Napster facing another crunch day in court

Napster is heading for a critical court hearing that could see all copyrighted music banned from the service.

The San Francisco District court session is expected to see an injunction re-written effectively paving the way for the site's closure.

Last month, an appeals court largely upheld the recording industry's demands for a court order banning the exchange of all unlicensed MP3s.

The judges ordered District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel to rewrite an order she first passed in July but was quickly suspended pending appeal.

The appellate judges upheld the injunction's premise, adding only that there should be a provision allowing Napster to survive if it can keep pirates off its network.

Napster has tried to buy time with a series of legal appeals but it is unclear whether they can delay Patel from quickly issuing a reworked order.

There is also speculation over whether Napster will be able to act on the injunction as it is in the process of developing a subscriptions-based service with Bertelsmann which will not be in place until later this year.

Another last-ditch bid for survival, which saw Napster offer music firms $1 billion to settle the copyright infringement suit, was roundly rejected by the Recording Industry Association of America.

The trade group dismissed the plan, which would have given Napster license to continue using copyrighted content, anticipating victory in its landmark case.