It was clear from early on in the Wednesday afternoon hearing that Judge Patel was not to be easily swayed by Boies. Less than halfway into the 20 minutes she had allotted him to present his case, Patel cut Boies off and gave him a minor tongue-lashing. As Boies explained that Napster is capable of substantial non-infringing uses, she interrupted to ask why, if people are using Napster for non-copyright infringing purposes, an injunction would put Napster out of business. "Isn't that inconsistent with your argument?" she queried.

After Patel issuing her ruling, Boies stood up to ask for some leeway. The tan-faced attorney argued that by demanding that Napster prevent users from trading copyrighted songs, the judge was in essence asking Napster to shut down. Napster, he argued, can't separate the copyrighted songs from everything else without listening to every file, in its entirety. "We don't even have a list of songs that plaintiffs claim have been copyrighted," he said.

But Patel would have none of it: "That's their problem. They've created the monster and this is the consequence they face," she said, adding, "They can have their chat rooms. They can have their new artists."

Boies' cohort Johnson also failed to woo the judge with his argument that the record industry created its own problem and that Napster shouldn't be held responsible for it. "The ripping software [used to copy music from CDs to MP3 format] isn't created by Napster, it's created by Sony," he told the court. "They have created their own monster and the monster is MP3." The record industry, he argued, could have created an encryption system for music as early as 1988, but failed to do so and now -- no matter what happens in court -- MP3 files will exist and people will likely trade them. "It's not my fault, it's not Napster's fault, it's their fault," he exclaimed.

But Patel found the arguments of Russell Frackman, an attorney for the record industry, far more compelling. In his opening remarks, he suggested that Napster's wild popularity should be considered a black mark against it and estimated that within the few minutes it took for people to find their seats in the courtroom, 30,000 songs -- the vast majority of which would be copyrighted -- were downloaded using the service. "This is just the beginning," he prophesied, "and your honor has the ability to nip this in the bud."

Even after the injunction, his words ring true. Anything could happen. The full trial has not yet even begun. But it now seems even more unlikely that Napster will slip out of its tangle with the recording industry. Judge Patel has now ruled twice: once against Napster's attempt to have the case thrown out, and now against Napster's ability to continue unhindered while the RIAA's copyright infringement case snakes its way through court. All evidence suggests she will remain a tough customer for Napster to win over.

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