Napster Injunction Handed Down
Following up on last month’s Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision, U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Patel issued an injunction Tuesday ordering the Napster song-swapping service to remove all copyrighted materials within 72 hours of notification by the copyright owners. Napster has said it will comply with the order while continuing to negotiate for some sort of settlement with the record companies and prepare a membership-based service that would enable it to pay royalties to copyright holders. It remains to be seen if Napster can successfully limit access to copyrighted material, since multiple song title formats could foil automated searches, and users could also intentionally modify file names (think Pig Latin or Leetspeak).