Epilogue
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 ...
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