On January 12, 2000, MP3.com launched Instant Listening Service and Beam-it, free services that allow users to listen to their music CDs through their computers using MP3's applications and technology. A user loads CDs into his or her CD ROM drive, and the CD is then matched to one of the 40,000 CDs in MP3.com's database. Then MP3.com transfers a MP3-formatted copy of the CD from their database...

Yesterday US District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel issued a temporary restraining order, directing Napster not to facilitate or permit infringement of copyrighted material. Because the immensely popular person-to-person music trading service does not have the capability to separate copyrighted materials from non-copyrighted, this ruling will effectively shut down Napster at midnight tonight, pending...

The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that patients cannot sue HMOs in Federal court for giving doctors financial incentives to hold down treatment costs. Reversing a Federal Appeals Court decision that argued such suits could be allowed, Justice Souter, writing for a unanimous Court, concluded that Congress's intent in passing a 1973 law paving the way for HMOs was to affirm the entire concept of...

On Tuesday, August 8, 2000, 28 states, including New York and Florida, banded together to file a federal lawsuit against five of the largest record companies and three major music retailers, accusing them of fixing the prices of compact discs. The lawsuit charges the music companies Tower Records, Sony, BMG, Warner Music Group, and Universal Music with inflating the price of CDs by as much as $2,...