Napster says new technology will place limits on downloads

The announcement by Napster CEO Hank Barry came just days after a Federal Appeals Court ordered Napster to stop its estimated 50 million users from trading copyrighted song material. The copy protection technology was developed by Digital World Services, a subsidiary of German media giant Bertelsmann, which last year took a 50-million-dollar stake in Napster and is working to develop it into a subscription-based music service.

"This solution is further evidence of the seriousness of our effort to reach an agreement with the record companies that will keep Napster running, reliable, and enjoyable," said Barry. Analysts saw Friday's announcement as an important step towards a fee-paying system. The copy protection technology could conceivably allow Napster members to continue downloading songs for free while charging them a modest monthly rate if they wanted to make CDs out of digital files. Napster and Bertelsmann have yet to reach agreement with any of the other music labels that sued the music service for copyright infringement. In a brief presented to the San Francisco District Court, which is now responsible for the case, the Recording Industry Association of America late Thursday said it intended to supply Napster with a list of copyrighted song being swapped on the site and would demand Napster take action to delete them and bar people who traded them.

(kil/dpa)