Private Media Group Incorporated, a worldwide leader in premium quality adult entertainment products, services and content, has made an offer to Napster, Incorporated to acquire the Napster trademark and napster-dot-com domain name for one million shares of Private common stock. Private's offer, if accepted by Napster, is subject to customary terms and conditions, including approval by the court having jurisdiction over Napster, Inc.'s bankruptcy proceeding.
With the Napster trademark, Private plans to create a unique peer-to-peer (P2P) environment that would offer the tens of millions of adult consumers worldwide the opportunity to share adult content for free as well as access top quality adult content at a reasonable price. Napster is one of the most recognized names in P2P file-swapping services that allow users to trade and download files. At its height, Napster had 84 million users of its software and was the fastest-growing software application ever monitored by online tracking services.
Charles Prast, president and CEO of Private Media Group stated: "Along with Hollywood and the recording industry, we have become increasingly concerned about the level of copyright infringement inherent in free peer-to-peer file swapping services. It is estimated that up to 35% of all content downloaded from P2P sites is of an adult nature, which raises significant issues both in terms of copyright infringement and lack of controls of access by minors. It is an industry that presently has over 150 million users."
"At Private, we feel that there has been an excess of spamming, credit card fraud, abuse of consumer data, and price
gouging among many on-line providers of adult content," he added. "We intend to use the strength of the Napster trademark to build a community for adults to share content provided by Private and our industry partners. Private has high standards, both from a regulatory and financial perspective with a 37 year track record of legal compliance. Private owns the largest library of quality adult content in the world, global rights to all our content, and strong technological know-how. All of these factors make Private uniquely suited to manage a viable and legal P2P network for consumers of adult content."
