken advantage of a market dysfunction," Jaszi said. And the recording companies refused to license a technological solution, he said.

Jaszi said he expects technology and content players will opt for a form of cooperative licensing. It is unlikely that government will expand compulsory licenses to widen copyright protection over the Internet. The last time the government tried to control and suppress what consumers wanted on a large scale was Prohibition, and that was unsuccessful, he said.