The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled against Napster and their effort to keep the major record labels from shutting them down.
As the details of the ruling unfold, please keep this in mind: Napster is not shut down, but under this decision it could be. They are very disappointed in this ruling by the three judge panel and will seek appellate review. The Court today ruled on the basis of what it recognized was an incomplete record before it. Napster will attempt to get more facts into the record and will pursue every avenue in the courts and the Congress to keep Napster operating.
Napster's creator Shawn Fanning released this statement following the decision :
"I'd like to add a word or two about the future of Napster. As many of you know, we've been developing a Napster service that offers additional benefits to members of the community and, importantly, makes payments to artists. I'm focused on building this better service and I still hope to have it in place this year. The new technologies we are developing are amazing; I hope that, by further court review or by agreement with the record companies, we can find a way to share them with the community.
I would also like to thank everyone for being so supportive. Napster works because people who love music share and participate. Along the way, many people said it would never work. We've heard that we couldn't survive before -- when we had 700,000 members, and when we had 17,000,000 members. Today we have more than 50,000,000 members, and we'll all find a way to keep this community growing. If we work together and let Members of Congress know how important Napster is to us, we'll succeed. Thanks."