LOS ANGELES -- File-sharing firm Aimster on Wednesday said it has removed from its website a program based on pig Latin that enabled Napster users to get around court-ordered restrictions on the popular song-swap service.
"At the request of Napster, Aimster has removed the Pig Encoder Software from public distribution through its website," said Aimster Chief Executive Officer Johnny Deep, adding that the encoder was removed as of Tuesday morning.
"We do this out of respect for Napster's efforts to maintain its own service for its own users as it deems best," Deep said, but added that Aimster bears no responsibility if the encoder is distributed by users on Aimster's private messaging service or websites administered by Aimster users.
Aimster, whose software lets users trade files by piggybacking on instant message networks, released the free Aimster Pig Encoder program on March 4 on its website.
A Canadian firm, PulseNewMedia, released a similar program this week as Napster attempts to comply with a preliminary injunction issued on March 5 by the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, which requires it to remove songs from its service within three business days of notification by copyright holders.
Napster's service has attracted about 60 million users who swap songs for free by trading MP3 files, a compression format that turns music on compact discs into small digital files.
The injunction was the result of a 15-month-long legal battle, which has come to be viewed as a landmark case on copyrights in cyberspace, and seen as defining how music, books and entertainment will be distributed online.
The world's biggest record labels -- including Vivendi Universal's Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music, EMI Group and Bertelsmann's BMG 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.
Last Friday, the labels e-mailed Napster a list of 135,000 songs, including music from Elvis Presley to Eminem, for their removal. Napster late Monday, however, said much of the list was duplicated and not in compliance with the injunction.
"Wednesday's not going to be the be-all end-all," Napster CEO Hank Barry said on Monday.
Barry said Napster so far has screened 115,000 unique file names, representing 26,000 songs with artists and titles associated with them. A spokeswoman on Wednesday said that more file names would be screened by late Wednesday.
Amy Weiss, a spokeswoman for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on Tuesday said the organization was not going to debate the fine points of the order's implementation.
"We believe the court's intent is clear. Napster is required to stop infringing. Stall tactics are unacceptable," she said.
While Napster has begun blocking access to some files, its efforts have been thwarted by users who have changed file names by deliberately misspelling titles or by using programs like the Pig Encoder to change names.
With the Pig Encoder, "Music" becomes "usicM," "Hello" becomes "elloH," the Aimster website said.
On Tuesday, Napster also announced it had aligned with Gracenote, a maker of music recognition services, to help it in its file-filtering efforts.
Some experts on Wednesday said that while Gracenote's services will be an improvement over Napster's current method of file identification, it still had limitations since Gracenote's method of file identification does not handle pig Latin-type conversions or any other code naming applications.
