Copyright.net blocks users.

["Hamaker, Chuck" <cahamake@email.uncc.edu>]

http://usatoday.com/usatonline/20010403/3198311s.htm

USA Today

Copyright.net targets song sharers

By Jefferson Graham
USA TODAY

Copyright.net. The Nashville firm is attacking music piracy with a new
level of aggressiveness -- by targeting users directly.

Copyright.net CEO Tim Smith says: ''When (you go) on Napster to trade a
song, Napster goes through your hard drive and identifies the MP3s you
have, puts them in your shared folder and posts your folder on Napster's
servers.

Under the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, as well as a
federal court injunction, copyright holders can contact Napster to
complain of infringement, and the service has to suspend the user.

Napster notifies users that Copyright.net is responsible for their
cancellation. If they go to Copyright.net's Web site, they discover a
number of ways to get accounts re-established. If a user registers with
Copyright .net and agrees to remove the offending files, for example,
Copyright.net will e-mail Napster on the user's behalf.

Copyright.net also has been sending lists of users to Internet service
providers such as Verizon, demanding user accounts be terminated. But ISPs
call the firm's methods unfair and intrusive.

''There are many legitimate uses of Napster,'' says Verizon's Sarah
Deutsch. ''Not every use is an infringement.'' Copyright.net wanted
Verizon to suspend 240 of its customers; Verizon refused. ''Those songs
were on hard drives, and who knows whether or not they were traded?'' she
says.

''This company is threatening service providers and violating the privacy
interests of our customers.'' New York-based entertainment attorney
Whitney Broussard says Copyright.net's practices raise a ''very serious
issue'' of unlawful searches. ''You can't just search someone's hard drive
because you think there might be some MP3s there. Maybe they were copied
from a CD. A mere act of an MP3 on a hard drive is not infringement.''

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