Tech glitch brings Napster down

By Daniel Sieberg
CNN.com Technology Editor

(CNN) -- Both the Napster Web site and its wildly popular song-swapping service were inaccessible to users for several hours Wednesday due to a hardware problem, a company spokeswoman said.

The service went down beginning about 10:30 a.m. EDT. Since Napster is based in Redwood City, California, the technical staff weren't in the office because it was so early there, the spokeswoman said.

When the technical problem was discovered they began repairing it and managed to get everything operational by about 1 p.m. EDT.

The company spokeswoman emphasized that it was a hardware problem and was not related to any outside computer action or the current legal case.

	MESSAGE BOARD
MP3 wars

"It's nothing serious," she said. "It was down and they've fixed it."

Message boards were abuzz as users fretted over the apparent loss of their source for MP3s -- a compressed music file that has become the standard format on the Internet.

One person wrote: "I need my Napster fix and I'm having a hard time dealing with it. Please Napster, don't let us down."

Attorneys for Napster and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) presented arguments to a federal appeals court Monday.

The judges are reviewing a lower court's injunction against Napster that would shut down the service pending a ruling.

The service, developed by college dropout Shawn Fanning, has attracted some 30 million users since its launch last year.

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Napster
Recording Industry Association of America

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