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Wednesday, November 29, 2000 By David Radin
Have lawsuits become a key marketing tool to build dot.com companies? According to David Pakman, senior vice president of MyPlay.com, they have.
Pakman's company competes in the same space as Napster and MP3.com -- the downloadable music space. His company has chosen to stay away from potential liabilities arising from lawsuits by consulting with teams of lawyers before implementing key elements of its strategy.
His company does not condone its customers bootlegging music without the proper license. It has issued a no-piracy policy. And it has appointed staff members as liaisons for customers who want to report copyright pirates. MyPlay does not supply music. It provides "lockers" in which users can store their own music, so they can play it online. The concept depends on the user having the rights to copy the music, which are provided by fair use laws such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the Audio Home Recording Act and the Doctrine of Fair Use.
Pakman says companies such as Napster and MP3.com base their marketing strategies in part on how much publicity they can get by getting sued.
MP3.com, he says, took a calculated risk putting together its MyMP3.com service with the knowledge that it had crossed the legal line by copying thousands of CDs to disk. According to Pakman, the law is unambiguous related to reproducing copyrighted works for commercial gain. He suggests the executives at MP3.com must have known they would not win in court, and were hoping to take advantage of media frenzy, then have enough time to settle its lawsuits before being hit with massive judgments. It seems that they were, at least in part, right. They just didn't get to settle all their suits.
If Pakman is correct in the lack of ambiguity of the law, then we have only two interpretations for what happened. Either they did use it in the way that Pakman suggests; or they hired the wrong legal team, because any good legal team should have kept them out of trouble in such an easy to interpret situation.
By the way, Bruce Fries, in his book "The MP3 and Internet Audio Handbook", does a great job of outlining how each of the copyright related laws affects you as individuals as well as anybody who duplicates or distributes music via Internet.
Q: How do I create the copyright symbol (the c with a circle around it -- (c)) in my documents?
A: In Microsoft Word, the symbol is created automatically using a technique called Autocorrect. All you need to do is type in the c surrounded by parentheses. As soon as you complete the closing parentheses, MS-Word should automatically turn it into the symbol you want. The same technique can be used to create the trademark symbol -- O -- and the registered trademark symbol -- . Simply type either tm or r surrounded by parentheses. Interestingly enough, MS-Word will even turn the TM into a superscript for you so it looks just the way you want it to look in print -- slightly raised and smaller than the rest of the sentence. For the registered mark and copyright symbol, you'll have to turn them into superscripts yourself. Highlight the symbol after MS-Word creates it. Right-click on the highlight to pop up the menu. Select [Font]. Then, in the "Effects" section of the [Font] tab, check off the box next to "Superscript". You'll see the change in the "Preview" section of the same dialog box. Click [Okay] to accept the change.
Insider Extra: Moore's Law
Way back in 1965, Intel's chief Gordon Moore stated that computer processors would double in capacity every 18 to 24 months. Thirty-five years later, "Moore's Law," as it has been called, is still going strong -- with computing power and speed doubling every 18 months. So if you plan to buy a computer, don't try to buy one to grow into. Buy it with the understanding that you'll want to get rid of it two years later in favor of a better, faster system. By the way, three years ago, Moore postulated that Moore's Law would last at least five more generations of computers before reaching the limits imposed by the laws of physics.
David Radin is host of the nationally syndicated radio show "Internet Insider," a local version of which is aired on KDKA AM 1020 at noon Saturdays. You can ask him a computer or Internet question by following the instructions at www.post-gazette.com/interact , where you also can find an archive of his previous Q&A columns.
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