Napster Use Shrinking Court Order Affects Use Byron Alley
March 19th, 2001 - Since the court order requiring Napster to prevent users from sharing copyrighted music, the online music sharing system has seen a definite decrease in usage. Napster does not store music on its site but maintains lists of the titles that its users have offered to share. Therefore, the company has no direct control over the music being offered. Now, per court order and with a long list of copyrighted songs, they must attempt to filter out the names of copyrighted music, thus preventing them from being listed.
Despite user's attempts to circumvent this filtering system by misspelling or garbling song names, Napster use has fallen into decline. Fewer songs are being offered by users and fewer songs are being downloaded, according to Webnoize, a company monitoring Napster usage. Napster is also seeking to filter out misspellings of popular song names and other name-mangling schemes, in order to comply with the court order.
In the meantime, the company is also eagerly pursuing contracts with recording companies to license music, hoping to turn its service into a legal paid-subscription system.
