Utah senator opposes DOJ, copyright briefs on Napster

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -- In an apparent official rift over Napster Inc., Sen. Orrin Hatch has sent a letter to a federal appeals court saying that a brief filed by the Department of Justice and the Copyright Office siding with the recording industry against the controversial song-swap service did not represent the opinion of the full U.S. government.

"Given the importance of the issues to be decided, I thought it important that the court be under no misapprehension that the (DOJ) brief necessarily expresses the view of Congress in this matter," Hatch wrote in the letter sent September 14 to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco and obtained by Reuters.

Hatch is a Republican Senator from Utah who is also chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee.

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Two weeks ago, the Department of Justice and the U.S. Copyright Office jointly filed a legal brief with the same court siding with the recording industry. The document attacked parts of Napster's defense against the record industry's claims that its song-swap service facilitates copyright piracy.

Redwood City, California-based Napster's service lets fans swap songs for free by trading MP3 files, a compression format that turns music on compact discs into small computer files.

"Indeed, Congress has recently held hearings into the matter and is engaged in ongoing deliberations about its merits as the events unfold in the emerging online music and entertainment market," Hatch wrote in the letter.

Just before the federal agencies involvement, Napster scored help from trade associations for technology giants like Yahoo Inc., which filed their own amicus briefs in the Napster case.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which represents big record companies, like Seagram Co. Ltd.'s Universal Music, Bertelsmann AG's BMG, Sony Corp.'s Sony Music and Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Music Group and EMI, first sued Napster for copyright infringement in December and is now seeking a preliminary injunction against the service, which has amassed between 20 million and 30 million users. Time Warner is the parent company of CNN.com.

In July, a U.S. District Court issued a preliminary injunction against Napster ordering that it bar all big labels' copyrighted songs from being traded on its service, a move that would virtually shut it down.

Napster won a last-minute reprieve and the Ninth Circuit has ordered the two sides to make oral arguments in early October.

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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U.S. Department of Justice
US Senate: Committee on the Judiciary
U.S. Congress
Ninth Circuit
Napster
Recording Industry Association of America
Universal Music Group
BMG
Sony Music
Warner Music Group
The EMI Group

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