Napster must begin blocking songs from being traded through its service. But U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel gave the music-swapping company much of what it asked for in court Friday, denying the record industry's appeals for a much broader order.
Although the order will considerably reduce the amount of music available through Napster, it appears the company will not have to shut down the service altogether: for now. The company faces billions of dollars in damages and a possible shutdown at a pending trial into alleged previous copyright violations.
Regardless of any bright spots in Monday's ruling, Napster has been facing an almost certainly crippling decision since last month's record industry victory in 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. Patel's ruling simply adds details to the circuit court's ruling, attorneys said.
"I think this is a pretty damaging blow," said Mark Radclyffe, an intellectual property attorney with Gray Cary Ware & Freidenrich. "I think this is going to be pretty hard on Napster."
Patel said that record labels must share some of the burden of identifying songs on Napster's service that are infringing their copyrights. The labels must identify individual infringing file names as well as song titles and artist names to be blocked.
That's far less broad, and far easier for Napster to comply with, than Patel's original order, which simply ordered that all the labels' copyrighted works must be taken off the service.
The order does require Napster to help police for misspellings and other variations that are slipping through filters. The company has three days to block a file after determining that it likely infringes on copyrights.
"All parties shall use reasonable measures in identifying variations," Patel's order read. "If it is reasonable to believe that a file available on the Napster system is a variation of a particular work or file identified by plaintiffs, all parties have an obligation to ascertain the actual identity...of the work and take appropriate action."
