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Sharing
music site Napster to charge users a fee
AFP
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DAVOS,
Switzerland: Napster, the controversial but popular file-sharing
system, will charge site users a membership fee later this
year, the head of Bertelsmann, Napster's parent company, said
Monday.
"We
have an idea of the price range but it is too early to publicise
it," Bertelsmann chief executive Thomas Middelhoff told
journalists on the fringes of the World Economic Forum held
in this Swiss resort town. The California-based website has
allowed some 44 million users to easily pass along digitalized
music files, most of which have been copied from CDs. Music
companies however have sued the site for copyright infringement.
Middelhoff expressed confidence a membership fee would not
deter users of Napster's controversial site. "The Napster
that we provide is of a very high quality," he said.
But because
most of the 56 million people using the site are teenagers,
they would have to persuade their parents to pay up, he quipped.
They decided to introduce the membership fee in June or July
of 2001, after conducting market research involving 20,000
users, he added. Middelhoff played down fears that the service
could be used for piracy, insisting that users' capacity for
illegally downloading and sending audio files was very limited.
Napster joined up with Bertelsmann Music to develop a paying
service after coming under pressure from other music giants
such as Sony, Warner, Universal and EMI, who pursued them
over the copyright issue.
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