Ruling is not last dance for Napster - Company Business and Marketing

The Recording Industry Association of America may think it has won the war to defend Its members' copyrights online, now that the United States Court of Appeals has ruled against Napster, Inc.

But academics and Internet developers are springing to the defense of what they say is a ground-breaking technology and not just a music-geeks' free ride.

Users [will] move to other software like Freenet or Gnutella, and to other servers such as OpenNap," said Professor Steve Jones, head of the department of communication, University of Illinois at Chicago. "But we won't see Napster go away very soon."

As part of its defense, Redwood City, California-based Napster emphasized that its peer-to-peer file-sharing technology was not simply a means for college students to get free music. A report commissioned by Napster, written by Peter S. Fader, associate professor of marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, claimed that Napster's technology Is particularly suited to academic research projects--and that work was being done to determine If the technology could be adapted for file-sharing for the human genome project.

Fader's report also quoted Dr Andy Grove, chairman of Intel Corp., Santa Clara, California, who has said, "The whole Internet could be re-architected by Napster-like technology."

But the judges ruled that Napster may be held liable for copyright Infringement perpetrated by its users, if it knew of such material on its system and failed to act to prevent its distribution. Napster was also told that it must patrol its system and block access to those songs in its search index.

But Napster and Berteismann AG, of Gutersloh, Germany, which has provided $50 million to help transform Napster Into a secure subscription service, have hired legal big guns.

"Napster didn't hire [David] Boles and Bertelsmann didn't hire [Joel] Klein without planning to go to the Supreme Court with this case," said Jones. "And it will take some time for it to get there. All the while Napster will continue to operate as is--or until Bertelsmann gets Its subscription act together--whichever comes first."

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