On April 28, 2000, a summary judgment found MP3.com in violation of copyright infringement and ordered a full trial to begin in August. The "space-shifted" content in the My.MP3.com service was shut down shortly thereafter, and icons resembling a padlock started to appear next to song names on your personalized My.MP3.com page, connoting that this song was unavailable. MP3.com managed to reach deals with four of the five major record labels agreeing to pay a settlement and gaining a license to serve their content, once each copyright was verified. [17]
On August 28, 2000, MP3.com went to trial with the one label it could not reach a settlement with, and promptly lost the case nine days later. Before damages were awarded, however, a settlement was reached, but the damage was done.
Over the next months, MP3.com soldiered on, looking for new revenue streams, partners, and "groundbreaking" applications. They also continued to bring back the now-licensed content, and the padlock icons started to disappear from content you had verified, although sometimes only 3 or 4 of the 10 songs in an album would be unlocked (frustrating, to say the least). Six months after settling with the last label, MP3.com was purchased by the label in question: Vivendi Universal.
In retrospect, continuing to rip CDs when we clearly didn't have the money was sheer folly, but it was so very MP3.com. You see, at some point early on, MP3 had become the bad boys—maybe only in our own minds—of a certain Internet space. We went toe to toe with the major record labels and didn't back down: hell, we countersued after they sued us for copyright infringement!
In a way, this was all Michael. He defined MP3.com and made it the company it was: a company that talented people flocked to because they wanted to be a part of it. This culture, once defined, both held the company together and sent it asunder.
Eight-plus years after Da Bomb was dropped, there are still headlines about music downloads and sharing. Some of the visions of the My.MP3.com service have come to fruition—Apple opened the iTunes Music store and started selling music—while some are now obsolete or yet to be realized. A surprising number of the areas are still topical, though ….
[17] This "copyright verification" process lingered for months as the labels—who were not in the digital age—dragged their feet in responding to requests for verifications. The Harry Fox Agency was no better, and at one point we sent them two or more palettes stacked to the brim with copyright request forms (they wanted individual paper requests for each album). How many man-hours got siphoned from MP3.com I can only imagine, but I bet the look on the faces of the folks at HFA was priceless.