Now this could prove to be interesting. It might not. But it could. A Ninth Circuit Court judge in the US has ordered Universal Music Group and EMI to disclose previously confidential documents relating to the two major record companies' early dealings in the digital music domain.
The court order has been made as part of a long running legal dispute between the major record companies and Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, one of the investors in the original Napster P2P platform. They were sued by the majors who claimed that by investing in the original Napster technology, which allowed the mass sharing of copyright content online, the Partners were guilty of contributory and vicarious copyright infringement.
The investment firm is counter-suing, claiming that the major record labels colluded to prevent the original Napster from successfully launching a legitimate business model, instead offering favourable licensing deals to Pressplay and MusicNet, the two digital music companies set up and initially owned by the major record companies. Hummer Winblad also claim that because the majors were collaborating on those early download ventures they shared information on their licensing deals, giving them an unfair competitive advantage.
It was as part of the ongoing legal wranglings in this case that judge Marilyn Patel last week ordered the release of documents belonging to the two major record companies that have previously been protected by attorney-client privilege. It remains to be seen whether the documents provide any new evidence for Hummer Winblad's claims. If they do, that evidence might be of interest to the US Department Of Justice who have previously investigated claims of collusion between the majors in the digital space, but who dropped their investigation in 2003 because of a lack of evidence.
PS: For fans of digital music history, a little background perhaps. MusicNet was originally owned by EMI, BMG, Warner Music and RealNetworks, but is now owned by Baker Capital, a New York-based private equity firm, and it provides a back-end download platform for the likes of Virgin Digital and HMV Digital. PressPlay was a JV between Universal and Sony, but was sold to tech firm Roxio, who then acquired the Napster brand, and in a round about kind of way used the PressPlay technology as the basis of the legit Napster download platform. So the majors are essentially accused of being unfair to the old Napster by favouring what would become the new Napster. If only they'd known that it would be Apple who would come to dominate all things digital music, they could have just not bothered.