In anticipation of the ruling by District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel, Napster began filtering its service on Sunday night.
Hank Barry, CEO of Napster, said of the amended injunction:
“The 9th Circuit and the District Court rejected the recording industry's argument that Napster is inherently illegal. The District Court's order holds that the recording industry and Napster share the burden of complying. Plaintiffs are required to certify that they hold the rights to the material and that it is available on Napster. As we receive notice from copyright holders as required by the Court, we will take every step within the limits of our system to exclude their copyrighted material from being shared.
“We will continue to press our case in court and seek a mediated resolution even as we work to implement the court's order. We will continue to seek a settlement with the record companies and to prepare our new membership-based service that will make payments to artists, songwriters and other rights holders.”
The terms of the injunction require the record companies to provide Napster with the title and artist of each track together with the name of one or more files available on Napster’s system containing that work, and also certification of copyright ownership. Both Napster and the record companies must “use reasonable measures in identifying variations of the filename(s), or of the spelling of the titles or artists’ names” on the companies’ lists.
Within three days of receiving “reasonable notice of infringing files, Napster shall affirmatively search the names of all files being made available by all users at the time those users log on (i.e. prior to the names of files being included in the Napster index) and prevent the downloading, uploading, transmitting or distributing” of these files. The record companies can also send Napster lists of tracks in advance of new song releases.
The ruling is more favourable to Napster than Judge Patel’s original order which required Napster to remove all labels’ copyrighted works from its service. The new order takes into account the way its file sharing system currently operates and divides the policing responsibilities between Napster and its opponents. The record companies and the RIAA, their industry body, welcomed the ruling.
This ruling is only a preliminary injunction; a full trial in the case is scheduled for later in the year. Accordingly, Napster can still try to settle the dispute, although its recent $1 billion offer to the record companies met with an unfavourable response.