A US Federal appeals court has set the week of October 2nd for opening arguments in the trial pitting music songswap company Napster against some of the giants of the recording industry.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals set the October date without comment and did not say which justices would sit on the three-member panel hearing the case, a landmark battle over copyright protection in cyberspace that could eventually touch books, movies and television.
The same court last month granted Napster a last-minute reprieve by staying a judge's order that would have shut down the service, which boasts more than 20 million users.
The lawsuit lodged against Napster by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) contends that the service - which lets fans swap songs for free by trading MP3 files, a compression format that turns music on compact discs into small computer files - is just a high-technology short-cut to music piracy.
In the suit, Napster faces a collection of the most powerful recording companies in the US, including Seagram's Universal Music, Bertelsmann's BMG, Sony's Sony Music, and Time Warner's Warner Music Group and EMI.
In recent "friends of the court" briefs, however, the Computer & Communications Industry Association, which represents technology giants like AT&T, Oracle and Yahoo, said the courts needed to revise some of the "overprotective" models for intellectual property protection.
Similar briefs filed by several other coalitions expressed concerns that the ruling could limit users' rights to enjoy music and media and could impose copyright policing responsibilities on Internet service providers.
Napster on August 18th asked the appeals court permanently to overturn US District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel's July 26th order that Napster prevent users from trading copyrighted songs - an order that would have effectively shut the service down.
Officials at Napster have said they hope to settle the legal battle out of court, saying the two sides should work together to figure out a business model that combined music distribution technology with copyright protection.
The recording industry has been less enthusiastic, however, saying file-sharing programs like Napster represent a clear threat to their operation and profitability.
