JULY 28: Napster Inc Chief ExecutiveOfficer Hank Barry said Thursday he was asking all 20 million users of the song-swap service to stage a "buycott" and write the record companies telling them they support their artists."We're encouraging users to go out this weekend and buy their favourite albums and write the labels, telling them Napster users are their most active customers and want to keep Napster alive," Barry told Reuters in an interview.Meanwhile, the tiny San Mateo, Calif.-based company that ignited a revolution and turned the traditional music industry upside down by making it easy for computer users to swap songs digitally, is hoping it will obtain an emergency stay on U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel's injunction, which goes into effect midnight Pacific time Friday.The judge's order, issued inside a packed San Francisco courtroom on Wednesday, ordered the company to shut down or stop allowing its 20 million users from swapping copyrighted songs belonging to members of the Recording Industry Association (RIAA), which had sought the injunction.The RIAA represents all the big record labels like Sony, Warner and Seagram Co Ltd's Universal."We strongly disagree with the ruling," Barry said, noting that in the appeal Napster's lawyers said the decision ignored substantial evidence that Napster helped, not hurt, record sales.Its lawyers said the ruling extended copyright law to cover new technologies, ignoring the counsel of the Supreme Court that such extensions should be Left to Congress.While Napster awaits word on its request for an emergency stay in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Barry said the company is also "trying to look at how we can comply with the order."During the hearing on Wednesday, Napster's attorney David Boies said it would be hard to comply without shutting down altogether, because there was no easy way to separate legitimate use of its service from illegitimate use.Barry said Napster servers had all been running close to capacity since the injunction was ordered. One user said there were about a million songs listed on at least one server at any given time on Thursday. It has multiple servers.Napster works like a co-op that enables users to swap Mp3 files in a compression format that translates music from compact discs into computer files that can be downloaded.Despite Wednesday's victory in court, many experts said the record companies face an uphill battle in reining in this new generation of music fans who have embraced this new form of "copy and swap" technology.Other file-sharing services like Gnutella were also experiencing a huge influx in activity resulting from the judge's decision.Barry said there were no discussions underway with any of the record companies and that the hope was to keep the company running even after the injunction. "We're just trying to focus on this appeal and how we can comply with the injunction," he said.Other Napster fans were expected to attend a Dallas rally on Thursday organised by an independent hip-hop record label which supports the song-sharing software, while others joined a call to boycott the RIAA.
