Napster Judge Issues Injunction
Music & MP3
3/6/2001; 2:22:12 PM 'Napster has a three-day window to remove copyrighted music from its file-sharing system every time it is notified that a copyrighted song appears on its network, if it accepts the terms of an injunction issued by a federal court judge late Monday night.

'According to District Judge Marilyn Patel's injunction, Napster now has five days to outline its plans to begin policing its network. Somewhat surprisingly, the injunction also calls for splitting the responsibilities of monitoring the system between Napster and the Recording Industry Association of America.'

Not really that surprising... this is probably to forstall the objections on the part of Napster that the RIAA has not proven a single case of infringement. While one can make vague claims that Napster has infringing material and be confident (statistical sense of "confident") in it enough to issue an injunction, when one gets down to the tricky business of deciding which recordings are actually illegal, RIAA is going to have to help. Remember, some bands allow fans to record concerts and trade them, so in some cases there will be multiple versions of some songs, some legal, some not. It's trickier then it looks to prove a particular file infringing.