Napster says it has begun to block the sharing of music files from
its system as it pre-empts an injunction being re-drafted by a
federal district court in San Francisco. Last night, it was hoping
to have technology in place that would block the sharing of file
names submitted to Napster by copyright holders. Estimates suggest
this could cover around one million MP3 files.
Hank Barry, CEO of Napster said after a court hearing on
Friday:
“This is a case that should be settled… At
today's hearing, Sony, AOL TimeWarner, Vivendi Universal and EMI
pushed well beyond the dictates of the 9th Circuit decision in
their quest to shut Napster down, insisting on an injunction that
it would be impossible to comply with other than by shutting down
the service.”
He added that he is hopeful that the court’s injunction, when it
is issued, will allow the Napster service to continue in operation
while it continues to seek a settlement deal with the recording
industry and a move to a subscription-based service. He said: “We
believe that this matter could and should be successfully resolved
by the mediator appointed by Judge Patel.”
Napster’s attempt to filter song files may not satisfy its
opponents who will likely argue that it will be easy for users to
circumvent the filtration software by changing the titles of songs
and artists, many of which are already misspelled on the
service.
