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[Harry_The_Hipster]

Just to show us how well the industry has absorbed the Napster and P2P lessons.....

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/5744529.htm

Technology innovation in the long term relies on venture capital for early stage development. This case can have a substantial effect on the investment community at a time when financial support for new technologies is already at a low point.

It's not just music - what about the BioTech fund investing in a start-up that is later found to be violating a Pfizer or Schering patent? In hindsight, should the investors be responsible for having figured out the risk of infringement? Presumably, one of the issues is the degree of control that vcs may retain over their portfolio companies, but that's present in most vc financings.

This kind of behavior by the music industry is highly anti-competitive - or to quote the article, "thuggery".

HTH

[JimH]

Hummer Winblad knew or should have known that what Napster was doing was probably illegal.

Every time we sought legal advice on similar situations, it was made clear to us that we shouldn't touch this area.

It's just one more example of the lack of respect for the normal rules of business that pervaded the dot com era.  There were a lot of people thumbing their nose at the law, and some of them were in investment banks, venture funds, and brokerages.

[zevele10]

Jimh
You are right ,more than right.

But still no way to find the Hillary behaviour the right one ....