NAPSTER GETS A LITTLE SLICKER

From MTV: Time appears to be running out for Napster users who have been evading the service's filtering system by identifying Metallica songs as the work of "Metllicka." Napster said Friday (April 20) that it plans to begin using "acoustic fingerprinting" technology soon to identify songs by their musical content, not by their user-defined file names. In other words, if you're trying to share tracks of Radiohead's Amnesiac, Napster will be able to stop you, even if you try to pass off the files as songs by "Radiohed" or even "Underwater Sea Life of Pluto." Napster has licensed a music identification method from technology company Relatable, and the file-sharing service plans to use the technology not only in its current screening system, but also in the promised new version of Napster that requires users to pay subscription fees to download authorized files. The major labels — whose copyright infringement suit against Napster prompted a court injunction requiring the service to remove songs specified by the labels — have said that the service's current text-based filtering efforts are insufficient. U.S. District Judge Marilyn Patel concurred in a hearing earlier this month, calling the filtering system "disgraceful"