Napster hampered by technical hitches

Music swapping service Napster said although it has blocked users from exchanging 228,500 files, it is still having difficulty complying with a court order to remove copyrighted material.

Napster also told a US court in its second briefing submitted on Wednesday that it has received "hundreds of thousands of inaccurate file names that do not correlate to the artist and title, making it hard to comply with the order".

Napster also claimed the big labels involved in the lawsuit do not own the copyrights in some instances and have made only "meager attempts" to comply with the injunction.

Napster said the exclusions have substantially constricted the files being listed on the Napster index. Prior to implementing the requirements of the injunction, the average user had 220 songs available for sharing. Currently that number is about 110 files per user.

According to a court order Napster must track down and block reasonable variations of artist and song names. The record companies are also required to participate in this search.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has said some inaccurate filenames may have been submitted. The RIAA sued Napster, alleging the internet site is allowing millions of users to download and copy copyright music at no cost.

"At this point it is clear that Napster has not complied with the court's order," said a spokeswoman for RIAA. "We are going to spell out our concerns in detail in the next court filing."

Separately, online music store EMusic.com said it has launched monitoring software that allows the company to continually search the Napster network for EMusic MP3s being made available on Napster without permission. The software also automatically reports these infringing track names to Napster for filtering.

Gene Hoffman, EMusic president and chief executive, said: "A small amount of unauthorised music will always be available to those who seek it out, but we are confident that recent legal opinions and automated technology such as this will significantly curtail the large-scale, flagrant file-sharing."