The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has requested a preliminary injunction to shut down Napster.

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The Recording Industry Association of America filed a brief requesting U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel grant the injunction preventing Napster from "facilitating or assisting others in, the copying, downloading, uploading, transmission or distribution of copyrighted musical works."

The RIAA's legal actions against Napster began in December 1999 with allegations that Napster encouraged music piracy. Napster claimed the responsibility of obeying copyright law rested in the hands of the individual Napster users. But Judge Patel ruled in May that Napster could be held responsible for illegal song-swapping.

Judge Patel's ruling on the request for injunction against Napster is expected July 26.

Even if Napster is put out of action, it is likely to be a failure as a long-term strategy. Many other file-sharing applications currently exist, some of which make detecting copyright infringement on a wide scale an extremely difficult proposition.

Additional legal action by Metallica and Dr. Dre has lead to over 500,000 Napster users being banned from using Napster. Many users have since found ways to circumvent their banning.

File-sharing programs:
Gnutella - Anonymous file sharing program
iMesh 1.02 Beta build 116 - Search, find and download files like never before
MP3Exchanger 1.19 build 66 - Like Napster, but so much more
Napster Fix - A patch for Napster for any blocked or banned users
Scour Exchange 1.0 Beta - Share your music, video and image files

 

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