Napster song-swapping temporarily out of order

Sue Zeidler

LOS ANGELES: Song downloading was suspended on Monday on embattled Napster as

it suffered some technical glitches during an upgrade of its music-swapping

service to comply with a crippling court order.

"File transfers have been temporarily suspended while Napster upgrades

the databases that support our new file identification technology. Keep checking

this space for updates. Thanks for your support!" said a message posted on

Napster's homepage Monday.

A spokesman said file transferring had been suspended in order to resolve a

problem with the databases for new fingerprinting technology, which helps

Napster filter out copyrighted songs in order to comply with its injunction. The

fingerprint technology, developed by Relatable, identifies songs based on

acoustical properties. Napster said the problem arose out of complications with

the database of fingerprints that it is compiling.

Under a March 5 injunction from federal judge Marilyn Hall Patel, Napster is

required to block songs as it is notified by copyright holders. The company has

seen usage practically grind to a halt as it has sought to comply with

injunction.

The newest version, dubbed 10.3, is expected to enable users to trade songs

that were previously inadvertently halted by its earlier filtering efforts.

These songs include material from independent artists and labels, which are not

required to be blocked.

"It will take some time for our new filtering technology to identify

files; so initially, the number of files available will drop. As more users

upgrade to the new versions and more files are identified, more music will

become available through Napster," the message posted on its Web site said.

As of Friday, Napster began requiring users to download the latest version,

thus barring any visitors unless they had upgraded to 10.3. "All previous

versions of Napster have been disabled. We're making this change as part of our

ongoing effort to comply with the court's orders," the Web site has said

since Friday.

But with over 800,000 musical works to identify, Napster apparently has run

into problems as the users have upgraded to 10.3. "The filtering databases

had to be rebuilt to support the new file identification technology, and when

you're dealing with such large numbers, things are bound to be

complicated," the company said in a statement.

"Our own testing indicated that the database was allowing files to be

shared that should have been blocked from the index, and the best way to correct

that problem was to take the database offline to make corrections," the

company said.

Research firm Webnoize last week found that users shared an average of 1.5

songs each on Napster's service, down sharply from an average of 220 songs

shared per user in February. Many people feel the changes are too late for

Napster, which is attempting to keep user interest alive, ahead of a planned

summer launch of a membership-charging service.

Many users have increasingly jumped ship, looking elsewhere at Gnutella-type

file-sharing services like WinMX, LimeWire and BearShare and other services like

Audiogalaxy for free music. "This is so 'rest in peace Napster,'" said

one user when he saw the latest message posted on the home page.

(C) Reuters Limited 2001.