The trade group representing major record labels has sent a list of 135,000 songs to Napster that the company must block from being swapped over its wildly popular Internet service by Wednesday, a group spokeswoman said Sunday.
Amy Weiss, spokeswoman for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), said the list was e-mailed to Napster late Friday.
Under a court injunction issued March 5, Napster is required to bar the transfer of songs specified within three days of notification by the copyright holders.
A Napster spokesperson confirmed that the company had received “a list.”
The world’s big record labels – including Vivendi Universal’s Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music and EMI Group PLC – first sued Napster in December 1999, claiming it was a haven for copyright piracy that would cost them billions of dollars in lost music sales.
Industry experts expect that Napster’s service will slow down significantly once the blocks are implemented. Napster has tried to block the transfer of 500 to 1,000 song titles over the past week, but in some cases users managed to get around the screening mechanisms.
