Yes, you can still use it. But a legal decision means Napster may soon by under the thumb of copyright owners. By Geoff Nicholson

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The panel sent an earlier decision by U.S. District Judge Marilyn Patel back to the district court with instructions for creating a narrower injunction that would still require Napster to block the trading of copyrighted music.

Music companies will be required to identify which of their copyrights are being infringed. Napster then has to block access to those songs. It has been claimed in some reports that up to 90% of content available via Napster infringes copyright.

Napster could also be held liable for copyright infringement to the extent that it knew of specific material on its system and failed to act to prevent its distribution.

This means Napster can live on until lower-court injunction is modified, but Napster will have to acceed to valid requests from music companies to prevent music from being shared. There is no firm date set for the injunction to be officially modified.

Hilary Rosen, president and chief executive officer of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), declared the ruling a victory.

Napster claims it will lodge an appellate review, according to a statement released on its web site.

"Napster is not shut down, but under this decision it could be. We are very disappointed in this ruling by the three judge panel and will seek appellate review. The Court today ruled on the basis of what it recognized was an incomplete record before it. We look forward to getting more facts into the record. We will pursue every avenue in the courts and the Congress to keep Napster operating."

Napster is indeed not shut down. There are still users trading files via the service. In anticipation of Napster's demise, more users have been logging onto Napster than usual. A CNN report claims as many as 250 million songs traded hands in the past 48 hours.

What do you think of the ruling? Please make yourself heard in the Napster discussion forum.