"Your Member of Congress and Senators may be able to prevent efforts to shut down Napster before there has been a trial," the Napster Web site urges. At a news conference on Monday, Napster founder Shawn Fanning said fans should let Congress know "how passionate they are."

While admittedly it's still early in the game, the passion so far seems a touch muted. "They're speaking out a little bit," said Ben O'Connell, press secretary for Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.). "There were 36 e-mails over the last 24 hours, which is a fair number on any given issue but nowhere near the all-time record."

Rep. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) received "50 or 60" e-mails and phone calls yesterday, according to spokesman Lawrence Pacheco. While that is a "pretty heavy" amount of daily e-mail traffic, the debate over subsidies for prescription drugs generated "hundreds" of e-mails and calls in a single day, Pacheco said. Udall represents Boulder, home to many college students � Napster's most devout users.

The largest record companies have sued Napster, claiming that its music-swapping software permits wholesale copyright infringement. A lower court agreed, and on Monday so did a San Francisco appeals court, saying a preliminary injunction "is not only warranted, but required." That injunction, which will stop Napster from permitting users to swap copyrighted music, will come in weeks if not days.

Napster claims more than 50 million users. Even if this number is inflated, it clearly has an enormous user base. What those people will do over the next six months if Napster disappears will determine the fate of digital music.

Will they seamlessly move to the Napster clones � sites that essentially duplicate what Napster does so smoothly that fans might never even notice the original is gone? Will they wait for the record companies to start effective and legal pay-for-play services, pushing the pirated download to the margins of the virtual world?

Or, in a less likely scenario, will the users care enough about Napster to help persuade the company and the entertainment industry to work together?

"We cannot leave the consumer at the altar much longer," said Steven Gottlieb, president of the independent label TVT Records. "They have clearly and emphatically said how much they love this service" � not, he stresses, because it's free, but because it allows the sampling of every kind of music.

Until three weeks ago, TVT was among those suing Napster. Then it dropped its copyright-infringement suit, saying it was time to embrace Napster. Now that there's a court ruling establishing that exchanging copyrighted music without permission is illegal, Gottlieb thinks the other music companies should back off too.

"The record labels should be working on not trying to shut Napster down, but how to make it legitimate," Gottlieb said. "To the extent they continue to push against something that the public so much desires, they won't improve the judicial treatment of this issue, and they'll invite a legislative view � or consumer backlash."

Meanwhile, assuming the injunction that a federal judge is now retooling does indeed change Napster so drastically it will be unrecognizable, the record companies have a chance to prove they can do it themselves.

"We have a window of opportunity, but it won't be open forever," said Larry Miller, president of Reciprocal Entertainment, whose company handles back-office digital transaction services for such major entertainment companies as Sony Corp.

Negotiations between Napster and the music companies that sued it are continuing. But in the wake of this week's ruling, Napster doesn't have many chips left.

"Of course we are still interested in talking � if they can build a legitimate market with that brand name, that marketability and ease of use," said a music industry executive. Bertelsmann AG, through its BMG subsidiary, recently made an investment in Napster, and plans have been afoot to start some sort of legitimate service.

"If BMG and Napster can build that mousetrap, we will show up," said the music executive, who declined to be named.

While the vast majority of downloads of copyrighted music are done through Napster, it isn't the only file-sharing service. But some of the others mentioned most often, such as Gnutella, practically require an engineering degree to use.

Much more user-friendly is MusicCity.com, which seems to be attempting to stay out of trouble by posting a disclaimer that all users agree not to infringe the intellectual property of others. But you can download the Beatles off it almost as easily as you can off Napster.

"The point is not that free music is going to keep popping up � but that it's going to be there without even having to retrain the consumer," said one Silicon Valley executive who follows the industry.

After all, the software that people having been downloading from Napster or places like FileNavigator is not a violation of copyright. Nor is it a violation to have music on your computer. Only the central directory of songs � the mechanism through which the swappers find each other � is at issue in the Napster lawsuit. "Competitive directories are easy to build and find," said this executive.

Unlike Napster, though, their makers seem to know how to keep a low profile. While there's no phone number listed on the MusicCity.com site, its Internet registration card gives a number in Tennessee. A man who answered the phone said the president, Steve Griffin, would return a reporter's call "if he feels like it."

He didn't.

Copyright (C) 2001, The Washington Post. Reprinted with permission.