The decision to take on song-swap giant Napster Inc. could end up backfiring on the recording industry by stoking the already frenzied pace of trading music on the Internet, industry experts said on Saturday. A failure to negotiate with Napster may come back to haunt the industry because working with the Silicon Valley firm may be the best way to grab a piece of the online music pie, analysts add. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sued Napster in December, accusing it of facilitating wholesale music piracy. But so far the high-profile legal battle has only helped to swell the firm’s user base to more than 20 million in the past year. "The lawsuit against Napster has probably contributed to most of that growth," said Bruce Fries, author of a book on the technology that allows users to trade music via the Internet. "Napster would never have existed if the major labels had fulfilled the demand for downloadable songs by major artists." On Saturday, users continued to stampede to the Napster Web site, one day after a U.S. Appeals Court stayed a judge’s order directing the firm to stop online trading of songs covered by copyrights owned by RIAA members. The case has exposed the problems in applying traditional copyright law to services like Napster, which enable the online trading of MP3s, small computer files containing CD tracks that are easily swapped over the Internet. It also marks one of the first major skirmishes over a whole new form of technology that is expanding rapidly. The Motion Picture Association of America is locked in its own Napster-like battle against Scour Inc. and other companies that provide film and video over the Internet. And software services that specialize in digitally storing and transferring all forms of intellectual property are proliferating. Opening the legal defense for these companies, Napster said its members do not violate copyright because their trades were all for personal, noncommercial use as defined by the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992. It also said that, because some of the files Napster users trade are not protected by copyright, it was being unfairly required to alter technology that had a legitimate purpose.
Iranian pop icon Googoosh, barely seen in public since her country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, ended two decades of silence on Saturday, returning to the stage in Canada in front of thousands of delirious fans. The former pop sensation, 50, has not performed publicly in 21 years since an official ban was imposed on female solo singers after the revolution. Changes ushered in by clerical rule put an immediate end to the careers of Googoosh and countless other pop stars and movie idols. Word that Googoosh, a former child star who was in her 20s when the ban came into effect, would perform again electrified Iranians after the government agreed to permit her to leave the country for a tour abroad.