We don't have any way to keep track of who the people are on the other end of our links, and we're really absolutely no different than Yahoo or Lycos that way. At issue, the suit claims, is who can be held responsible for Internet piracy. In its suit, the RIAA alleges more than 600 infringements on one occasion alone. MP3Board says it has been unfairly persecuted by the RIAA, which in October 1999 and April 2000 muscled MP3Board's Internet service provider with lawsuit-threatening letters from RIAA legal counsel. At stake in both suits is how the courts will negotiate a gaping hole in copyright law.
Studies released in the past few months come to conflicting conclusions.
MP3Board has on average 100,000 visitors a day. But MP3Board isn't the most profitable of the sites he operates, Mapstead says. The biggest moneymaker is CashSurfers , which lets registered users who download a proprietary Windows-based application accumulate points toward cash and prizes in return for viewing targeted ads while browsing the Internet, chatting on instant messaging services or reading and writing email. Lars Mapstead came to Santa Cruz 15 years ago from Carmel to live with his grandmother. A stockbroker at first, he became involved with online businesses about the time the World Wide Web first hit the mainstream in 1994.