Napster has ratcheted up its efforts to block unauthorised song swapping, sending the amount of music available on the service plummeting.
The company has posted a notice on the service saying the step is necessary to comply with a federal court order, which requires it to block access to certain files identified by the record industry as copyrighted works. Nevertheless, Napster acknowledged that the measures could obstruct some songs that fall outside the scope of the injunction.
In addition, the judge overseeing the case put off a request by the record industry to order stricter remedies against Napster, saying she first wanted to hear the report of a technical expert assigned to the case.
The company has been blocking songs from being traded on its service with only limited success since early March, when US District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ordered it to halt swaps of much copyrighted music. But the record industry has complained that these efforts have been largely fruitless. Faced with evidence of continued swapping, Patel called the filters "disgraceful" earlier this month.
Swan song?
The legal pressure has finally forced Napster to give ground in its filtering strategy, changing the way it is blocking music so that even many songs not identified by record companies as copyrighted are being screened out. As a result, the availability of music on the service this week has fallen steeply.
In a note to Napster users, the company apologised for its actions.
"We have recently enhanced (our) filters in an effort to screen out the wide range of variations in artist name and song title that result in noticed works continuing to appear on the Napster index," the company posted. "That, in turn, has unfortunately caused substantial additional 'overblocking,' the unintentional removal of otherwise authorised works, for which we apologize to our users and artists."
The company also reminded potential file swappers that intentional use of filter-evading tools such as NapCameBack or Pig-Latin encoders are now a violation of Napster's terms of service. People using these tools will be warned and ejected from the music-swapping network if they keep sharing files this way, the company said.
Disgruntled users
Napster users began complaining about overblocking, saying that even collections of "obscure, out of print" music were disappearing.
"It's time to euthanise this sorry, dying excuse for a file-sharing service," wrote a Napster user going by the initials "HTC" on the company's message boards. "I don't blame Shawn Fanning or any of the management trying to keep Napster alive, but it's time to face reality - with the flagrant overblocking currently in place, Napster is useless."
Although Patel did not explicitly order Napster to change its strategy, she said the company's efforts to date did not measure up to her expectations.
"You created this monster," she said. "You figure it out."
Patel said that no decision will be made on how well the filters are working, however, until a court-appointed technical mediator has a chance to dig into the technology involved. No date has been set for his final report.
