Napster has submitted a complaint to the US Court of Appeals
about the way in which certain aspects of the copyright
infringement case against it were conducted. Amongst other issues,
the company behind the file-swapping service asserts that the
court-appointed technical advisor Dr. Nichols, whose duty was to
monitor the filtering measures taken by Napster to eliminate
copyright infringements, was given too much power over the
company.
The legal brief alleges that Dr. Nichols interfered in the daily
running of the company, ordering decision-making timetables and
requesting internal engineering It states: “Nichols effectively put
himself in control of the fileID development effort, setting
priorities and deciding how the fileID system should work in
significant respects”.
The submission also claims that the initial ruling of the trial
court made in March was subsequently reinterpreted in a way that
had more serious consequences for the Napster service than the
court had originally intended. In part it attributes its failure to
comply with a court order, which required a guarantee that its
technology for detecting infringing files was 100% effective, to
the record companies for not providing complete listings of those
files.
