Dr. Dre Demands Napster Block Access To His Music

Rap music artist Dr. Dre has demanded that Napster, the online company which provides free software that enables users to store and swap MP3-formatted musical recordings, take action to remove or block access to his recorded music.

A published report out today says that Dr. Dre, whose real name is Andrew Young, has sent Napster a list of more than 900,000 recordings of songs which Dr. Dre says were made from pirated copies of his music through the use of Napster's MusicShare software.

The demand by Dr. Dre follows other lawsuits brought against Napster, Inc. by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the hard rock group known as Metallica.

Each of the parties suing Napster is claiming that Napster is infringing on the copyrights of music recordings by providing the means for people to store and share music over the Internet without the permission of the music artists or paying a license fee for doing so.

Both Metallica and Dr. Dre are represented by Los Angeles-based attorney Howard King, who recently delivered to Napster a list of more than 300,000 names of Napster members that King said were illegally violating the copyrights of his client Metallica. On behalf of Metallica, King demanded that the named persons be denied access to Napster's Web site.

The delivery by King of a list of Dr. Dre music rather than the names of Napster members who are alleged to have copied and traded the music appears to represent a shift in strategy by King.

When King delivered the names of users to Napster, the company responded by blocking access to the more than 300,000 people named. However, Napster also told the barred individuals that if they felt they had been wrongly identified they could file a claim stating that they were named incorrectly. Then, Napster said, Metallica would have ten days in which to respond to their claim or, under federal law, their access to the Napster Web site would have to be restored.

King told Newsbytes on Wednesday that about 30,000 claims, which he called "perjurious," had been forwarded to him by Napster so far.

Dr. Dre's attempt to have his music removed, rather than having Napster members barred, seems to be an attempt to avoid having to deal with thousands of claims that may be filed by barred individuals.

However, compliance with Dr. Dre's request may be impossible. Napster has always maintained that it neither stores nor makes copies of music on its Web site and that the actual reproductions of musical work reside on the hard drives of the individual users of Napster's software. Napster says that it has no way of taking the music off of the hard drives of individual users.

Neither King nor Napster's attorney was available for comment.

Reported by Newsbytes.com, http://www.newsbytes.com.