They're Back

Napster OK'ed to Resume Limited File Trading

9th Circuit Court Overturns Judge Patel

Limited reason prevailed today as the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Darth Patel's death sentence of Napster in a short two sentence ruling. And although both Napster's Web Site and the Software still proclaim file trading is suspended, 120,000 people were waiting on-line with 65,000 "Napster filtered" files as of 10:00 pm Monday, July 18, 2001.

Curiously, as of July 23, 2001 file trading was still blocked. Napster may feel the current filters do more harm than good. But no information has been coming from the once mighty music resource.

None the less, this is welcome relief from Patel's very harsh ruling. Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the major labels will still kill Napster, but Patel was completely out of bounds in creating this type of economic burden on a company that is trying to comply with her rulings.

The decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel's July 11th order that Napster remain offline until it fully complied with an injunction to remove all copyright music.

During the July 11th hearing Napster announced it was about to restart its music-sharing service and could now block more than 99 percent of all infringing song files. But Patel told Napster it needed to block 100 percent of unauthorized, copyright songs or stay offline indefinitely.

The Recording Industry Association of America noted that the court only temporarily lifted Patel's order and will hear arguments on the case later this year. At that time, the industry said it expects to prevail.

"It is important to note that today's ruling does not change in any way the fact that Napster must prevent copyrighted works from appearing on its system as previously ordered by the court," RIAA attorney Cary Sherman said.

In separate news, Napster today announced it will eliminate trading of mp3's when it's new service is unveiled later this year. In its place will be a .nap format that will allow only secure trading and tight copy controls. Members mp3 files will be converted to the .nap format before any file trades are possible.

Sadly, Napster has bowed to industry pressure to create an totally useless format. The .nap format cannot be copied, cannot be downloaded onto portable players, cannot even be played on other software on the host computer. And for this we will pay a monthly fee??

Napster doesn't need Darth Patel to kill them, they are committing suicide all by themselves.