Napster MP3 users under fire

Rapper Dr Dre is the latest in a line of music artists to sue MP3 file swapping website Napster, but he is taking a novel approach by putting its users in the legal firing line.

As well as Napster, Dre is targeting students at universities who are using Napster to swap MP3 files of his music. No individual students have been named in the lawsuit as yet.

Heavy metal band Metallica also recently issued a lawsuit against Napster for alleged violation of copyright following legal action taken by The Recording Industry Association of America.

Last week Dre demanded that Napster remove all his tracks from the service. Napster refused and said it would only remove individual users identified as copyright violators.

Dre responded by asking a US court to shut down the Napster service and award damages of $100,000 for copied work. According to the lawsuit, this could amount to a total of $10m. Napster argues that because it is not storing the music it is not breaking the law.

Napster was launched last year by Shawn Fanning, a 19-year-old student who dropped out of university because he was bored. The Napster program, which can be downloaded from the site in minutes free of charge, provides users with a 'swap shop' of free MP3 music files that can be used on PCs and portable players or burned onto blank CDs.

At any one time, some 800,000 titles are available and there are already five million committed Napster users.