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Slurping Up Spilled Milk |
The labels love the lawsuits. Suing people makes them beam with joy. So much do they enjoy court action that they will sue each other when they're bored. The case against major-label BMG, which partially owned Napster when it was getting sued into the ground, has been green-lighted (green-lit?) by none other than Judge Marilyn Patel, the original judge in the Napster case. It's not just that BMG owned a financial stake in the original Napster; that case would probably get thrown out. The plaintiffs contend that BMG had substantial operational control of the company, and could have shut it down before the courts did, but failed to, costing BMG's sister labels much money in damages. Not that file-sharing has ever been proved to damage CD sales, but as I said, the labels just adore those hard courtroom benches.
