German media company Bertelsmann AG, after writing off a substantial investment in defunct song-swap pioneer Napster Inc., now faces a multibillion dollar lawsuit from a group of music publishers.
The music publishers are seeking damages of at least US$17 billion, claiming that Bertelsmann contributed to wide-scale infringement of their copyright works by funding Napster, which created an Internet song-swapping service based on peer-to-peer (P-to-P) technology. The plaintiffs, including the songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, allege that Bertelsmann’s decision to provide funding to Napster prolonged the service’s life and thus the illicit sharing of music, according to a copy of the complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Thursday.
Music publishers and record companies, including Bertelsmann’s own record label BMG Inc., originally sued Napster in late 1999 and early 2000 for copyright infringement and were granted a preliminary injunction, which was subsequently stayed on appeal.
However, the music publishers’ complaint alleges that, “notwithstanding Bertelsmann’s full knowledge of Napster’s gross infringement of music copyrights – which its own record label had only just decried in court as ‘the most egregious case of massive copyright infringement that has even existed’ – Bertelsmann shocked the music industry by throwing Napster a lifeline.”
It was at that time, in October of 2000, that the German firm formed a strategic partnership with Napster and funded it with $50 million in capital, the complaint states. Bertelsmann’s initial investment was followed by several more.
The plaintiffs allege that if it weren’t for Bertelsmann’s funding of Napster, the P-to-P service would have been shuttered in 2000, instead of in 2001 when it was ordered to shut down by a California federal court.
“But for Bertelsmann, the massive infringement on the Napster service would have ceased nearly a year earlier,” the complaint states.
Rocco Thiede, a spokesman for Bertelsmann in G
