National Music Publishers' Association File Copyright Infringement Suit Against Unlicensed...

Business & Entertainment Editors

NEW YORK--(ENTERTAINMENT WIRE)--Nov. 20, 2001

Several prominent songwriters and music publishers filed a copyright infringement action today in Federal Court in Los Angeles against the operators of three unlicensed Internet music services

All three operate unlicensed peer-to-peer services modeled on Napster's former unlicensed service. MusicCity, operator of the Morpheus service, promotes itself as "the most advanced peer-to-peer application ever developed." The plaintiffs include legendary songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Famous Music, Peer International Corporation, and Criterion Music.

"This lawsuit seeks to protect the rights of music creators from flagrant piracy," said Edward P. Murphy, President, National Music Publishers' Association. "As the legitimate market for online music develops, however, it is also about fundamental fairness to the music services that wish to comply with the law by taking licenses."

The publishers recently signed a preliminary agreement with Napster, the pioneering peer-to-peer file sharing service, by which Napster has agreed to take licenses and compensate the owners of musical works. "Our legitimate licensees should not be competitively disadvantaged simply because they have chosen to comply with the law. This lawsuit seeks to level the playing field," Murphy added.

Mike Stoller of the Leiber & Stoller songwriting team - who wrote such world renowned songs as "Hound Dog," "Stand By Me," "On Broadway," "Jailhouse Rock," and "Kansas City" - said, "This lawsuit seeks to preserve the important principles that the courts recognized in our case against Napster - that commercial businesses have a legal obligation to compensate songwriters for the use of their creative works, irrespective of the technology they use to do so. When millions of people use the Morpheus service, they are doing so not because they think the technology is `cool.' They are using it because they can get our songs without paying for them. This has got to stop."

"Our preliminary resolution of our legal dispute with Napster paved the way for other Internet services to come to our music publishers for licenses," explained Gary Churgin, President and CEO of The Harry Fox Agency, Inc. "MusicCity is trying to take us on a voyage through the past. But the wave of the future is licensed services and we intend to win the campaign against music piracy."

The National Music Publishers' Association, Inc., founded in 1917, works to protect and advance the interests of the music publishing industry. With over 800 members, the NMPA represents the most important and influential music publishing firms throughout the United States. The Harry Fox Agency, Inc., the licensing subsidiary of NMPA, provides an information source, clearing house and monitoring service for licensing musical copyrights, and acts as licensing agent for more than 27,000 music publisher principals, who in turn represent the interests of more than 160,000 songwriters.

A copy of the complaint is available at http://www.nmpa.org/legal/Musiccity_.pdf