Napster Plays Hardball
A federal judge has issued an injunction ordering the wildly popular song-swap service Napster to eliminate all copyright materials in its system.
The order, dated Monday, says Napster has just 72 hours to block any copyrighted songs from the moment that record labels hand over lists of songs they want banned from the song-swapping service, which has drawn more than 50 million people into a free-music frenzy.
The order by U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel did not specify what would happen if Napster was unable to comply, except to say another hearing could be held. All parties in the case are due to meet with a mediator Friday.
In issuing an injunction she reworked on the order of an appeals court, Judge Patel said the record labels must notify Napster of the title of the song, the name of the artist, and the name of the Napster file containing the infringing material. She said all parties should take "reasonable measures" to identify the copyright-infringing music.
Napster, which began a screening system this weekend in an effort to weed out such copyright music, then would have three business days to implement a system of blocking access to that file.
Patel acknowledged that it might be difficult to identify all variations of a copyrighted song, given that Napster users could use code words or shorthand to identify different pieces of music. "This difficulty, however, does not relieve Napster of its duty," she wrote.
On Tuesday, a Napster representative told CBSNews.com that the company will follow those procedures as it continues its legal battle. The representative also said that the recording industry must provide all of the file names that their songs are traded under.
Napster is fighting to stay online and retain its popularity while promising to shift over to a subscription-based service. And for that, it depends on the cooperation of the very music labels that sued the company to stop song swapping.
Praising the ruling, Recording Industry Association of America president Hilary Rosen said that the labels would comply fully with Judge Patel's order.
"We intend to provide the notifications prescribed by the court expeditiously, and look forward to the end of Napster's infringing activity," Rosen said.
A lawyer representing heavy metal band Metallica and rapper/producer Dr. Dre in their $10 million suits against Napster also praised the ruling and said his clients have been eager to get their songs off Napster for a long time.
"If Napster complies with what this injunction says, it will be to our satisfaction," said attorney Howard King. "It's technologically doable. The question is, is Napster going to go to the necessary steps to do it?"
King expressed frustration after speaking with Napster officials Monday. His clients have only about 200 songs they want blocked, and many were still available.
Judge Patel's ruling oes not mean Redwood City-based Napster has to shut down or turn itself off, stressed Eric Sheirer, an analyst with Forrester Research.
"What it does is give the record labels a great deal of power over exactly what songs are going to show up on Napster, how long they're going to be there, and how usable Napster will be for the vast number of consumers that are on there now," Sheirer said.
"The record industry has the advantage now of being able to get these songs off Napster any time they choose," Sheirer added. "But if they do it now, consumers will flee to all these other alternative services where they won't be able to control them."
And even if Napster is shut down, music fans can find their favorite songs all over the Internet.
The Napster-like Napigator program, for example, on Monday showed more than 96 million music files being traded by more than half a million people through computer servers located as far away as Italy, New Zealand, and Russia - numbers that rivaled Napster itself even as downloads peaked this weekend.
The music industry may have beaten Napster in court, only to find itself battling a countless assortment of new peer-to-peer file-sharing services, analysts said.
"This truly pushes trading copyright music back to the underground," said P.J. McNealy, who follows the digital music industry for Gartner Group.
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