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motion, certainly plenty of paper has been expended as well,” she said. “The court is able to render a decision.” Speaking off the top of her head, Patel ruled first that most Napster users were violating copyrights. “This, in fact, should come as no surprise to Napster, since that . . . was the purpose of it.” Tackling next the VCR case’s approval of technology capable of substantial noninfringing use, she said that even the potential for such use at Napster was minimal. “While it may be capable of some of these other things, those uses seem to pale by comparison to what Napster is actually used for, what it was promoted for, and what it continues to be used for.” She conceded that the issue of acceptable personal use was a trickier one, because the technology had gotten out ahead of the law. But she said users who distributed files to large numbers of strangers “cannot be said to engage merely in the typical personal use.” And she got rid of the rest of the VCR case by pointing out the huge flaw in the parallel: The VCR case involved technological devices that a manufacturer distributed to consumers and then lost control of. Napster continued to be in charge of how its service was used. Then Patel disposed of the Audio Home Recording Act in four sentences, declaring that computers were not “audio home recording devices” as defined by that law.

Satisfying herself that Napster users were breaking the law, Patel turned to what Napster knew about the behavior and if it abetted their actions, as required for a finding of vicarious or contributory infringement. Citing the internal documents about piracy and the need to remain ignorant of IP addresses for that reason, Patel ruled that the evidence “overwhelmingly establishes that the defendant had actual or, at the very least, constructive knowledge.” That finding also ended Napster’s attempt to get into any of the DMCA’s safe harbors.

For good measure, Patel went beyond what she needed to do to shut Napster down. She said that Napster had added liability because it had “supervisory powers” over what was happening on its network, as it demonstrated by blocking hundreds of thousands of users, including those cited by Metallica and Dr. Dre. Going forward, she said, the company must find a way to make sure that none of the files available violated copyrights, even if Napster had to redesign from scratch. “I’m sure that anyone as clever as the people who wrote the software in this case are clever enough, as there are plenty of those minds in Silicon Valley, to do