End of the road for Napster

by Oliver Goggi

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FOLLOWING months of litigation it appears Napster has finally been brought to its knees. The ruling by a Californian court to stop trading in copyrighted material means that although the site does not have to completely shut down, it must work out a way to guarantee royalties to artists traded within its file sharing system.

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Napster users downloaded some 250 million tracks last weekend, fearing Monday's ruling might close the site. However, following the recent partnership with BMG entertainment last October plans are currently being devised to keep the service going with the introduction of a subscription charge to guarantee royalties to artists. The company says that it is possible to create a service that not only secures and compensates the rights of the artists, but also provides punters with a service they are prepared to pay for.

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But the big question still remains how many people would be willing to pay for something they have always been able to download for free Some say current users are pretty loyal and would continue using the site if there were an introduction of a monthly fee. And this would go some way to placate musicians such as Eminem who said of the matter: 'If you can afford to have a computer, you can afford to pay $16 for my CD.'

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However, with a number of alternative file-swapping programmes, such as Napigator and Gnutella gaining popularity, what's the beating that the ever-fickle internet user will simply switch to one of the alternatives