Following directions from the US Appeals Court in July, Napster lawyers have until 18/08/2000 to lodge their brief and explain why the original order of US District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel should be permanently over-turned.The RIAA [recording industry association of America] then have until 8/09/2000 to respond and Napster then have until 12/09/2000 to respond to the RIAA.David Boies, famous for his role as lead prosecutor for the Justice Department in the Microsoft anti-trust case, who this time round is leading the Napster defence team stated that “the individual user has an absolute right to share music. The problem is that the RIAA seems determined to kill the new medium. If that’s so, we’re not going to go quietly into that night. We are going to fight.“Napster’s arguments are likely to be refinements of the same points that failed against the original district judge, but with more idiot speak for the pre-tech judges in the Court of Appeal [some have commentated  that part of the problem in the case is that most Judges find it hard to understand what Napster is].Napster will probably claim amongst other things that there is no violation of copyright since all use is personal and is thus non-commercial use as defined by the US Audio Home Recording Act 1992. Also, since some of the titles on Napster are not copyrighted in the first place it is unfair to force Napster to protect these works. The RIAA will probably repeat the fact that Napster has 20 million downloads a day and thus does not constitute home use, that the percentage of non copyrighted music is minimal and that Napster constitutes a promotion of privacy and serves to undermine the cocaine fuelled lifestyles of the big six: Time Warner, Sony Music Entertainment, Seagrams Universal, BMG, the music unit of Bertelsman and EMI.With Scour under a similar attack from the MPA, it looks like the eventual  Napster ruling will have a fundamental effect on the way people will be able to use the net to share information. The info war is heating up.