Napster, the free music-downloading service beloved by millions, was in the news again this week. But there is not much agreement on what the news means.
What happened was that on Monday a U.S. federal appeals court upheld an injunction against Napster -- though the district judge who wrote the injunction has been told to fine-tune it a little -- requiring the controversial service to stop letting its users share copyrighted material, that is, get it for nothing.
The problem is, that is pretty much Napster's whole reason for being. Once the reworded ruling comes through, perhaps as soon as a month from now, the upstart service with the demon-kitty icon will face three unpalatable options: It will have to restrict itself to dealing in noncopyrighted and authorized music (there is some, but nobody much seems to want it); it will have to shut down; or it will have to figure out some way of charging users for downloads. The last option is the most likely -- in fact, the German media group Bertelsmann has already agreed to work with the embattled site to develop a fee-based service -- but that will entail Napster ceasing to be Napster. Son of Napster, maybe, but not the cool, anti-establishment hero it is now.