Roxio Inc. which makes CD-burning software, said on Friday it will buy substantially all of the assets of defunct song-swapping service Napster in a deal valued at $5.3 million.

The Nasdaq-listed firm offered $5 million in cash and 100,000 warrants in Roxio stock to finance the purchase. Roxio's shares ended Thursday's session at $3.38.

The deal hinges upon approval by the U.S. bankruptcy court overseeing Napster's assets, but a spokesman for Roxio in London said both parties have agreed to the sale terms.

If it is approved, Roxio would receive all of Napster's intellectual property including its technology patent portfolio, but Roxio is not assuming any of Napster's liabilities, including pending litigation, it said in a statement.

The court could rule on the deal as early as November 27, thus putting an end to the lengthy saga of the music industry's biggest nemesis in recent years.

At its height two years ago, Internet users traded tens of millions of songs across Napster's network, ushering in an era of rampant online song piracy in which CD-quality songs could be downloaded onto a computer's hard drive for free. Napster is still one of the most recognisable brand names on the Internet.

The major music labels, which blame online piracy for a dramatic drop in CD sales, took Napster to court for infringing copyright laws, essentially shutting it down in July, 2001.

The Napster phenomenon, though, triggered an explosion in Internet file-swapping. Newer advanced services such as Kazaa and Morpheus MusicCity enable Internet users to trade all manner of copyrighted materials from songs to video games and movies.

Napster, which closed its operations in September, reached a deal late that month with the U.S. Trustee's office for the appointment of a Chapter 11 trustee to manage its estate.

More that a dozen bidders, including Barcelona-based adult entertainment company Private Media Group (PRVT), emerged to purchase the assets of Napster.

"Seems the porn company wasn't able to rise to the occasion with enough hard cash."

A sentence filled with sexual euphemisms. Excellent. If they were intentional, kudos, Bill. If they were unintentional, well, still...kudos

Too bad Private, our nice swedish porn company, didnt buy napster..

Swedish Fish?

heheh, couldn't "rise" to the occasion ehh?? I guess you just gotta come harder then that when laying it down nice and slowly on the bargaining table. Sometimes you just have to bang it out very hard when doing business and unfortunately their under the table proposition efforts didn't do the trick.

Ohh well

"Internet users traded tens of millions of songs across Napster's network, ushering in an era of rampant online song piracy"



Yet another blatently idiotic statement that __trading__ is piracy.

this is interesting....... (you know why) I hope this'll be good....!!!

meep

meep meep!!!!

meep meep meep

BEEEEP!

BBBBBBEEEEEPPPP!!!!!

sheep

SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECCCCCCCCCCHHHHHHHH!!!! Somebody bought it at last!!
CDC-MP3 greetings! Love ya always!

But Private *did* EMERGE to purchase...

I agree with mtbatol, you need to thrust all of your energy into doing it, that is if you plan on doing it right. I mean, if you half-ass it, don't expect any favors. You've really got to put in the hours if you want to reach that peak, that point at which the deal is the best and then PUSH PUSH PUSH to sell! Of course this coming from an newbie at the game, but I know how to stick it to 'em!

I lost track of the real topic and got lost in the euphemisms.

weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

I can't believe someone would pay $5.3 million for Napster. Napster is the king of p2p file-sharing but, Napster is now wiped out. Nothing can defeat KaZaA(Lite) and it's popularity. Unless KaZaA was to somehow shut down. I just can't believe people still want Napster. Odd. If I had 5.3 million, I would be doing other things with it.