It was only a matter of time before musicians filed lawsuits against Napster for listing downloadable audio files of their records on Napster's cooperative database. Metal band Metallica was the first to announce a lawsuit on April 13, 2000, alleging the company "violated the law by committing continuing copyright infringements, unlawful use of digital audio interface device, and violations of the...

Yesterday US District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel issued a temporary restraining order, directing Napster not to facilitate or permit infringement of copyrighted material. Because the immensely popular person-to-person music trading service does not have the capability to separate copyrighted materials from non-copyrighted, this ruling will effectively shut down Napster at midnight tonight, pending...

This online edition of a book published by the National Academy of Sciences is an example of its subject matter as it explores the issue of intellectual property in a digital age. The book examines the question of what happens to copyright issues when innumerable numbers of people can download a book (or a song, e.g., through Napster) from one copy on the Web? (Apparently, the National Academy of...

A federal judge's order, made public Wednesday, January 30, 2002, puts the recording industry's copyright infringement suit against Internet song-downloading service Napster, Inc. on hold until February 17, 2002. The case was put on hold for a month after both sides submitted requests to seek a possible settlement. Capitol Records, Inc. and Virgin Records America were the only two recording labels...

On Monday a three-member panel from the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that a lower court decision requiring Napster to immediately halt music swapping was "overbroad." This week's decision was anything but a victory for Napster, however, as the panel instructed US District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel to craft a narrower injunction that would still require Napster to block...