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GEN: Napster affects us all - FWD from ReutersFrom: art fougner, md (evsono@pipeline.com)Thu Aug 31 07:58:18 2000
this from Reuters through Physicians Online - Physicians group says Napster lawsuit jeopardizes medical Web sites By Karen Pallarito WESTPORT, Aug 31 (Reuters Health) - A injunction against the music swapping service Napster Inc. could force medical Web sites to shut down as well if the recording industry's challenge against the company prevail, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) charges in a legal brief filed this week. AAPS's "friend of the court" brief, filed with the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, supports Napster's appeal of a preliminary injunction, which would have forced the company to immediately pull the plug on its service had it not been granted a temporary reprieve. AAPS suggests that the case poses dire consequences for public access to vital healthcare information. "The same faulty reasoning against Napster that would prohibit the free exchange of data could lead to the shutdown of all medical Web sites," Kathryn Serkes, public affairs counsel for the AAPS, said in a statement. To illustrate the point, the Washington-based association cited the example of a mother who consults Web sites like Yahoo to find information on attention deficit disorder and the popular but controversial drug therapy Ritalin. "What if the owner of Ritalin asserted its intellectual property rights, and demanded that Yahoo only provide authorized links on Ritalin? The outcome would be that criticism of the use of Ritalin would be effectively silenced," AAPS asserts in its brief. It also warns that health-related Web sites that provide information on life-saving therapies not yet approved in the US could be forced to shut down as well. "These court-ordered strangleholds such as the Napster injunction create multimillion-dollar monopolies for special interests," Serkes charged. "They restrict access to information and add unnecessary costs to the public." A federal appeals court has set the week of October 2 for opening arguments in the trial pitting Napster against some of the giants of the recording industry, Reuters reported on Wednesday. The lawsuit lodged against Napster by the Recording Industry Association of America contends that the service, which lets fans swap songs for free by trading MP3 files, is really just a high-tech shortcut to music piracy, Reuters said. The battle over copyright protection in cyberspace eventually could touch books, movies, and television. -Westport Newsroom 203 319 2700 art
-- art fougner, md
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