With a possible court-ordered shutdown of Napster's popular music swapping service looming, fans of the online song-swapping service said they planned to spend the last minutes downloading music.
"I've already been investigating new alternatives to Napster such as Aimster and Gnutella," said Cary Miller, a new media executive and Napster enthusiast.
"Right now I have over 110 songs sitting on my hard drive that I've downloaded on Napster, and I will probably download another 50 or so depending on how much time I have," he said.
Earlier on Friday, a federal court said it would issue its opinion on Monday as to whether it should re-issue an injunction against Napster that would effectively shut down the wildly popular song-swap service.
In October, a three-judge panel heard arguments from both Napster and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which requested the court lift a stay on an injunction against the service, which has attracted more than 50 million users.
Users flocked to the site following the court's announcement on Friday.
"You can assume the Napster servers are maxed out...," said Bruce Forest, vice president for Sapient Corp., referring to the server computers that manage the flow of data in a network.
One 14-year-old said he would like to spend all weekend downloading songs, but would have to squeeze in his song-swapping activities between working on school assignments.
"I'd hate it if it was shut down. But even if they shut it down, there are hundreds of ways to get songs on the Internet," he said. "But Napster is still the easiest."
Napster's service, which lets fans swap songs for free, is considered a haven for piracy by the big music companies which are seeking the injunction to stop it from operating pending a final decision in the landmark copyright lawsuit.
Since the lawsuit was first filed in December 1999, Napster's service has continued to gain popularity.
Users who log on to the service to swap individual songs for free by trading MP3 files, a compression format that turns music on compact discs into small computer files.
Napster to abide by court ruling?
In the past, Napster officials have always said they would comply with any ruling that the court issues.
The company got a shot in the arm in late October, when BMG parent company Bertelsmann AG, one of the record labels suing Napster, broke ranks, saying it would drop its suit once Napster transformed itself into a paid service that pays royalties.
As part of the deal, Bertelsmann provided an estimated US$30 million to US$50 million in funds to Napster and obtained a warrant to buy a stake in the company.
Bertelsmann invited the other music companies to participate, which would make such a music subscription service most appealing to users.
To date, Napster and Bertelsmann have scored support from Germany-based Edel Music AG, one of the world's leading independent labels, and TVT Records, a large US independent label. It has continued to lobby other labels to join in the initiative.
