Napster to filter out songs identified as copyrighted

The latest Napster ruling may have been music to the record industry's ears, but it may be a painful cacophony to the approximately 57 million registered Napster users worldwide.

Earlier this week, nearly a year after Metallica filed suit against Napster, the file-sharing service began filtering out copyrighted files from its library of songs.

Titles and artists' names passed over the music-sharing network are now being screened through a list of copyrighted works. Files that match the title and author of a song that Napster has identified as copyrighted will not be listed in the directory, preventing blacklisted copyrighted works from being shared.

"The filtering won't be 100-percent effective, but just good enough to stop the average user from finding too much copyrighted material," said Napster user Jon Viventi '04, who has been following the Napster struggle.

The Metallica song "Enter Sandman" was one of the first songs to be filtered out. As of yesterday, a search for the song returned several "Enter Sandman" songs that sneaked through Napster's filter, but no songs with the exact title.

Napster user Andre Kurs '04 said, "Just misspell the artist's name. And there you go, you can find anything you want."

With only a tweak in Napster's filtering system, however, MP3s listed under variants of the true title and artist could disappear as well. "If things start to get hard [to find] . . . I'll probably go to some other service," Kurs said.

Viventi said, "Napster still mostly works for now, but it could become terribly restricted almost overnight."

The ruling does deny the music industry's claim that Napster is an inherently illegal operation. As long as Napster filters its file listing according to the injunction's demands, the service will not be shut down.

"We will continue to press our case in court and seek a mediated resolution even as we work to implement the court's order," said Napster CEO Hank Barry in a statement released Tuesday.

Last summer, a district court issued an injunction against Napster prohibiting the file-sharing company from facilitating the distribution of the copyrighted works of the plaintiffs — including A&M Records, Sony Music and MCA Records. The injunction was stayed by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals until the appeal was resolved.

On Feb. 12, the appeals court upheld the injunction against Napster. According to the ruling, nearly all of Napster's defenses fell through.

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The injunction was finalized Saturday by the district court. According to the injunction, "the burden of ensuring that no copying . . . of plaintiffs' copyrighted works occurs on the system is shared between the parties."

Napster is required to block copyrighted items within three days after being notified by the copyright holder that the file is being unlawfully transmitted.

Last month Napster went public with their plans to become a membership-based service starting this summer — something Napster users had been anticipating. According to Napster's Feb. 20 statement, unlimited transfer of files may cost users up to $10 per month, and a limited-transfer membership will likely cost between $3 and $5 per month.

The injunction has given the music industry the upper hand, putting Napster in more danger than it has ever been before.

"Now they're giving in to whatever demands they have to just to stay online," Viventi said.

When Napster puts a price on the music, users may choose to use one of several other Napster-like alternatives, such as Gnutella or OpenNap. The music industry will have a hard time controlling these because there is no one person or company creating the software. Instead, there are dozens of programs available, designed by many programmers that use the Gnutella and OpenNap systems of exchanging files.