Yesterday I wrote about the lawyer who contacted me since he represents "a well-known rock band" and wants to "cancel" or "get hold of" a domain that has been registered under the country code top level domain .ST. I reveal the name of the rock band here. They can look forward to a fight against the Swedish Labor Union.
Maybe you recall that Napster was sued in year 2000? The guys in the heavy metal band Metallica turned furious after discovering that people were sharing their songs through some weird file-sharing software called Napster. They sued both Napster and some leading American universities for not blocking the student's access to Napster. Metallica was hit by a storm of negative PR.
Well, aren't we surprised that it now turns out to be Metallica that wishes to "get hold of" Metallica.st ?! But this can become a really fun case. You can go to Metallica.st and look. The owner of the domain is Förvaltnings AB Metallica (approximately Metallica Management, Inc.), the venture capital arm of the Swedish Industrial and Metal Workers' Union, with 450.000 members.
I want to remind you how the strong man and drummer of Metallica, Lars Ulrich (born in Denmark, which explains his name), testified before the Senate in Washington about the atrocities going on among music sonsumers:
"What about the users of Napster, the music consumers? It's like each of them won one of those contests where you get turned loose in a store for five minutes and get to keep everything you can load into your shopping cart. With Napster, though, there's no time limit and everyone's a winner-except the artist. Every song by every artist is available for download at no cost and, of course, with no payment to the artist, the songwriter or the copyright holder.
If you're not fortunate enough to own a computer, there's only one way to assemble a music collection the equivalent of a Napster user's: theft. Walk into a record store, grab what you want and walk out. The difference is that the familiar phrase a computer user hears, "File's done," is replaced by another familiar phrase-"You're under arrest." "
Well, we don't have to feel too sorry for Metallica. As every other top earner they make most of their money from touring, not from records. In 2004 they were number 3 on Rolling Stone's U.S. list of Money Makers in the music business: 43,1 million dollars, beaten only by Madonna and Prince. Copies of music is on the way out as a source of revenue. U2 pulls in 150,000 dollars per concert on average. On merchandising! Ticket sales give them 2 million dollars per performance. Rod Stewart makes 10 million dollars per year from performing at billionaires' private parties. The music business is not copies only, although anti-piracy organization IFPI, which organizes the record companies, wants us to believe that, since they make their money from copies.
Lars Ulrich seems to be commonly known as Lar$ on the net now. It would be fun if they or their lawyers have to go to Africa, which I suggested in yesterday's post.
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