MP3 file-sharing company Napster Inc. was granted a stay, delaying an injunction handed down Wednesday that could have forced the service offline at midnight Friday (July 28).

Napster attorneys convinced a panel of Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals judges to stay the injunction, which U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel granted the Recording Industry Association of America on Wednesday. The stay allows Napster time to put together its formal appeal, the opening brief of which is due Aug. 18.

The preliminary injunction would have forced Napster to remove all copyrighted material owned by RIAA member record labels, including the "Big Five" majors, from the site.

Napster attorney David Boies, who successfully argued the federal government's antitrust suit against software giant Microsoft, had argued that it would be impossible to remove the copyrighted material from Napster's directory of available MP3 files. Boies said even the RIAA could not identify all its material in a six-month period and that the injunction likely would force the popular service offline, leaving Napster’s 22 million users without access to the site.

Napster attorneys argued that Patel wrongly distinguished between "personal" and "noncommercial" use, extended copyright law to cover new technologies against apparent Supreme Court advice and "ignored substantial evidence that Napster is helping, not hurting, the record industry," according to an official statement.

Napster is urging its users to demonstrate their purchasing power by staging a "buy-cott" this weekend, encouraging them to purchase CDs by Napster-friendly artists such as Limp Bizkit, Chuck D and the Grateful Dead.