Napster Users Download Like No Tomorrow
Posted by Heidi Chambers in Archive on February 11, 2001 at 11:23 PM

As most people know, there is a good possibility that Napster will be shut down tomorrow due to the fact that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is ready to rule on a lower court's injunction against the company started by Shawn Fanning. This has created an MP3 downloading frenzy.

Yesterday, almost 10,000 Napster users logged on to just one of Napster's computer servers sharing nearly two million MP3 files. (Napster's servers normally accommodate about 6,000 users at a time.) Compare this to last July's statistics of 7,300 users sharing 800,000 files and you can see the giant growth. (As I am writing this story, at 10:00pm PST on a Sunday night, there are still over 1,500,000 files currently being traded on Napster.)

Even through what some people see as impending doom, Napster is remaining hopeful. "We have great confidence in our legal position," said the company in a statement.

Most of the time, I don't agree with Hilary Rosen, president and chief executive officer for the Recording Industry Association of America, but in this case I do. She stated, "The ultimate Napster decision will set a precedent. Its outcome is important for all intellectual property." Tomorrow's ruling will be one for the record books.

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