Napster accuses music industry of being unfair

Sue Zeidler

LOS ANGELES: Embattled song-swap service Napster says the record industry is

not playing fair. Just days after big record labels e-mailed the company a list

of 135,000 songs to be blocked from the service as part of a court-ordered

injunction, Napster chief executive Hank Barry said on Monday that much of the

list did not comply with a court-ordered notification process.

"Most of the names were in conjunction, but 50 per cent of Sony's list

did not have file names and that's a clear violation of the injunction,"

Barry told reporters on a conference call. He said that Sony Corp.'s Sony Music

submitted just under 95,000 songs altogether and that 46,037 of those songs

listed artist and titles but no file names. Additionally, he said that 5,600

songs on the list submitted Friday were duplicates. Sony Music was not available

for comment.

Napster is using a screening process that matches file names with artist and

title names. Users create new file names as they download songs on the service,

which enables them to swap songs for free using the MP3 compression format,

which translate music on CDs into a digital file.

Many users have already figured out new ways to spell file names, thus

getting around the screening mechanism. "It's about a week since we had the

injunction and we've been complying in both the letter and the spirit of the

law," Barry said, adding that Napster would soon file a compliance report

with the US District Court in San Francisco.

Not seen plans



"We have not seen Napster's compliance plans. We have no reason to believe
that they will not comply with the court's order," said a spokesman for the

Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Doug Curry.

Industry sources, however, scoffed at Napster's latest claims and said the

RIAA submitted over two million file names when it handed over the list on

Friday. Industry sources earlier said the labels were planning on sending more

lists in the next days.

Barry said Napster had so far screened 115,000 unique file names,

representing 26,000 songs with artists and titles associated with them since

March 4. He said the list included many popular songs spanning several genres

and artists, from Eminem to Elvis Presley to Bare Naked Ladies.

Under a court injunction issued on March 5, Napster has time until Wednesday

to block the songs. It is required to bar the transfer of songs specified within

three business days of notification by the copyright holders. Barry said the

company was blocking as quickly as possible, but that it was impossible to block

songs if they are submitted improperly. "It's important for our filtering

process because of the manpower involved and because the court requires at least

one file name," he said.

One person familiar with the list said that each major label used their own

criteria to identify songs to be blocked. "Each label has different

catalogs with different songs of importance," the source said. "I

think they generally started with pop stuff," said one executive at a

recording label.

A slower Napster?



Industry experts have said they expect that Napster's service will slow down
significantly once the blocks are implemented, although users have been getting

more adept at finding ways around the screening mechanism. For instance, if a

user wants "I Looked at You" by the Doors, they could just substitute

"Eye Looked at U" and get it.

Barry said that Napster was working on ways of "weeding out"

variants. "Nobody expects us to get all the variants within three business

days," he said. He said the company was developing a software program that

will continually conduct searches and said, "we believe it will pick up 99

per cent of the variants."

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.

"People are using Pig Latin, backwards spelling and inserting numerals

and deliberately misspelling names," said analyst Ric Dube of Webnoize.

"This injunction only feels like a victory to the recording industry. They

can hand in lists as long as they want, but what we've seen is that if fans want

to share something they figure out ways to do it," Dube said.

(C) Reuters Limited 2001.