Napster left out in the cold

A US judge has ruled Napster cannot reopen its service despite managing to remove 99 per cent of the copyrighted material on its servers.

The verdict effectively brings about the end of Napster as a free service.

US District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel told Napster it must stay offline until it can block 100 per cent of unauthorised copyrighted material.

Forrester analyst Tim Grimsditch said squabbling over the one per cent figure is a little "pedantic", but said he believed Napster had not been effective since filtering began and now its only hope is to become a subscription-based site.

Speaking to silicon.com, he said: "I would argue they've been cropped enough over the last few months, it's already pretty useless. To survive I think they need to legitimise their business."

The service has been unavailable since 2 July and Napster CEO Hank Barry denounced the decision to keep it down.

He claimed the ruling jeopardises all peer-to-peer file sharing over the internet and said Napster will appeal the decision.

Barry also said his company will try to enable file transfers as soon as it can. Napster still plans to launch its paid subscription service later in the summer, Barry added.

But Grimsditch said attempting to filter unauthorised file swapping to a level of 100 per cent "is a very tough task".

Meanwhile, Napster's nemesis, the Recording Industry Association of America released a statement praising Patel's ruling.

Hilary Rosen, CEO of the RIAA, accepted that Napster had made attempts "to migrate to a legitimate business model", but said it had hampered the development of the marketplace overall.

The major labels are attempting to step into the void left by Napster by launching their own paid online music services later this year. Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group have formed a joint venture named pressplay, while AOL Time Warner, BMG and EMI are working with Napster to launch a service called MusicNet.