Napster Back - But This Time Legally

by Glen Shapiro, LawAndTax-News.com, New York

30 July 2003

Napster, the file-sharing service which sparked the ongoing legal debate between the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the P2P community, is set to return later this year, but will remain strictly on the straight and narrow, according to reports.

The Napster name and patents were purchased by Roxio last year, and Napster 2.0 is set to launch in December 2003, in place of the firm's Pressplay service.

Users will now be obliged to pay to access Napster's catalogue of around 500,000 tracks, although no details have as yet been released on how the service will be priced.

Speaking to the US media, Chris Gorog, chairman and CEO of Roxio announced that:

'We are pleased by consumers' continuing interest in the Napster brand, as evidenced by the very significant traffic we are receiving to our placeholder site at www.napster.com which allows consumers to sign up for updates on our progress and enjoy some creative teasers prior to the availability of the service.' He went on to add that:

'Our early prototypes of Napster 2.0 are progressing very well and we will be disclosing additional details as we get closer to our launch.'

Napster was forced to close in the summer of 2001, as a result of several injunctions which forced it to remove copyrighted material from its database.

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