Despite reports on Friday that Napster would voluntarily implement new screening technologies to filter copyright-protected material, it appeared to be business as usual on the site this weekend.
Hoping to avoid a court order that could put the company out of business altogether, Napster offered on Friday to block user access to what could amount to millions of files. “We will begin later this weekend to block the transfer of file names we have previously received from copyright holders, consistent with the 9th Circuit’s ruling,” Napster’s CEO, Hank Barry, said in a statement on Friday.
Major record labels, music publishers, and bands like Metallica and Dr. Dre, who oppose Napster, submitted some 5,600 songs they wanted removed from the service. But according to The Hollywood Reporter and user reports, many of the songs, if not all of them, were still being traded freely on Saturday and Sunday.
Songs were not only traded freely, but they were traded heavily as well. MP3 addicts seemed determined to ensure they got a full dose of freebies before Napster’s new self-policing policies went into effect. Clip2.com, a site that monitors peer-to-peer networks, reported over 64,000 users online on OpenNap at 11:04 a.m. Pacific Time today, with over 15 million files available.
Emails and calls to Napster today were unanswered.
Should the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) accept Napster’s peace offering, the hot issue will be who is responsible for identifying copyrighted files on Napster’s network. The RIAA would prefer to provide a list of artists’ names, songs and album titles, while Napster is requesting that they also provide specific file names identified by copyright owners. Each song could potentially account for a huge number of differently named files on Napster’s system.
Once the file names are provided, Napster says it will take approximately three business days to remove the material from its search index.
The two sides will meet before a mediator on March 9, and a hearing scheduled for April 10 will address potential class-action lawsuits from independent labels and music publishers.
