Napster's Defense

from the it's-all-legal dept

On Monday Napster put out its first legal response to the lawsuit against it. The details are really very interesting. They make some very good points on why they are legal from a number of different standpoints. First they say that Napster is legal based on the case against Diamond Multimedia for their MP3 player - where it was determined that Diamond hadn't done anything wrong - it was all the users. Then they use the VCR defense that says as long as there is a legal use for the product, then the product itself can't be declared illegal. Next, they use the "ISP defense" where they say they're only acting as a directory, and don't control any of the content themselves. Finally, they add a new defense saying that record labels have illegally enforced their copyrights, and thus no longer have the rights to them any more. That one might be a stretch.

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