Ruling could doom Napster

A federal court ruled yesterday that Napster must stop allowing users to swap copyrighted music. Napster officials said they would keep operating while they fought in court. Napster was created by a teenager in 1999. Napster's software lets computer users trade audio files by connecting with one another. The music is all for free. You don t have to make any payment to the artists or record companies who produced the music. Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ruled in May that Napster knowingly helped its users violate the copyrights of artists and music labels. In a July, she ordered the service to stop all access to protected material. Yesterday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals said that Patel was fundamentally correct but that her decision. The judges said Napster could continue to operate until Patel revised her injunction. Legal experts said her revision could come within days. Napster officials said they would seek a hearing before the entire appeals court in San Francisco, and then before the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary. In its ruling, the appeals court said: "Any destruction of Napster Inc. by a preliminary injunction is speculative compared to the statistical evidence of massive, unauthorized downloading and uploading" of copyrighted songs, which according to court documents increases at a rate of 10,000 songs a second.

I believe that the judges ruling was not fair to Napster. The article said the Napster knowingly helped its users violate the copyrights of artists and music labels . But when you become a user of Napster, they specifically say that these music files are strictly for backup purposes only. They also say that if you don t have the original copy, you are not allowed to download the file. It is not Npaster fault that people are using the music files illegally.