Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO — Napster Inc.’s new screening technology failed to weed out even the most popular songs yesterday, and music fans seeking free tunes flocked to a growing number of Napster clones, an ominous development for record labels.
Attorney David Boies revealed the new filtering technology Friday in an attempt to avoid a complete, court-ordered shutdown, and Napster began phasing in it Sunday night to prevent copyright songs from being freely swapped.
Yesterday, only a smattering of songs were blocked from the service, however. A spokeswoman for the music-swapping company declined comment on its struggle to block songs.
A search yesterday for Metallica’s hit "Unforgiven" returned a "No matching files found!" response on one Napster server.
However, a query for Metallica’s other songs, such as "Enter Sandman" and "I Disappear," resulted in easy downloads. Searches for the top 10 Billboard hits — including R&B artist Joe’s "Stutter" and Crazy Town’s "Butterfly" — also were successful.
Meanwhile, Napster Inc.’s crackdown prompted fresh frenzies of free-music downloads at other Web sites that use Napster software but are beyond the easy reach of recording industry lawsuits.
For example, the Napigator program yesterday showed more than 96 million music files being traded by almost half a million people through computer servers located as far away as Italy, New Zealand and Russia — numbers that rivaled Napster itself even as downloads peaked this weekend.
The music industry might have squelched Napster, but it now faces an assortment of new file swapping services that will be far more difficult to track down and sue, said Aram Sinnreich, an analyst with Jupiter Research.
"This truly pushes trading copyright music back to the underground," said P.J. McNealy, an analyst who follows the digital music industry for Gartner.
Napster said in a statement that the process of screening out copyright-protected file names, song titles and artists won’t be easy.
"It has involved a significant investment of time and resources," the statement said. "However, we believe it is superior to shutting the service down and disbanding the community during the transition period to the new membership-based service."
Howard King, attorney for Metallica and Dr. Dre., expressed frustration after speaking with Napster officials yesterday. His clients have about 200 songs they want blocked, and many were still available.
"They need to tweak their screen do some sort of a term-based analysis," said King, noting that Metallica’s "Fade To Black" was still appearing on Napster, with various spellings using both letters and numerals. "If a week from now the results aren’t better I think you would have to say I’d be dissatisfied."
The software being installed on Napster’s servers will block access to 1 million music files, Boies said. Because it will filter out variations on each song’s title and artist’s name, the actual number of tunes screened out will be smaller, but officials refused to say how many distinct songs will be blocked.
Napster’s plan is a pre-emptive move against an injunction sought by the major record labels, which argue copyright holders and artists are not compensated for music traded on the service. Napster has argued its computers do not store actual song files but rather direct people to other users’ hard drives where the music can be downloaded.
In July, U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel granted the industry’s request for a preliminary injunction and ordered Napster shut down for facilitating infringement. But last month the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stayed the order pending its decision in the case.
By Friday, all parties were back in court to discuss the case when Napster changed its tune and announced plans to start blocking songs.
"We expect they will honor the representations they made to the court," Hilary Rosen, president of the Recording Industry Association of America, said in a brief statement on Monday.
Patel did not say when she issue a new injunction. Both sides are scheduled to meet with a mediator Friday.
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