Word: bertelsmann
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...Well, Warner Music, Bertelsmann, and EMI are partners in MusicNet, which is the RealNetworks venture that CEO Rob Glazer's is out trumpeting these days. Sony and Universal are partners in Duet, which Yahoo already has a stake in, and Bertelsmann has a side deal with Napster...
...service Napster is a shell of its former self, with 1.6 million copyrighted tunes now fully blocked by court order. And the music industry has not wasted time before stepping into the void. Its first Ping-Pong ball was served in the early hours of Monday morning, when EMI, Bertelsmann and Warner Music--three of the labels long lampooned as dinosaurs that didn't get the Net--were inking a deal with Real Networks and AOL after a year of top-secret negotiations...
...With a deal announced Monday between three of the music business's Big Five (Bertelsmann AG, EMI Group and AOL Time Warner, parent company of this writer) and tech outfit RealNetworks to create a pay-for-play service called MusicNet, the industry headed into a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on online entertainment Tuesday feeling ready to face the future...
...Napster has been trying to keep its users around long enough to kick off its own pay-for-play system in June with an investment by Bertelsmann. Now, with an evidently impatient Bertelsmann getting in on the MusicNet deal, Napster will be a beggar at that banquet - executives at the new service are already imposing stringent conditions about security and legality on Napster's eventual inclusion...
...Napster prevailed, we could have avoided this wretched mess. With the illicit but compelling market power of its 50 million users, Napster might have muscled agreements with the other record labels similar to its Bertelsmann pact. Still tiny relative to the rest of the recording industry, Napster would slowly but surely have been transformed into a profitable way to distribute music while benefiting artists, labels, consumers and Napster itself. All this would have been possible, if only the law had worked just a little bit slower. Yet thanks to our speedy and efficient legal system, it's now highly doubtful...