Cooney's boss, committee Chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, has been supportive of Napster in its battle with big music companies, which sued Napster a year ago for copyright infringement. While the court case has proceeded, Napster, which enables users to swap music for free on the Internet, has attracted over 40 million users. Hatch wrote to a federal appeals court in September saying that a brief filed by the Department of Justice and the Copyright Office siding with the recording industry did not represent the opinion of the full U.S. government. It said it would drop its lawsuit once Napster was transformed into a secure, paid service and invited other labels to join. Entertainment remains one of the most vexing issues for the Internet, yet the idea of providing content on the Web remains tantalizing,'' said Adam Schoenfeld, vice president of Jupiter Research at Jupiter's Entertainment Forum in Los Angeles on Thursday.
Subscription is a great model.
The question is what people want and are willing to pay for,'' he said. On Wednesday, Seagram President and Chief Executive Officer Edgar Bronfman Jr. said Universal would ramp up the test of the service to 20,000 users next week. Currently, the service only offers music from Universal. The Napster legal battle has come to be viewed as a landmark case for copyrights on the Internet, which will affect how music as well as films, books and all forms of entertainment can be distributed and protected in cyberspace. Manus Cooney joining our team ensures that Napster's more than 44 million users will be well represented in the coming critical policy debates over how to best grow and share the benefits of new technologies,'' said Napster Chief Executive Officer Hank Barry.