OWN CORRESPONDENT, San Fransisco | Saturday
THE recording industry said it planned to send a list of 135_000 copyright songs to Napster, giving the file-swapping company until Wednesday to block their free exchange on the online service.
The Recording Industry Association of America planned to send the list to Napster electronically some time Friday night, said representative Amy Weiss.
Napster then would have three business days to block the songs, according to an injunction published on Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel.
The injunction was issued based on a suit by record companies, who are seeking to shut Napster down for facilitating copyright infringement.
The list, compiled from music owned by the big five record labels, arranges the songs by artist name, song title and album name. Also included are names under which the songs are stored.
A Napster representative said late on Friday the company had not yet received the list of songs from the RIAA.
The RIAA would not speculate on what action it would take if Napster was not able to effectively block the material from its service.
One option would be to request a hearing before Patel and tell her that Napster had not complied to its satisfaction, at which point the judge could appoint an independent third party to serve as a technical expert and assist the court with any disputes, according to the injunction.
In a Web posting to its more than 60 million users, Napster said it has received some notices and expects the record companies to send more.
“You will still be able to share music that we haven’t been asked to block,” the statement read. “The Napster file-sharing service is and will continue to be up and running.”
Napster did not specify how many files have been blocked, but a wide range of files remained available Friday.
A search of “Metallica” revealed more than 100 files on one server.
A search of the band’s name and the song “The Unforgiven” returned no results. Yet a search on “The Un4given” was successful.
Howard King, an attorney who represented Metallica in a lawsuit against Napster, said he has been in contact with Napster officials since Patel’s order and has noticed efforts at blocking.
“I learned patience waiting four months for the court of appeals to rule,” he said. “As long as I think they’re trying to (implement the screening system), I’m not going to jump up and down.”
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