A federal appeals court panel ruled Monday that Napster Inc.'s 50 million users clearly violate copyright laws whenever they share songs on the company's popular Web site without permission. Song swapping on the site was still going strong Monday night, but Napster is likely to begin blocking unauthorized downloads within weeks. Ruling in a lawsuit brought by the five largest record labels, the appeals panel said a lower court injunction that would have shut down Napster immediately was too sweeping, but the order's main effects will take place when it is revised by the trial judge. Napster officials said they will appeal the decision to the full 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. Meanwhile, they vowed to step up efforts to build a fee-based subscription service with Bertelsmann AG, one of the world's biggest media companies.
Users have little to fear legally from the ruling.
There's really no money in suing a consumer . . . Napster itself wasn't providing copyrighted music for free. Instead, it pioneered a service to help members download songs from each others' computer hard drives. The court of appeals found that the injunction is not only warranted, but required. While we respect the court's decision . . .