Judges Press Napster's Buttons -- Late Wednesday, 26-Jul-00, Judge Marylin Hall Patel issued a preliminary injunction barring the popular and controversial online music service Napster from distributing copyrighted musicShow full article

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Judges Press Napster's Buttons -- Late Wednesday, 26-Jul-00, Judge Marylin Hall Patel issued a preliminary injunction barring the popular and controversial online music service Napster from distributing copyrighted music. However, two judges in the Ninth Circuit Count of Appeals on 28-Jul-00 issued a temporary stay that enables the service to keep operating. The stay should remain in effect until at least early September, when both parties will have filed their arguments regarding the preliminary injunction. Napster is being sued by the Recording Industry Association of America and A&M Records, which claim the company promotes piracy and copyright infringement and that the Web site has cost the recording industry over $300 million in lost sales. Napster claims it enables legitimate swapping of recorded music by acting as a clearinghouse of links to machines where MP3-encoded songs can be downloaded. Nonetheless, Judge Patel wasn't impressed, and barred Napster "from causing, assisting, facilitating, copying, or otherwise distributing all copyrighted songs or musical compositions." Napster's service has been the subject of considerable media attention, including lawsuits from high-profile recording artists and testimony before the U.S. Congress. Nonetheless, Napster is widely seen as being targeted by the recording industry because it's one of the most visible (and easily sued) facilitator of online music swapping, while other similar services such as Gnutella and The Free Network Project are more nebulous and difficult or impossible to trace. [GD]

<http://www.napster.com/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbup=06052>
<http://www.riaa.org/>
<http://www.amrecords.com/>
<http://gnutella.wego.com/>
<http://freenet.sourceforge.net/>

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Napster (Finally) Releases Mac Client -- Napster, the controversial peer-to-peer music sharing service currently being sued by major recording industry players for promoting piracy, has released its first beta client software for the MacintoshShow full article

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Napster (Finally) Releases Mac Client -- Napster, the controversial peer-to-peer music sharing service currently being sued by major recording industry players for promoting piracy, has released its first beta client software for the Macintosh. If the software walks and talks like Blackhole Media's Macster, one of the most popular third party Napster clients for the Mac, don't be surprised: Napster recently purchased Macster and has now blessed it as its official Mac client. Napster plans to keep the same team of developers working on it. The client allows users who register with the Napster service to download MP3 files from other members of the Napster community, as well as optionally share a local stash of files with that community and participate in real-time chats. The Napster 1.0b1 client is a 1.3 MB download and requires a PowerPC-based machine running at least Mac OS 8.1 (with CarbonLib 1.4 and Internet Config); Napster plans to release support for non-English languages shortly. [GD]

<http://www.napster.com/mac/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/06056>

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Appeals Court Upholds Napster Injunction -- A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals today issued a 58-page opinion in which it held that the popular peer-to-peer song-swapping service Napster must stop enabling users to access copyrighted material served by Napster usersShow full article

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Appeals Court Upholds Napster Injunction -- A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals today issued a 58-page opinion in which it held that the popular peer-to-peer song-swapping service Napster must stop enabling users to access copyrighted material served by Napster users. The Appeals Court action follows an injunction against Napster originally issued 26-Jul-00 by Judge Marylin Patel, which barred Napster from "causing, assisting, facilitating, copying, or otherwise distributing all copyrighted songs or musical compositions." Two judges on the Appeals Court issued a temporary stay against that injunction almost immediately, pending arguments from both Napster and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), who is suing Napster for copyright infringement and promoting piracy. (See "Judge Presses Napster's Buttons" in TidBITS-541.) The Appeals Court decision permits Napster to remain in operation until Judge Patel modifies her original "overbroad" injunction. However, the decision also requires Napster to prevent users from accessing content that would violate copyright and finds Napster had both actual and constructive knowledge of direct copyright infringement. Napster could be held liable for failing to monitor its system for copyright violations, as well as for contributory copyright infringement. Napster is expected to appeal the decision to the full Appeals Court or even to the U.S. Supreme Court; the full text of the decision is available from FindLaw.com.

In a move partially aimed at placating the recording industry, Napster partner Bertelsman's CEO announced recently that the service would start charging a monthly fee for users as early as June 2001 as a way of paying labels and artists, although no details of how such a payment system would compensate artists have been released. Napster currently claims to have more than 50 million users, and estimates place the number of downloads via Napster in January alone at 2 billion. [GD]

<http://www.napster.com/>
<http://www.riaa.org/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/06056>
<http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/ getcase.pl?court=9th&navby=case& amp;no=0016401>

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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 06-Mar-01 ordering the Napster song-swapping service to remove all copyrighted materials within 72 hours of notification by the copyright ownersShow full article

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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 06-Mar-01 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. In the meantime, late on 10-Mar-01 the RIAA delivered a list of 135,000 items for Napster to prevent from being swapped on its service; Napster has until 15-Mar-01 to comply, and more lists are on the way from music publishers. 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). [ACE]

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/06295>
<http://www.napster.com/>
<http://www.napster.com/pressroom/pr/010306.html>

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