Legions of Napster Fans Online Hardly Miss a Beat

A federal judge may have pulled the plug on the song-swapping party at Napster Inc., but partygoers Thursday simply moved, as many of Napster’s 22 million users quickly scattered to other piracy platforms that will be tougher for the record industry to stop.

Amid outpourings of anger and grief by Napster fans, who behaved as though one of their rock idols had died, Web sites offering downloads of Gnutella, Napigator and other file-sharing tools were deluged by music fans.

The scramble underscored the fact that, even though Wednesday’s ruling, which Napster is appealing, was a big victory for the record industry--forcing Napster to stop allowing users to swap copyrighted works--the industry’s fight to maintain its empire in the Digital Age is only beginning.

Legal experts and industry analysts said that killing Napster gives the record industry a chance to push Internet music piracy back underground, where it had been confined before Napster came along to bring music downloading to the masses.

But many experts believe that Wednesday’s courtroom victory could backfire on the music labels, because millions of fans who were engaging in piracy in the relatively plain view of Napster’s service will now be doing the same thing in more dispersed, protected havens.

The record industry itself is unlikely to lure many of these displaced Napster users. Even though every major label is planning to offer music downloads, their efforts so far consist of experiments in which the technology is clunky and the prices are considered obscene.

And because Gnutella and other budding swap services are not operated by a company, or even organized centrally, the record industry now faces the prospect of going after dozens of Internet service providers, and millions of Internet users, if it hopes to thwart their growing piracy habit.

Even the industry’s lead attorney in the Napster case acknowledged the difficulty of the new situation.

“One of the arguments we made to the court all along is that Napster is training people” that piracy is acceptable, said Russell Frackman, attorney for the Recording Industry Assn. of America. If Napster’s users simply move on to other services, he said, “people far smarter than I will have to figure out how copyright law can assert itself.”

Wednesday’s ruling by Judge Marilyn Hall Patel in U.S. District Court in San Francisco gave Napster until midnight tonight to prevent users from swapping copyrighted songs. Napster executives said there is no practical way to accomplish that and the company will be forced to shut down.

Napster appealed the decision Thursday to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Its attorneys argued that Patel’s ruling was “impermissibly broad” because it requires Napster “to block the sharing of all music” even though “a significant amount of music copying by Napster does not infringe any copyright.”

Frackman said the RIAA would file a response today and legal experts said it is unlikely Napster will win a reprieve.

The ruling is likely to be fatal to Napster, whose popularity was largely based on the ease with which it enabled users to download for free almost every popular song ever recorded.

“I’m frustrated and angry by it,” said Napster interim Chief Executive Hank Barry. “We’re focused on people continuing to use the service,” he said. But he acknowledged that without an immediate reversal Napster may “have to turn off the switch.”

He said the company has not decided whether it will keep the Web site and chat-rooms up and running if the injunction remains in place.

In its appellate court filing, Napster’s attorneys wrote that without a stay of the injunction, the company “will not be able to continue with its peer-to-peer technology,” and “approximately 40 employees will have to be laid off within a matter of days.” That represents the bulk of Napster’s work force, Barry said.

Within hours of the ruling, Napster fans began to lash out. Patel’s court received angry calls throughout the day Thursday, according to a clerk.

Meanwhile, Napster founder Shawn Fanning was greeted Thursday morning by 2,600 e-mail messages bemoaning the ruling, Barry said.

Napster fans also flocked to the company’s chat rooms to mourn the news, all while madly downloading audio files before today’s midnight deadline. More than 92,000 people downloaded the application Thursday, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, an Internet market research firm.

“God, god, god, I don’t have enough time!” wrote a Napster subscriber who uses the handle LeatherNun. LeatherNun’s MP3 collection, according to the service, includes more than 1,200 files. “This just sucks.”

On the Web site Slashdot, a news hub for the digerati, outraged consumers swore that they would boycott albums by artists signed onto major labels.

“I’ve decided that I won’t be buying any CDs for a while personally,” wrote one Slashdot poster. “I’ve already canceled a couple of orders.”

Others were making contingency plans. “I’m getting what I can, while I can,” wrote a Napster subscriber using the name SuperJuice. “Saturday, I’m off to Gnutella.”

Thousands of other music fans were already making that switch.

There are hundreds of sites with links to Gnutella software, which lets users swap any kind of file, including music. One popular spot, https://gnutella.wego.com, was crushed by an avalanche of traffic.

The site typically handles a few hundred visitors a day, many of whom grab a copy of the program, said Gene Kan, a Gnutella developer and founder of Infrasearch. By midday Thursday, the number of downloads had surpassed 30,000.

“It’s been absolutely crazy,” Kan said. “We’ve had brown-outs all day.”

Ultimately, the traffic proved to be too much: The site was taken offline temporarily Thursday “due to the unprecedented traffic volume following the Napster decision,” according to a posted statement.

Other music-swapping sites were also being flooded with Napster orphans. Scour Exchange, based in Hollywood, reported that its traffic was up 80% before its site also collapsed under the load. Scour faces its own RIAA suit, and many legal experts believe its song-swapping service will be the next to fall.

The record industry’s strategy is to use the courts to beat back the threat of online piracy until the labels themselves can control online distribution. But that remains a distant goal, at best.

EMI, for instance, only recently began making about 100 albums available online. But they cost as much as a CD in stores, even though the sound quality is inferior, and some industry experts report that EMI’s downloading technology doesn’t work.

Meanwhile, the legal battles are likely to become far more costly and strenuous. Already, a number of file-swapping technologies are cropping up overseas, beyond the reach of U.S. copyright laws. IMesh.com, for instance, is based in Israel.

Other services could be even more elusive because, unlike Napster, Scour and MP3.com, they are not backed by companies or even centralized services.

The music industry “would literally have to sue millions and millions and millions of people who are, after all, their fans,” said Bruce Forest, a media entertainment strategist for Viant. “Only a trial lawyer thinks that’s a good idea.”

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Times staff writer Joseph Menn contributed to this report. A special Times report with articles about the growth of music sharing on the Internet is at https://www.latimes.com/musicweb.

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Who Fills the Void?

* Gnutella: A data-swapping program that expands on what Napster started. https://gnutella.wego.com

* OpenNap: Data was meant to be shared, believe programmers working on https://opennap.sourceforge.net.

* FreeNet: The next hot thing, which will be the big boy of file sharing. https://freenet.sourceforge.net

* Scour Exchange: Swaps music, video and data files--much to the chagrin of Hollywood and the record companies. https://www.scour.com

* IMesh: Positioned as a smaller, friendlier version of Napster. https://www.imesh.com