Looking Back at Napster and Ahead to King

The news last month was the court case against Napster, the file sharing site on the web that allows individuals to swap music files. The court found against Napster and in favour of the big music companies. How does this effect the book business? Well enough publishing giants were so concerned that it was the theme of this season's Book Industry Study Group seminar. The title of the program was "What can the book industry learn from the music industry?"

The seminars examined the recent developments in digital distribution in the music industry and how they can be applied to the emerging electronic book industry. As Bertelsmann own BMG music besides Random House, Doubleday, et al, one can see the interest that multinational publishers might have in the Napster ruling, even though Bertelsmann claims they didn't really follow the court case. Why not? Because they have already come to an agreement with Napster to sell subscriptions to the sight to download music from BMG. This week it was announced that Bertelsmann was going to try to get out of the agreement if Napster doesn't get itself out of its current legal problems with the rest of the music industry.

It appears that Bertelsmann was working on its own version of Napster, called Snoopstar. It was running a beta program until just before the agreement with Napster. It is not now up, but a posting on the web site says the beta test has been suspended and tells viewers to "check back frequently for more news."

Random House, Times-Warner-AOL and other multinational, multimedia companies have been making quiet inroads into electronic publishing. Random house now has hundreds of books available in electronic editions and is offering its authors a 50% royalty on electronic editions. Warner Books has created an entire new division just for electronic books including advice to new authors, critiques, and reviews. With many of the giant multinational media companies expanding into the area of electronic publishing, it is only expected that they want their product to be secure and to be paid for. That's why there was such interest in the Napster court case. Several years ago, a college bookstore manager told me that copyright was almost unenforceable since the introduction of the photocopier. There was a time that this was true. But fortunately for the book industry most homes do not have a photocopier. The public still has to go out to a library or business supply store to use one and most libraries are very conscientious about copyright. However, most households today do have a computer and an Internet hookup, which is all that is needed to exchange electronic files, be they music or books, thus allowing the public to violate copyrights in the privacy of their own homes. No wonder the book industry is interested it what it can learn from the music industry. The need for secure digital rights management is required for the electronic publishing industry to grow. But as it was pointed out by Larry Miller, president of Reciprocal Entertainment, a firm offering digital-rights management services, "You can make something so secure, that no one can get it." The panel pointed to the need to develop "interoperability," or some kind of standard for digital file formats and playing devices as well as offering value-added content that is richer and more desirable than pirated content. "Something beyond vanilla content," said Brian Queen of Global Media and