Judge says "Maybe" Napster should be shut down

US District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel seemed on the verge of shutting down Napster, denigrating the company's efforts to block copyrighted songs as "disgraceful." Patel said that unless Napster finds a filtering system that works, "maybe the system needs to be closed down."

Napster announced it had acquired technology and help from music search and indexing company Gigabeat as part of their effort to improve filtering but, increasingly, experts seem to believe that the company will be shut down.

For more information, read newsBytes.com, pcworld.com and vnunet.com.