Q: How many copyrighted works are being filtered from the Napster index?

A: Napster's filtering efforts are an ongoing process. From March 16 to April 2, Napster has excluded from its index, approximately 87,000 unique artist/song title pairs and more than 550,000 normalized file names. In total, Napster has now filtered approximately 311,504 artist/song title pairs and approximately 1,717,602 unique file names. Additionally, Napster has blocked 142,000 artist/song title variants. In less than three weeks, the number of files being shared per user has dropped by more than 50%.

Q: Has Napster tried to improve its filtering capabilities?

A: Since the March 27 filing, Napster has added a third filter to its system. Whereas the first and second filters prevent files with a specific word combination from being indexed when a user logs on, the third filter blocks searches for certain artist/title pairs. For example, searches for the exact artist/title pair "Metallica" and "Enter Sandman," or any previously identified variant, now return no results.

Napster's filters can now also block files based on pre-selected keyword matches. For example, from "Jimi Hendrix - Purple Haze," Napster selects as keywords "Jimi," "Hendrix," "Purple," and "Haze." Any file with a combination of those words, such as "Jimi" and "Purple," would be blocked from the system.

Q: What is Napster doing to prevent users from circumventing the filters?

A: Napster is taking this issue very seriously. Napster now has full access to Gracenote's database of approximately 140,000 variations of artist names and song titles, and approximately 3 million variations and misspellings of file names. In conjunction with the new keyword filters, this should significantly reduce the number of artist/title variations that may escape the screen.

Napster has improved its filtering technology to account for common filename variations. For instance, numbers in front of or following a word ("1Jimi 1Hendrix - 1Purple 1Haze") are now treated as separate words, so that the keyword filter will properly identify and block the file name.

Napster has also amended its terms of service to advise users that if they intentionally change or otherwise disguise the names of their files in an attempt to circumvent Napster's filters, their access to the system will be terminated.