Yale Dropped from Metallica Lawsuit

Yale University's network officials shutdown access to Napster shortly after the announcement of the lawsuit was made. "Last Friday, we began to block Napster around the clock in response to the lawsuit and until we can clarify the legal issues surrounding Napster," stated Tom Conroy, a Yale spokesman.

Metallica's agents decided to drop Yale as a defendant after the school decided to block Napster, and they also stated that they will not seek further damages. Metallica released a statement on Wednesday, which said, "We appreciate the prompt and responsible reaction by Yale University in dealing with the gross violations of copyright laws and the protection of intellectual property."

Although many universities are beginning to block Napster, there are also other software pieces that perform the same type of online trading, namely Scour Exchange, CuteMX, Gnutella and iMesh.

In the slew of Napster lawsuits, Dr. Dre recieved an attack of his own. Dre previously gave Napster, Inc. an ultimatum to remove listings from their directory service that refer to his songs, but was then attacked by Lucasfilm LTD. for copyright infringement. Lucasfilm stated that Dre used the THX "Deep Note" in his album Chronic 2001, which is infringing on the trademarked sound. Dre previously asked for permission to use the sound, but his proposal was denied. Regardless of the denial, Dr. Dre used the sound in the beginning of his recently released album.