Dre Puts Napster on Notice

The jury's still out among music fans, but the West Coast rap godfather has joined a growing list of musicians ready to battle Napster--the Internet's pesky song-swapping program offering free MP3 music files.

Dre has given the San Mateo, California, based company until Friday to yank his songs from its growing directory. And if Napster doesn't comply, he'll likely file a lawsuit against the company, much like Bay Area rockers Metallica did last week in a U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

Metallica claims in its suit that Napster Inc. has encouraged people to freely trade songs without the band's permission.

Dre sent a letter Monday to Napster's acting CEO Eileen Richardson, asking that his songs be removed.

"[T]he listing of his songs and masters on Napster, and the facilitation and transfer of those files, constitutes an infringement of his copyrights," Howard King, who also is representing Metallica, tells Reuters. "Dr. Dre has not committed to suing them, but that would be the logical conclusion is they don't take it off their site."

Napster's massive growth has left record companies in a tizzy, and its operation makes old-school, swap-meet bootlegging look like the Stone Age. With its software, users trade free music files by getting access to other people's hard drives. That way, Napster's music directory grows every time a new user joins.

The site has been huge at universities, where campus networks have been clogged because of so many people connecting to the site. At least seven universities have banned Napster on their networks. Metallica's lawsuit accuses schools like the University of Southern California, Yale and Indiana universities of participating in the copyright infringement.

King says he's also been contacted by at least 10 other artists and managers, as well as a major publishing company, who are planning to battle Napster, either with Metallica or in separate lawsuits. Those groups also would be joining the Recording Industry Association of America, which is suing Napster for $100,000 for each song traded using the software.

Napster's lawyer could not be reached for comment, but CEO Richardson released a statement last week defending the company's music trading practice.

"It has never been Napster's intention to belittle the importance of an artistic production, and we are very passionate about helping bands understand the value of what we offer," the statement reads. "Nevertheless, technological advances over the last several years are restructuring the entertainment business."

Meanwhile, Dre's beef with Napster has spawned more debate among Netizens and music fans, who wonder whether groups have turned greedy by aiming at Internet bootlegging, or if the on-line trading is just too widespread to ignore.

"Even if Napster itself is shut down, they can't stop it," one music fan writes on an MP3 site. "There is nothing to keep me from going and buying the new Britney Spears CD, ripping it and distributing it to all my friends over the Internet for free.

"It's going to be hard for these artists to recover anything because no money is changing hands."

But others--some of them starving artists themselves--say groups like Metallica and Dre should fight any copyright infringement that pops up.

"They make lots of money, now they want to protect it. I don't blame them," the fan writes.

Ironically enough, Dre has just been sued for--what else--copyright infringement, by George Lucas' Lucasfilm Ltd.

The production company claims Dre stole its "THX Deep Note" for the opening of his latest album, Dr. Dre 2001. In a lawsuit filed April 14 in the U.S. District Court in Northern California, Lucasfilm alleges that Dre asked permission to use the sound and was denied--but he used it anyway.