Napster, Inc. was valued at 60 to 80 million dollars. The record companies depend upon the royalties earned from the sale of their music. They do not receive royalties from Napster or its users for MP3 music files copied over the Internet. The record companies have made substantial investments of money, time and effort to produce their sound recordings, and have invested heavily in developing plans to enter the digital downloading market. Napster did not obtain licenses to distribute or download, or to help others distribute or download, the music that plaintiffs own.
Plaintiffs promote the sale of new music by providing samples of music files to be downloaded.
The samples are limited in amount and duration and may be set to time out. This finding was based on the testimony of two experts for the plaintiff. One expert conducted a survey of college students. That expert concluded, the more songs available for download on Napster the more likely college students were to admit that Napster would reduce their music purchases. The opinion did not give details of the college survey.