Napster's efforts to filter copyrighted music from its file-swapping network have failed, and the company must modernize its screening system or transform its trading system altogether, record companies told a federal court Tuesday.
The company has already blocked more than 200,000 songs, and more than 1.6 million file names, Barry noted. That has led to the average total number of songs available at any given time dropping from 370 million to 160 million, he added. |
The filtering system now used by Napster is text-based, screening out the names of artists, titles and files that have been identified by the record labels. Independent research company Webnoize has said that the filters are resulting in nearly 25 percent fewer daily Napster users, although the number of files shared by each person has climbed.
The RIAA says it has identified more than 600,000 individual works at this point. But Napster has said that many of these have come in as simple names of songs and artists, without being tied to any specific file on Napster. Under the court's order, this is not enough to block a song.
"The aggregate impact of (the record labels') misinterpretation of the court's injunctions and inattention to the accuracy of their compliance efforts has placed a serious and inappropriate economic and physical burden on Napster," the company wrote in its filing last week. This has "resulted in significant overexclusion of legitimate user files on the Napster indices and produced an environment that will wrongly cause significant user frustration with the Napster system."
The RIAA will file comments with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday, arguing against Napster's request for a review of its case by a full "en banc" panel of judges, the next highest level in the appeal process.
Source: ZDNet.com
