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Record labels begin compiling lists for Napster

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CIOL Bureau
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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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