Students using the Internet music service Napster are breathing a sigh of relief — for a short while at least.

Some students are not happy with the ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco and are afraid that in the future the district courts will take Napster away for good.

"There are other ways to get music, but it would be a shame to shutdown Napster because it's such a good Web site," Nick Oglesby (junior-telecommunications) said.

Matthew Jackson, a communications professor who specializes in copyright law, said that while the injunction will take effect immediately upon revision, it technically does not mean that Napster has to shut down.

"The injunction says Napster is responsible for making sure the access to specific infringing works are blocked," Jackson said. "Napster is only obligated to block copyrighted works when notified by the company or musician."

For example, students can receive songs of a local band, if its members do not contact Napster to block access to the music, Jackson said. However, access to songs from well-known groups such as Metallica will be blocked, because of requests from most major recording labels.

Jackson is unsure of what method Napster will use to block access to copyrighted songs, but he said they could either block user access to songs or block the specific music from being posted.

Currently, over 20,000 artists have given their permission to have their works shared and such sharing is lawful.

Robin Suhrie (senior-agriculture education) said she thinks the injunction is fair.

"I think the artists have the right to let users listen to music for free if they want to," Suhrie said. "If they don't want to share their music, then don't put songs on the Internet."

Under the digital Millenium Copyright Act Penn State is required by law to comply with regulations regarding illegal use of its network.

While very rarely used, Jackson said that students could potentially violate civil and criminal copyright infringement laws.

"If you download a copyrighted song or make it available for others to upload, you could face copyright infringement," Jackson said. "Violation of civil copyright law faces a minimum of $200 per violation, and violation of criminal copyright law could result in six months in jail."

BMG, one of the five major companies suing Napster for copyright infringement, said last month it would drop the charges against Napster and allow users access to its artists if it would start a fee-charging system that pays royalties to the artists. BMG is the only company on the litigation team that is willing to add this subscription service.

John Mulhern (senior-operational systems informational management) said he would be willing to pay the monthly subscription fee for Napster.

"Five to ten dollars a month is no big deal and it's definitely worth it," Mulhern said. "I think it's a good move by Napster anyway because it would appease the music industry, and since there are so many users, they'd make lots of money."

Suhrie said she uses Napster but wouldn't pay money for its services.

"It would lessen the amount of music I listen to," Suhrie said. "But I'm not that big of a music fan. I can just listen to the radio."