Labels Seek Napster Injunction

The major record companies and music publishers Thursday urged a federal judge to require Napster Inc. to block the downloading of any song they identify as copyrighted, something Napster officials say they cannot do without damaging their file-sharing network.

The firm’s proposal came in response to a ruling Monday from the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which directed U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel in San Francisco to impose new limits on Napster pending a trial on copyright-infringement lawsuit.

Napster’s lawyers say they will seek a far less restrictive pretrial injunction, one that would allow their service to continue running for the sake of authorized song copying.

Patel is expected to issue the injunction within the next few weeks, at which point Napster officials say they plan to appeal the 9th Circuit’s ruling.