LOS ANGELES: Though record companies may have won a major courtroom battle
against Napster, the technological war may have just begun for the labels as
they will now have to compile the names of millions of songs that Napster will
now have to filter, under a court order.
A federal court judge in San Francisco on Monday ordered Napster to remove
music from Bach to the Rolling Stones from its wildly popular directory, within
three days of receiving notice by copyright holders. "We are putting
together a list and will deliver it to the Recording Industry Association of
America (RIA), which should get it to Napster by the end of this week," an
executive for one of the major labels involved in the lawsuit said.
While the long-awaited injunction, issued late on Monday, underscored a
victory for the music industry in its crusade to protect its intellectual
property, it placed some burden on the recording companies. The judge appeared
to give Napster a little breathing room by making the labels, who first sued
Napster for copyright infringement in December 1999, responsible for identifying
the infringed material on its vast directory, which facilitates the trading of
billions of music files each month.
Pastel first issued the injunction in July but it was held up by an appeals
court and later modified by Pastel. Executives at several labels on Wednesday
played down the modification, saying that they had been prepared for the
injunction in its latest state.
But compiling such lists is a formidable task, according to music experts.
"If Napster keeps going, we'll add to the list, but if Napster shuts down,
we won't have to," one executive said. Russell Frenchman, attorney for the
RIA, the trade group for the labels, said it would be an ongoing process.
"We're going to move as quickly as possible but its safe to say there will
be more than one list," he said.
Indeed, while the labels are not totally off the hook in the injunction
process, they hailed the ruling that comes after a 10-month legal battle. The
world's biggest record labels - including Vivendi Universal's Universal Music,
Sony Music Warner Music, EMI Group Plc and Bertelsmann AG's MG are involved in
the suit.
Napster chief executive Hank Barry on Tuesday said Napster would take every
step within the limits of its system to exclude the labels' copyrighted material
from being shared. He also vowed to press ahead in court, seek a mediated
resolution and try to work on a settlement with the labels even as Napster
prepares to stay alive with subscription version of its service with Bertelsmann
AG in this summer.
Users outfox Napster
Indeed, while Napster may not be shut down entirely, as most of its users
feared it now faces a daunting task of trying to curtail copyright infringements
on its service. Napster has already begun blocking by screening some files, but
Net-savvy users have quickly outfoxed the mechanism.
But experts said there were other means by which Napster could comply with
the injunction. Napster could incorporate 'digital hallmarks' or 'fingerprints,'
in the music files to place limits on usage. A firm called Canaletto, for
instance, has introduced software that can identify individual songs recorded at
different times by the same artist.
Judge Pastel said that in case of a dispute over Napster's ability to comply
with the injunction, a technical expert would be appointed and another hearing
held on this issue. "I'm going to assume that Napster in good faith will
try to identify variations of files and avoid infringements," Cary Sherman,
general counsel for RIA said.
(C) Reuters Limited 2001.