With Napster likely to shut off service to millions of MP3 traders Friday night (July 28), online music-industry observers are predicting former Napster users will simply turn to other file-sharing systems to get music.

On Wednesday, a federal judge in San Francisco granted the Recording Industry Association of America's request for a preliminary injunction against Napster, requiring the company to remove all material copyrighted by RIAA members from its service by midnight Friday.

Napster attorney David Boies said it would be impossible to identify and remove every copyrighted song flowing through Napster's network and that the service would have to shut down in order to comply with U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel's order.

"Somebody out there stands to pick up a lot of users on Saturday morning," San Francisco intellectual property attorney Fred Von Lohmann said, "and I don't know who it's going to be."

Napster announced Thursday that it had filed an appeal, asking a Ninth Circuit Court judge to stay, or delay, Patel's injunction, which otherwise would stay in effect for the duration of the RIAA's copyright-infringement suit, filed in December. Napster attorneys said the injunction should be stayed for several reasons, including that the decision ignored substantial evidence that Napster is helping, not hurting, the record industry.

Meanwhile, MTV News Online reported that Napster is urging its users to demonstrate their buying power this weekend by purchasing CDs from pro-Napster artists.

Napster users appear to be scrambling to grab MP3s while they still can (Click here for a full report), and a Napster spokesperson confirmed that traffic is up but would not release any figures. After Friday, many predict, similar file-sharing applications such as Gnutella, Freenet and Scour will take in many former Napster users.

"My sense is that the most popular search terms on the Internet today are 'Scour' and 'Gnutella,' which would suggest that consumers still want to find the music they want in the format they want, and find new music so they can buy it," said John Potter, executive director of the Digital Media Association, which represents such Internet music players as Real Networks, Liquid Audio and iCast.

"Everybody is gonna be mad at the whole situation, and they're just going to go to alternatives that are even better than Napster," said Jason Soares, 28, who runs the music download site MP3it.com. "There's Napigator, which is basically an open Napster network. ... You run this thing and it adds itself into the Napster program and allows you to use different servers. There's Gnutella, and then there's ultimately Freenet. Each of these things is more and more progressively a nightmare for the current thought process of the recording industry."

Gnutella, Scour and Freenet are file-sharing applications similar to Napster in purpose — allowing users to connect with one another to share files — but different in that they have no centralized server, thus making it harder to shut them down. The RIAA and the Motion Picture Association of America last week filed a lawsuit against Scour Inc. similar to the one the RIAA hit Napster with.

Scour Inc. President Dan Rodrigues said traffic on Scour.com had increased by 80 percent during the past week, which he attributed in part to press coverage of the RIAA/MPAA lawsuit.

'File Sharing Is Not Going Away'

Public Enemy frontman and Rapstation.com founder Chuck D, a fervent Napster supporter, said Wednesday's decision could impede technology, but it won't stop file sharing.

"If Patel was the key judge at the last turn of the century, we'd still be relying on horses and buggies and trains to get around," Chuck D said in a statement. "Stopping the process of file sharing is like trying to control the rain."

"A judge can put a company out of business, they can lock a server in a closet, but file sharing is not going away," the DiMA's Potter said, "so we need to manage it in a way that is pro-consumer and pro-creator."

Hard-rockers Metallica, who, along with veteran rapper Dr. Dre, have their own lawsuit pending against Napster, lauded the decision.

"We are delighted that the court has upheld the rights of all artists to protect and control their creative efforts," the band said in a statement Thursday. "[A] society that does not value intellectual property is a poorer society, both economically and esthetically."

In his own statement, Dr. Dre said, "This is one small step for Dr. Dre, and one giant step for people that actually work for a living, instead of living off other people's work. F--- Napster — and I mean that."

Attorney Howard King, who represents Dr. Dre and Metallica, said the injunction will help his clients' cases.

"The injunctive relief that [Patel] ordered is going to include my clients' works, so to that extent, they've gotten a large portion of the relief they sought in their lawsuits," King said. "Now I suspect the issues in their cases are going to be how much damages they're entitled to."

Napster Raised Awareness Of Online Music

"Napster has proven that there is huge demand for online music consumption," Listen.com CEO Rob Reid said in a statement. "It's up to the traditional music industry and legitimate online music companies to build on this opportunity, and to develop systems that will properly compensate artists and other rights holders."

Reid and other Internet music executives are quick to chastise Napster for not following the rules of copyright law, yet credit the company with vastly raising public understanding and knowledge of online music.

"I'm not in a place to give them credit for anything but amplifying the issues through controversy," said Steve Grady, vice president of marketing for music download site EMusic.com. "That doesn't justify going around the rules. ... Crime doesn't pay, and ultimately, if you do things that are illegal, you're not going to come out ahead. If what Napster does was legal, a lot of people would have done it."

"As you can imagine, Scour's been following the case closely, including every detail of the case and the arguments made by the defense, but really, at this time, we're still analyzing Judge Patel's decision," Scour Inc.'s Rodrigues said. "We still strongly stand by our position that all of our services, including Scour Exchange, are legal services, and that ultimately the court will agree with us."

"This case has big implications for many Internet businesses, not just music companies," Von Lohmann said, noting that the Napster case is among the first to put Digital Millennium Copyright Act "safe harbor" provisions to the test. The provisions protect Internet service providers from copyright infringement liability, but Patel said they were inapplicable to Napster.

"There are many Internet companies that have been relying on those provisions, so everybody needs to pay close attention when she finally writes it down," Von Lohmann said. "Two years ago, the online players went to Washington [D.C.]to try to get some clarification on what their copyright obligations are. ... This is one of the first court decisions telling us whether or not that compromise works."