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Three days after Monday's court ruling required Napster to block copyrighted music, traders were still able to log on and find the top ten tracks on Billboard's "Hot 100" singles chart.
Joe's "Stutter" -- the No. 1 single on the Hot 100 chart -- was there ("I can tell you're lying / cuz when you're replying / you stutter, stutter, stutter.") So was virtually everything Napster nemesis Metallica has ever recorded.
The music is available because the recording industry is still in the process of compiling its list of songs it wants off Napster, a task which is recognized to be a bit time-consuming and difficult.
"We are putting together a list and will deliver it to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which should get it to Napster by the end of this week," an executive for one of the major labels involved in the lawsuit told Reuters on Wednesday.
So basically Napster is still a free-for-all for everyone -- unless, that is, you are a fan of Roy Orbison.
Though it's true that none of Orbison's songs quite match the lyrical genius of "Stutter," it seems that such Orbison favorites as "Pretty Woman" and "Unchained Melody" are a rather hot commodity on Napster. So late last week, his estate, led by his widow Barbara Orbison, notified Napster of "over 1 million copyright violations of the Roy Orbison catalog."
Now, much to the chagrin of at least a couple Napster users, the service has started blocking people who have Roy songs in their libraries.
"I got a great big message when I tried to log on, three pages of infringements," said an annoyed Carolyn Borders, a 65-year-old Napster user from Ossawa, Mich., where it's "snowing like you wouldn't believe."
Borders said that she didn't mind being blocked from the service that much; what she really hated was that legalistic notice. "It's very complicated," she said, "and I don't know what to do. I guess I have to contact a lawyer."
She added that she didn't think there was anything really wrong with freely downloading songs from a service like Napster, because, well, the quality just isn't very good.
"I only had one of his songs -- 'Only the Lonely' -- and you know, when you download this stuff, they don't tell you there's skips in them, and you can hear background noise," she said. "Most of the songs I have are real real oldies, and I'm not going for the hip-hop or the bebop or the loud rock music. So I just think (record companies) are trying to get their two cents' worth."
Keith Jackson, a Napster user from Washington, D.C., saw his banishment from Napster as a sign they were using too stringent a filtering method. Jackson was blocked for having a copy of "Crying," an Orbison duet with k.d. lang, in his library.
But within hours he was able to set up a new Napster account, after getting rid of the offending tune. Jackson can now be reached on Napster at the screen name "riaablowsdogs."
All this agitation over just Roy Orbison, legend though he may be, begs the question: What'll happen when Napster starts blocking really popular songs?
Peter Sohal, vice president of marketing at the software firm J. River, hopes that there'll be a file-trading revolution, one that will lead to the dominance of his company's subscription-based music-swapper, called AfterNap.
The apparently dim future of Napster has prompted Sohal's firm to go on a marketing blitz. Just as it snapped up the lucrative AfterNap domain name last week, the company sent out a press release offering record companies $3 billion to license their music content.
That sum eclipses the piddling $1 billion offered by Napster. Needless to say, though, J. River doesn't have the money. "Do we have $3 billion lying around the office? Of course not," Sohal said. "But Napster doesn't have $1 billion either."
Sohal said that his billion-dollar dreams were based on the assumption that record companies would license their content for use on AfterNap, and that users will pay about $10 per month to get the songs. "Three of the big five labels have contacted us," he said, "and the upshot is that we will meet them and discuss terms."
