Napster comes back from the dead

Music file swapping website Napster has convinced the US Federal Appeals Court to suspend the 11 July ruling that it stay shut.

Napster had earlier suspended its service while it upgraded its filtering technology.

But despite assurances that its audio fingerprinting technology would be 99 per cent effective, Judge Marilyn Patel had ordered the service to remain closed. The Appeals Court ruling now gives Napster the chance to prove its claim.

Although file swapping had not yet restarted by 11a.m. BST on Thursday, it should soon if Napster sticks to its 11 July promise that it "will make every effort to resume file transfers as soon as possible".

Lawyers for the Recording Industry Association of America, Napster's chief protagonist, said Napster had not done all it could to police its system and that the Appeals Court ruling had not altered the fact that Napster must prevent copyrighted works from appearing on its system.

Naspter is also under fire from its own fans after PlayMedia revealed that Napster had licensed their proprietary variant on the MP3 technology used to swap tracks.

Users believe this means that Napster is set to dump MP3 in favour of a proprietary technology that will give copyright owners total control over its service. PlayMedia said the technology would be used in Napster's subscription service when it is launched later this year.