OFF: N*pster updating.....["the master list"]

[DASLUD at AOL.COM]

Napster Will Comply With Judge's Order
Will Seek Settlement With Record Companies

Reuters

LOS ANGELES (March 6) - Napster, the wildly popular song-swap software, said
Tuesday it would comply with U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel's
injunction, ordering it to remove songs from its directory three days after
it is notified by their copyright owners.

"Napster will follow the District Court's order. Even before the court
entered the order, we began making efforts to comply with what we believed to
be the dictates of the Ninth Circuit's ruling," said Hank Barry, chief
executive officer of Redwood City, Calif.-based Napster.

Barry said Napster would continue to press its case in court and seek a
mediated resolution as it works to implement the order. Napster will continue
to seek a settlement with the record companies and to prepare its new
membership-based service.

In his statement, Barry said the Ninth Circuit and District Court rejected
the recording industry's argument that Napster was inherently illegal and
that the order called for both the recording industry and Napster to share
the burden of complying.

The world's biggest record labels -- including Vivendi Universal's Universal
Music, Sony Music Warner Music, EMI Group Plc and Bertelsmann AG's BMG first
sued Napster in December 1999, claiming it was a haven for copyright piracy
that would cost them billions of dollars in lost music sales.

The labels are required to provide lists of the material they want removed.
"As we receive notice from copyright holders as required by the Court, we
will take every step within the limits of our system to exclude their
copyrighted material from being shared," he said.

17:47 03-06-01
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Court Gives Napster 72-Hour Deadline

By RON HARRIS
.c The Associated Press


SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A federal judge Tuesday laid down the law to Napster,
saying that once the recording industry comes up with a list of copyright
songs it wants removed from the music-swapping service, Napster will have 72
hours to comply.

The order effectively gives the recording industry control over the immediate
fate of the Internet music service that lets computer users download popular
songs for free.

Meanwhile, Napster was hit on another legal front Tuesday when the National
Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, the producers of the Grammy Awards,
filed a copyright infringement suit.

Napster is fighting to stay online and retain its popularity while promising
to shift over to a subscription-based service that charges listeners and pays
royalties to artists. For that, it needs the cooperation of the music labels
that sued Napster for copyright infringement.

The academy's suit mirrors the ones filed by the recording industry. The
academy is seeking to prohibit Napster from allowing its millions of users
from downloading and sharing recordings of live performances aired at last
month's 43rd annual awards show.

The academy said it owns the rights to the works and has applied to copyright
the material. Some of the recordings appeared on Napster immediately after
the Feb. 21 broadcast.

Academy president Michael Greene said the academy and Universal Music Group,
the parent company of Eminem's record label Interscope, now are debating
whether to commercially release the broadcast of Eminem's duet of ``Stan''
with Elton John now that it is on Napster.

``We remixed that song, and were looking to put it out to the public with
some of the proceeds going to the recording academy charities,'' he said.

Napster did not immediately return messages seeking comment on the academy's
actions.

Napster, which has struggled with little success in the last few days to
screen out some songs already identified by record labels, faces a contempt
of court order if it can't comply. Chief executive officer Hank Barry said
Napster will follow the court's order.

``The district court rejected the recording industry's argument that Napster
is inherently illegal,'' Barry said in a statement. ``As we receive notice
from copyright holders as required by the court, we will take every step
within the limits of our system to exclude their copyright material from
being shared.''

``If Napster complies with what this injunction says, it will be to our
satisfaction,'' said Howard King, an attorney for heavy metal band Metallica
and rapper-producer Dr. Dre in their $10 million lawsuits against Napster.
``It's technologically doable. The question is, is Napster going to go to the
necessary steps to do it?''

In her ruling, U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel asked record labels to
provide the titles, artists' names and relevant file names of all songs it
wants banned. After that, Napster will have three business days to remove the
songs.

It will be up to the music industry to prove ownership of the particular
songs it wants excluded.

The judge acknowledged it might be difficult to identify all variations of a
copyright song, since Napster users could use code words or shorthand to
identify different recordings.

``This difficulty, however, does not relieve Napster of its duty,'' she
wrote.

The judge said she would hear any disputes arising from her decision and
appoint an independent technical expert if necessary.

Hilary Rosen, president of the Recording Industry Association of America,
said: ``We intend to provide the notifications prescribed by the court
expeditiously, and look forward to the end of Napster's infringing
activity.''

The music industry could come up against some snags.

Eric Scheirer, an analyst with Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research,
said that in many cases record labels do not actually know what songs they
own, what versions are copyright and what are properly registered.

``Many of these records are filed away in a cabinet somewhere and haven't
been computerized yet,'' he said.

Scheirer stressed that Patel's ruling does not mean Napster has to shut down
or turn itself off. Instead, he said, Napster's continued survival depends on
how quickly or slowly the record labels deliver song lists.

``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,'' Scheirer said.

If the labels force Napster to pull the plug completely, he said, ``consumers
will flee to all these other alternative services where they won't be able to
control them.''

Napster's popularity exploded in 1999 after founder Shawn Fanning released
software making it easy for people to locate and trade songs stored as
computer files in the MP3 format, which compresses digital recordings without
sacrificing quality.

The five largest record labels - Sony, Warner, BMG, EMI and Universal -
quickly sued, saying Napster could rob them of billions in profits.

On the Net:

Napster: http://www.napster.com

Recording Industry Association of America: http://www.riaa.org

Northern California U.S. District Court: http://www.cand.uscourts.gov/, click
on Napster rulings

Napigator: http://www.napigator.com

AP-NY-03-06-01 2316EST
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Alternatives to Napster

Reuters

NEW YORK (March 6) - While a federal court judge ordered Napster Tuesday to
remove copyrighted songs from its service within three days of receiving
notice from record companies, there are a number of online alternatives.

Ranging from utopian hacker creations to well-financed commercial efforts,
following are some of the best known:

-- Scour.com (http://www.scour.com): Like Napster, routes file requests
through a central corporate server computer.

Formerly one of the largest Napster-like services, it was sued by the
recording industry and shut down under bankruptcy protection. The new owner,
CenterSpan Communications Corp., plans to launch a new "legal" version of the
song exchange by the end of the month.

-- iMesh (http://www.iMesh.com): Also routes requests through a central
server, and offers access to video and image files.

Based in Israel, it offers the ability to complete downloads even if the
original owner goes offline while the file is being transferred.

-- Aimster (http://www.aimster.com): Piggybacks on America Online's instant
messaging service, allowing users to share files with people on their "buddy"
list, or with those who have chosen to share with anonymous guests.

Routes encrypted file requests through proxy servers, which may provide some
degree of legal protection.

Allows any type of file -- music, images, data -- to be shared.

-- Gnutella (http://gnutella.wego.com): Decentralized network without a
central server may be considerably more difficult to shut down via a music
industry lawsuit.

Volunteer-run open source program can be chaotic, with arcane controls and
extremely slow download times.

A slew of derivative programs -- Gnotella, Gnewtella, Newtella, Mactella, to
name a few -- have emerged in recent months.

-- OpenNap (http://opennet.sourceforge.net): Effectively allows individuals
to create their own Napster networks.

-- Napigator (http://www.napigator.com): Enables searching across different
Napster-like servers, including Napster itself.